Oppose Visitors’ Visa Bond


Take a stand against Britain’s racist immigration laws.

A picket of the Home Office, Queen Anne’s Gate, London was organised by Indian Workers Association (GB) on 15th February. Ealing Southall CSLP supported this action and distributed the following information as part of its mobilisation for the picket.

Britain’s immigration laws and the way that they are used have always been racist. Now the government is planning new racist regulations to require visa bonds of up to £10,000 from black visitors to Britain. Plans favour a ‘pilot’ for visitors from Pakistan, India and Bangladesh. This is the not so thin end of the wedge, and visitors from the Caribbean and Africa are obviously next in line. Why not pilot Australia? The answer is obvious, a government ‘consultation’ paper actually says: “we must use posts [i.e. overseas visa application centres] which regularly have a large number of applications for entry clearance by visitors, and where there is a large and well established ethnic community from the country living in the UK”.

All the talk about institutional racism and ‘things to be done’ following the Macpherson Report into the murder of Stephen Lawrence is shown to be hollow. Through such racist legislation and regulations ‘respectable’ politicians peddle the lie that black people are “the problem”. These are the very people who are crying blue murder over the inclusion of Jorg Haider’s Freedom Party in the Austrian coalition government. Not without reason has Jorg Haider said: “If you compare our programme with the programme of Tony Blair you will find a lot of similarities”!

Among the ‘respectable’ politicians proposing and supporting this ‘scheme’ are almost all the black MPs who made their careers on the backs of the black community, who were told by this gentry that only black representatives could protect their interests. Having now carved out cosy little niches for themselves in one of the best bourgeois clubs, these gentlemen are busy acting their role as Uncle Toms of British imperialism.

Characters such as the despicable Mr Keith Vaz, pompous and full of self importance (now Minister for the Foreign and Commonwealth Office) and the congenitally demented Mr Piara Khabra, MP for Ealing Southall, are the willing agents for racist actions of the Labour government. Their behaviour, despicable though not unexpected, is true to form; they have a long record of self-seeking careerism, in the pursuit of which there is not a crime they will not commit. If the interests of their petty careers require that they fall in line with British imperialism’s attacks presently being launched on the ethnic minorities, the lone parents, the unemployed, the disabled or the unfortunate visitors from countries which are the victims of cruel imperialist exploitation, they are only too happy to oblige.

As for that joke which passes for our representative in parliament, to wit Mr Khabra, he is becoming, not without reason, an object of ever increasing ridicule for his inability to be even an effective bourgeois politician. For example the following comment appeared in the Daily Telegraph of 5th February:

“Piara Khabra (Lab, Ealing Southall) confirmed himself as surely this Parliament’s weakest performer. Mr Khabra, with an astonishing majority of 21,423, was first up in this week’s Prime Minister’s Questions.

“His question was near inaudible and his delivery laughably weak. Perhaps because he is Indian, or perhaps because he i

s old, the House listened with a straight face. How patronising. Mr Khabra deserved a loud and long raspberry. If he cannot lift his game he should make way for someone better.”

In the

Ealing Gazette

of 4th February Mr Khabra stated “I receive many letters from people complaining that relatives have been refused entry to attend a wedding or visit a family member who is sick.” Yes, we are sick and tired of the prevalence of such racial discrimination, but what is Mr Khabra’s answer? Is it to do something against the racism of the Labour party? No! He goes on to say: “A lot of people have come to me and said they would be prepared to pay a bond”! Is this the voice of the people of Southall, or is it the voice of a lackey of imperialism?

We must oppose these racist regulations and our so-called representatives who support them . The Labour Party represents the interests of British imperialism. Tony Blair recently visited Southall in the style of a Viceroy of India, with the likes of the obsequious Mr Khabra acting the role of the toadies of the Raj. The working class of Britain, the black people in particular, have absolutely nothing to expect from the Labour government. On the contrary, they must break with Labour. They must support the Socialist Labour Party which is committed not only to repealing racist immigration and anti-trades union laws, but also to the abolition of capitalism, which is the source of all the maladies of present day society.