As Labour and the Tories alike gear up to the election by pledging harsher and harsher measures to deter or deport would-be immigrants, the government has caught itself in a trap of its own making. The obvious contradiction between ‘outlawing institutionalised racism’ and being ‘tough’ on asylum seekers has finally become visible in a way from which Labour cannot escape. Nicki Jameson reports.
The Immigration (European Economic Area) (Amendment) Regulations 2001 encapsulate the nonsense of tightening immigration laws while preserving an anti-racist facade. They state that, following the passing of the post-Lawrence Race Relations Amendment Act, there is ‘a right of appeal to a person who alleges that an authority has, in taking any decision under the Immigration Acts… racially discriminated against him’. However, once the complainant lodges such an appeal, ‘the Secretary of State may certify that appeal as manifestly unfounded. If the adjudicator agrees with the certificate, the person is prevented from appealing against the adjudicator’s decision…’
And if general permission to racially discriminate in immigration decisions is not sufficient, the government has named specific groups to be targeted for special attention. Race Relations (Immigration and Asylum) (No 2) Authorisation 2001 has now been removed from the HMSO website following exposure by Hugo Young in The Guardian and embarrassing questions in the House of Lords. It lists nationalities which may be subject to ‘discrimination on grounds of ethnic or national origin’: Kurds, Roma, Albanians, Tamils, Pontic Greeks, Somalis, Afghans and ‘ethnic Chinese’ travelling on Malaysian or Japanese travel documents. When asked in the Lords if such discrimination would involve, for example, scrutiny of all Tamils, including those from ‘India, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Malaysia, Canada, the United Kingdom and elsewhere’, the government minister shamelessly responded that this would indeed be the case and that ‘the authorisation applied to passengers of Tamil ethnic or national origin, irrespective of their nationality.’
And just to make the whole vicious attack even more Kafkaesque, the government is seriously of the view that asylum applicants don’t need to have information in a language they understand. Ministers maintain that no breach of the Geneva Convention on Refugees or the European Convention on Human Rights will be committed if the explanatory notes to the Statement of Evidence Form are entirely incomprehensible to the asylum seeker who has to complete it.
Meanwhile, Tony Blair has been wooing the bourgeoisie in The Times. Labour, he says, defends two ‘fundamental principles’: ‘an enduring belief in helping those fleeing persecution and torture’ and ‘upholding the rule of law’. But the law Labour chooses to uphold is that which is intended to keep asylum seekers out of Britain. When ‘the rule of law’ appears in the inconvenient international form of the 1951 UN Convention on Refugees, Labour does not want to uphold it. Instead it is campaigning for it to be rewritten in order to remove Britain’s responsibility to give asylum to those fleeing persecution. Given this creative approach to ‘fundamental belief’ number two, it is clear that ‘fundamental belief’ number one is meaningless. Large parts of Blair’s article are dedicated to boasting of Labour’s plans for further repression: ‘extra investment for X-ray equipment to search lorries in France before they leave for Britain, electronic finger-printing…a specialist anti-trafficking unit… 1,000 extra immigration officers and 1,500 more detention places’.
‘Keeping racism out of the election’ is absolute nonsense. Far from scrapping institutionalised racism, the political parties are competing to institutionalise it still further. Condemning ridiculous old Tories who use vile racist language is fine, but it goes nowhere near the heart of the real problem, which is that government and opposition are completely united in their plans to seal off Britain to all immigrants other than those who are very rich or are specifically needed by particular sections of the economy. With just a few weeks to go to polling day, no-one should have any illusions. Hague and Widdecombe are indeed racists of the first order, but Blair and Straw are on a par with them, and it is Labour which currently has the power to turn its vicious hatred of particular groups into law.
FRFI 161 June / July 2001
