The Labour government’s Border Security, Asylum and Immigration Bill is currently going through Parliament and is likely to become law later this year. In advance of the passing of this latest piece of draconian legislation, Home Secretary Yvette Cooper continues to boast of the ramping up of immigration raids and deportation of vulnerable low-paid workers. Meanwhile the trade union sponsored organisation Stand up to Racism and its fellow travellers concentrate their fire on the relatively small forces of Reform UK and other far-right groups, and have nothing to say about the far more powerful racist and imperialist Labour Party currently in power. Nicki Jameson reports.
New legislation
The Border Security, Asylum and Immigration Bill had its first reading in Parliament on 30 January and second reading on 10 February. It is now at the ‘committee stage’ of parliamentary scrutiny.
The Bill formally introduces the role of Border Security Commander, although in practice former Police Chiefs Council head Martin Hewitt was already appointed to the role in September 2024 on an advertised salary of £140-200k. Government propaganda was hyped up around his recruitment and that of the force he will lead, whose task is described as ‘to tackle organised immigration crime, drawing on substantial resource to work across Europe and beyond to disrupt trafficking networks and to coordinate with prosecutors in Europe to deliver justice’.
The Bill also introduces new criminal offences of:
- supplying or handling ‘articles for use in immigration crime’ to anyone attempting to enter Britain without entry clearance;
- collecting information for use in immigration crime;
- endangering another during a sea crossing.
These measures are a clear attack both on migrants and on those assisting them. Although there is an exemption for the provision of food, drink, accommodation and medical items, those such as charity workers in Calais who provide migrants with items such as phones, maps of the local area and written legal advice face criminalisation. The charge of supplying/handling carries a penalty of up to 14 years’ imprisonment and that of endangering six years.
The Conservative government’s absurd Safety of Rwanda Act and parts of its Illegal Migration Act (IMA) 2023 are repealed in the Bill but the majority of the IMA remains, as does all of its predecessor, the Nationality and Borders Act (NABA) 2022. NABA drew a distinction between ‘legal’ and ‘illegal’ asylum seekers, ignoring the provisions of the Refugee Convention and decreeing that anyone arriving without documentation would be guilty of a criminal offence.
Going even further than the Tories in its racist persecution of refugees, on the same day as the Bill’s Second Reading, the government amended Home Office guidance on British citizenship to the effect that ‘Any person applying for citizenship… who previously entered the UK illegally will normally be refused, regardless of the time that has passed since the illegal entry took place.’
The new Bill also contains a section on ‘Prevention of Serious Crime’ which – although presumably adding to the government’s bluster about ‘smashing the gangs’ – appears to have nothing directly to do with asylum or immigration. It amends the existing Serious Crime Prevention legislation and introduces various new provisions including the very specific offence of possessing a template for producing fire-arms using a 3D printer.
Introducing the Bill to Parliament, Cooper described its purpose as ‘to strengthen UK border security… restore order to the immigration and asylum systems… and to bring in new counter-terror-style powers for our law enforcement to go after the dangerous criminal gangs that undermine our border security, that profit from putting lives at risk and that have been getting away with it for far too long.’
The debate which followed saw a few questions from the remaining handful of ‘left’ Labour MPs, expelled independents, Greens and Scottish Nationalist representatives as to why Labour was not making more allowances for those fleeing repression, and why it was trying to outflank the racist Reform UK party. Reform’s own MPs weren’t present. There were, of course, some responses from Conservative MPs as to why Labour’s plans were unworkable, the Rwanda scheme would have been better and the few bits of Tory legislation being repealed should remain in place. Meanwhile the Labour faithful congratulated themselves on a Bill which ‘will start to restore fairness and balance to our immigration system and, dare I say it, take back control of our borders’ (Jon Pearce, MP for the swing seat of High Peak in Derbyshire).
Clamping down on the vulnerable
In a 10 February public statement, the Home Office boasted that in the month of January alone its enforcement teams had ‘descended on 828 premises, including nail bars, convenience stores, restaurants and car washes, marking a 48% rise compared to the previous January’ and had made 609 arrests, a 73% increase on the previous year.
Conservative Shadow Home Secretary Chris Philp pointed out in the parliamentary debate that while ‘the Home Secretary crows about removal numbers… only a tiny fraction relate to people who arrived by small boat’. Labour is wedded, however, to the insistence on there being a connection between its overall ramping up of attacks on migrants and the prevention of sea-crossings by asylum seekers. This is sound-bite political posturing targeted at the Red Wall voters who switched back to Labour from the Conservatives after PM Rishi Sunak’s failure to deliver on his promise to ‘stop the boats’ and who Labour ministers believe they need to convince that their replacement mantra ‘smash the gangs’ will be more effective.
The government argues that ‘ending the promise of false jobs used by smuggling gangs to sell spaces on boats and taking down their business models [will help] restore order to the immigration system’. However, a Guardian report on 10 February quoted research by the Refugee Council to conclude that ‘there is little evidence that significant numbers of small boat arrivals are being trafficked to work’.
Stand up to government racism!
While the Labour government has declared an all-out war on migrants, the trade-union sponsored group Stand up to Racism (SUTR) remains entirely focused on the threat from far-right politicians either in Parliament (Nigel Farage) or prison (Tommy Robinson), and has nothing at all to say about the racism of the government. With an eye on County Council elections and local by-elections on 1 May, SUTR encourages supporters to ‘Go door to door where Reform candidates are standing to mobilise the vote against them’. This is effectively a call to anti-racists to canvass for the racist Labour Party. In attempting to explain the rise in popularity of racist parties, SUTR proclaims that ‘Trump has given another boost to the global far right’ but will never mention the role of mainstream British political parties in creating a xenophobic climate in which racist groupings can thrive. Farage and Robinson may posture as an opposition to Conservative and Labour policies on immigration but in reality the far right racists and the racist parliamentary parties feed off one another.
Labour is a racist, imperialist party, which continues to arm and provide all types of support to the Zionist genocide against the Palestinian people. It is an anti-working class party, which is attacking the lives of the poorest and most disadvantaged by cutting benefits to disabled people. The Labour Party has historically supported and led Britain’s wars abroad and then criminalised the refugees from these wars when they seek sanctuary here. The last Labour government introduced five new immigration acts, all of which are still in force, alongside the subsequent Conservative laws which brought in the ‘hostile environment’ and attacked the right to asylum. When Labour came to power in 1997, there was one dedicated immigration prison; by the time it left office in 2010 there were 12 Immigration Removal Centres, as well as a network of Short Term Holding Facilities at airports and reporting centres.
Anti-racists and anti-imperialists across Britain need to come together to build a movement in solidarity with refugees and migrant workers, that does not just oppose the most overt excesses of the far-right but that can directly challenge the ingrained racism of the parliamentary parties and, at this time, the Labour government in particular.
FIGHT RACISM! FIGHT IMPERIALISM! 305 April/May 2025
