On 23 April, having seen off various attempts to stall or amend the Bill, the Conservative government succeeded in getting Parliament to pass the Safety of Rwanda Act. The Home Office then began rounding up asylum seekers with the aim of flying them to Rwanda within the next three months. Prime Minister Rishi Sunak has now said that no flights will take place prior to the general election on 4 July, but if his party retains power they will start immediately. NICKI JAMESON reports.
This is the government’s second attempt at mass deportation to Rwanda. Two years ago, then Prime Minister Boris Johnson and Home Secretary Priti Patel were casting around for imaginative ways to ‘solve’ the supposed migration crisis that would appeal to their racist support-base. Inspired by her consultation with racist former Australian Prime Minister, Tony Abbott, Patel fixed on the concept of ‘offshoring’, ie dumping asylum seekers on a willing third country.
In November 2023 the Supreme Court ruled that, although offshoring schemes were not in themselves unlawful, Rwanda did not have sufficient legal safeguards in place for it to be designated a ‘safe country’ for this purpose. Designed to overturn this and prevent further legal challenges, the Safety of Rwanda Act is a vicious piece of legislation with bizarre echoes of the scene in the children’s classic fantasy story Alice through the Looking Glass, in which Humpty Dumpty says: ‘When I use a word, it means just what I choose it to mean…’ Following the passing of the Act, Rwanda is now officially a ‘safe country’ and people seeking asylum in Britain can lawfully be deported to there. No British court can now contradict this ‘safe country’ designation, irrespective of any evidence produced to the contrary.
Putting the wheels in motion
While this Act was going through Parliament, the government was creating the infrastructure for mass removals. In a speech outside Downing Street on 22 April, Sunak boasted of having increased immigration detention places to 2,200, trained up 200 ‘dedicated caseworkers’ to process deportations and arranged for 800 escort staff to carry them out, as well as readying 25 courtrooms, 150 judges and 5,000 court days to deal with any legal challenges. A designated airfield was on standby and ‘commercial charter planes [booked] for specific slots’. The first flight to Rwanda would be ready to leave in 10 to 12 weeks, after which there will be ‘a regular rhythm of multiple flights every month over the summer and beyond until the boats are stopped’.
The government says it has 5,700 people in its sights for deportation to Rwanda this year. The majority of those targeted are migrants who have arrived in Britain since January 2022, but earlier asylum seekers whose cases have been unsuccessful are also in the frame. Hotels which have been used as migrant accommodation have been raided and residents snatched, and people turning up for routine Home Office appointments at venues across England, Wales and Scotland detained. By 1 May the government website was claiming that ‘the first illegal migrants set to be removed to Rwanda have now been detained… with more activity due to be carried out in the coming weeks’.
On top of the costs of this infrastructure, in what is effectively state-run human trafficking, the British government has pledged huge sums of money to its Rwandan counterpart to implement its side of the plan. To date Britain has paid Rwanda £240m and the National Audit Office says that the total payment over five years will be at least £370m. Furthermore, if more than 300 people are successfully deported to Rwanda, Britain will make a one-off payment of £120m to ‘help boost the country’s economy’, with further associated payments of £20,000 for each individual relocated. This is separate to the relocation payment of up to £150,874 per person over five years to cover the costs of asylum processing and integration, plus up to £500 for healthcare.
Echoing the use of the Victorian ‘hulks’, prison ships where convicts were kept prior to transportation to Australia, the Bibby Stockholm barge in Dorset, which the government has always claimed is not a prison, is being used as an interim location for those targeted for removal to Rwanda. The announcement on 23 May that nobody would actually be flown to Rwanda prior to the general election has not prevented people being snatched and imprisoned but is providing them with grounds to ask immigration tribunals to then release them on bail.
Resistance to the round-up was immediate with activists quickly mobilising to support migrants under attack. In Peckham, south London, on 2 May, 45 protesters were arrested as a large crowd blocked the road for seven hours, successfully preventing the taking of asylum seekers targeted for transfer from a hotel to the Bibby Stockholm.
Labour, Tory – same old story
The Labour Party is positioning itself to be the next government and has an election platform every bit as reactionary and racist as the Tories. Labour opposes the Rwanda Plan, not because it is racist or punitive, but because it is expensive and inefficient. On 10 May Labour announced its own immigration plans, which mainly consist of increasing and militarising border enforcement. Under a new Border Security Commander, people smugglers will be treated as terrorists, with the concomitant violence and loss of legal rights. Gung-ho Labour spokespeople were interviewed on TV and radio, crowing about how they would step up stop-and-search, preventative arrest and other repressive measures against supposed human traffickers. Under a Labour administration, those like 20-year-old Senegalese man Ibrahima Bah, who in February was convicted of manslaughter and sentenced to nine years’ imprisonment for piloting a leaky boat from France to England under duress, will be subject to even longer terms and designated as terrorists.
Labour’s plans for a militarised zone along the white cliffs of southern England were sufficient to convince Dover MP Nathalie Elphicke, previously a fan of the Rwanda Plan and a vocal opponent of Labour leader Keir Starmer, to abandon the Conservatives and join Labour, as a more effective outlet for her viciously racist views. Days after Elphicke’s defection, Starmer declared on a visit to Kent that ‘this is a community on the frontline of one of the gravest challenges we face as a nation. Illegal migration is a test of seriousness for all governments and would-be governments, and not just here – right across the world’. Starmer claimed that a militarised response is needed to ‘smash the gangs’, and ‘that’s where the Border Security Command comes in. A new command with new resources and new powers including counter-terrorism power’. Such language depicting asylum seekers not just as ‘illegal’ but hyperbolically as ‘one of the gravest challenges’ facing the country is not just an appeal to the most reactionary sectors of the electorate but displays the racist essence of the Labour Party.
Fight back against racist laws
The passing of yet more draconian legislation and the rounding up of asylum seekers for mass deportation are the acts of a Conservative government desperately appealing to the racist sentiments of a section of the electorate it hopes will keep it in power. Meanwhile Labour waits in the wings with its own brand of racist oppression. But just as there is mass opposition to the two parties’ support for the genocidal Israeli government, there is a groundswell of opposition to the scapegoating and mistreatment of asylum seekers – many of whom have come to Britain as a direct result of imperialist wars in which this country played a major role. We need to step up solidarity against deportations and build a united movement against racism and imperialism.
No deportations to Rwanda!
No paramilitary immigration policing!
Fight racism! Fight imperialism!
FIGHT RACISM! FIGHT IMPERIALISM! 300 June/July 2024
