Editorial – Labour sinks even lower
Somebody has said, ‘What Powell says today, the Tories say tomorrow and Labour legislates on the day after’. There is some evidence for this, going back to 1968, the year Enoch Powell delivered his notorious ‘rivers of blood’ speech. The Labour government of the day then brought in the Commonwealth Immigrants Act to end the free entry into Britain of people from the old Empire. Extending the colour bar to Commonwealth citizens required careful drafting to avoid keeping out ‘white’ people. In the end Labour found a solution — that only those whose father or father’s father were born in Britain would have free entry.
It was in that same speech that Powell talked of the ‘existing population’ finding themselves ‘made strangers in their own country’. A refrain taken up by Starmer in his notorious ‘island of strangers’ speech last May, given in response to the rise of the latter-day Powellites of Reform UK. Now, in a bid to stop losing more votes, the Starmer government has decided to steal Reform UK’s clothes and introduce legislation making it even more difficult for refugees to obtain permanent residence; some are going to have to wait twenty years just to apply (instead of five as now) and during this period will be liable to be sent ‘back to where they came from’ at any time. This, in addition to previously announced measures to make it more difficult for ‘strangers’ to become a British citizen.
No capitalist state is going to allow free entry — and socialists are not so naive as to expect them to. States seek to control entry in accordance with the requirements of the labour market and so as to decide who can come in and who can’t. Most European states, as they have an ageing population, do currently need working-age immigrants to keep production and profits flowing.
They need immigrants, but who? That’s where choice — and prejudice — come in. As in 1968, the Labour government has chosen the path of prejudice.
The Home Secretary, Shabana Mahmood, has said it is her ‘moral responsibility’ to bring in the legislation. What sanctimonious humbuggery! The Labour leaders and most of their MPs are unprincipled careerists whose main concern is to stay in office or at least keep their seats. Dragging morality into it just makes them more despicable. And then there is the sheer vindictiveness of some of the proposed measures. Why keep individuals living for twenty years in fear of deportation?
It is true that, by clever propagandising and media help, many have become convinced that there is ‘mass immigration’ and that stopping ‘too many’ immigrants would lead to an improvement in their life. But it wouldn’t, because the problems they face over housing, health care, and education derive not from there being too many immigrants but from the fact that meeting these needs is not a priority under capitalism where the aim and driving force of the economy is to make a profit. Even if all immigration were stopped and all ‘illegal’ immigrants rounded up and deported these problems would remain.