Labour set to fight the next election on a racist ticket
Regular readers of this
paper will not need convincing of the racism of all the bourgeois parties,
including Labour, as we have, over the years, presented irrefutable evidence in
abundance of this fact. So much that it could now be described as a ‘well
known’ fact. However, the problem with ‘well known’ facts is that unless you
keep repeating them they can very quickly become unknown facts to a large
number of people. As new people are coming into the movement every day, it
would be criminal to assume that our readership remains unchanged; indeed, we
know that it is expanding and so for this reason, if no other, we really cannot
let recent utterances by the Labour MP, Margaret Hodge, pass without comment.
Ms Hodge, the sitting MP for Dagenham and Barking,
has recently been quoted as saying that it was “time to lance the boil of
resentment over the ‘unfairness’ of immigration”. From this you could be
forgiven for thinking she was talking about the ‘unfairness’ that is paraded as
an ethical immigration policy in this country, which locks up people, including
children, in glorified prisons for wanting work and a better life than
imperialism assigns to them. An immigration policy that can send people back
to countries our rulers support, whether they face danger or not, while forcing
those from countries our rulers do not support to mouth any lie about the
government of the country of their birth or be repatriated.
People who leave their homes, their friends and
families, to travel half way around the world to receive a frosty (at best)
reception in the lands of imperialism do not do it for fun. They do not go
through the many dangers and indignities in order to ‘sponge’ off of a foreign
people. They follow work, they ask for nothing but the chance to work and
contribute to their family’s well being. Let’s face it, the wealth of their
nations has in all probability preceded them to these shores under the name of
imperialist profits from abroad.
However, let us return to Ms Hodge. The
‘unfairness’ she is trying to convince us of (ably assisted by the Daily
Mail and the Sun) is that of immigrants coming here and jumping
housing queues, being given massive hand-outs on arrival, and generally living
in luxury at the expense of the ‘British working class’. This is, of course,
the same rubbish that the BNP and other such organisations mouth. So why is it
coming from a leading member of a respectable bourgeois political party? The
answer is simply that this racist trash has always come from all ‘respectable’
bourgeois parties. The Labour party has never lagged behind in this field
because racism is a very good weapon for dividing workers, and in times of
recession that is needed more than ever as that is the time when the truly
unworkable nature of imperialism is laid bare to those who choose to see it.
Racism and Xenophobia are means by which imperialism escapes blame for the very
real crimes it commits against all workers.
The present Labour Government has implemented
enough racist anti-immigrant policies and legislation to be considered the
equal in this regard of any previous government (of any party) in this country,
it has amply prepared the ground for the growth of parties and groups like the
BNP. It then uses this growth that it has helped create to raise the cry ‘vote
Labour to keep the BNP out!’. And this cry is then taken up by most revisionist
and Trotskyist parties and groups. The idea of voting Labour (large racist
party) to keep out the BNP (small racist party) put forward by these people,
who profess to be opposed to racism, is about as sensible as that other cry
raised at election times, i.e., ‘vote Labour to keep the Tories out!’ These
feeble-minded supporters of Social-Democracy will earnestly tell us that should
the Tories ‘get in’ there will be benefit cuts, higher unemployment, lowering
wages and services, more wars, attacks on the NHS and education services etc.
What they omit to point out, but what is becoming more and more obvious to
working class people, is that if we follow the advice to vote Labour there will
still be benefit cuts, higher unemployment, lowering wages and services, more
wars, attacks on the NHS and education services etc. What this revisionist
and Trotskyist gentry seem unable to get into their ‘thick as a brick’ heads is
that in an imperialist system the needs of imperialism comes before all else;
whichever of the bourgeois parties (all pro-imperialist) forms the government,
it will be required to carry out the will of imperialism. Minor policy
differences between these parties are of no real political importance: they are
only there to create the illusion of difference between these parties, to
create a façade of equality between the classes or even that now classes no
longer exist. This deception is the real purpose of bourgeois democracy.
Margaret Hodge and 1 or 2 other Labour MPs find
themselves in a difficult position because of the growth of the BNP that is so
helpful to their party as a whole and the class it really represents. Hodge
has a parliamentary seat in an area of higher than normal unemployment, an area
that used to be a hub of industry where car manufacture was the main employer.
As car production is now on the decline in Britain because of overproduction,
the BNP have found such areas quite easy prey to the argument that says
unemployment is the fault of foreigners living here, rather than a political
decision of our rulers based on getting the most profit possible from any
enterprise and walking away from those that can no longer generate a high
yield. So the car companies are not to blame, the government that refuses to
nationalise the industry to save jobs is not to blame, but somehow poor
immigrants with little or no control over anything are. Instead of pointing
out to white workers that the political system we live under is responsible for
their current and future miseries, Ms Hodge and her ilk simply try to outdo the
BNP in making scapegoats of the immigrants. Naturally, they do not attack the
system that gives them the elevated status and standard of living they enjoys.
Of course, Ms Hodge is respectable and wouldn’t talk in the same crude terms as
the average BNP member, but she does come very close at times and her claim
that “British values of openness and tolerance are under threat because of
an increasing sense of ‘unfairness’ over immigration” leaves one’s head
spinning as one tries to make sense of it. If we read it right, apparently our
tolerance is under threat unless we become less tolerant! Only intolerance, it
seems, can save our shared British value of tolerance!
What is obvious is that her calls, once again, for
a points system based on length of residence, citizenship or National Insurance
contributions for ‘economic’ migrants, before they can access social-housing or
key benefits, will not offer anything better to the British worker. However, it
will save some Government departments some cash, while driving those immigrants
into the hands of those who organise jobs for those without papers etc at lower
than legal rates, but who still need to live while such things are sorted out.
The fact of the matter is that all new benefits claimants are under
attack and that attack, whichever party wins the General Election, is set to
become fiercer, and extended to all existing claimants in an attempt to deny as
much as possible to as many as possible. Basically when the government, or
individual MPs like Ms Hodge, ask us to accept attacks on the benefits of
immigrants, they are asking us to accept the same attacks on all of us and, as
unemployment is set to rise anyway, far more of us will feel those attacks –
and these will happen with or without immigrants.
As far as social-housing is concerned, there is
precious little left, and inviting us on the basis of our colour, nationality
or National Insurance contributions, to squabble over what bit there is comes
a poor second to providing decent housing for all. Again, take immigrants out
of the equation and the situation is no better for those stuck on long lists
for inadequate housing stock. Building affordable social-housing creates jobs
and homes, but not maximum profits for the imperialists; the decision to not
build council houses, and to get rid of those that do exist, is a political
decision made by those who represent the interests of the ruling class, not by
immigrants.
The decision to scapegoat immigrants for electoral
purposes is not new, and Ms Hodge will certainly not be alone in doing it, but
we don’t have to be taken in by such tricks. If there are not enough jobs, it
is because we live in a political and economic system that needs a section of
workers to be unemployed so that they can be used as a threat to those in work
to toe the line. If not enough social housing exists, that is a decision of
our masters to keep working class housing either in private hands – where the
greatest rents can be demanded – or sold to owner-occupiers thus tying workers
to paying banks back over years and making them liable to lose their homes
anyway if they become unemployed for any length of time.
If the NHS and the state education systems are
failing, it is because more and more parts of both are falling into private
hands so that they can be properly milked of the maximum profits regardless of
the ‘service’ offered. If there are more wars, it is not because Moslems or
anyone else is posing a threat to this country: it is because our imperialist
masters are busy seeking world domination to corner raw materials, markets and
avenues for investment. Hence the Iraq and Afghanistan genocidal wars; hence
the preparations for a war against Iran.
These then are the reasons behind the racist
anti-immigrant words of people like Margaret Hodge and workers must learn to
see the reasons behind their words. We call on those who have votes in the
coming elections not to waste them on the big three bourgeois parties, for
their pleas and lies are not in the interests of working people. Likewise, the
smaller racist parties should be shunned as they too only turn worker against
worker for the benefit of the ruling class.
Votes should be given to those who genuinely oppose
imperialist wars, to those who support the struggles of the Palestinian people
against the Zionist puppets of imperialism in Israel, to those who really
oppose and work against the misleading of our class by the imperialist Labour
Party, to those who stand against attempts to scapegoat immigrants and who
stand on a platform of jobs, social-housing, publically owned education and
health care for all who live in this country regardless of colour, age, sex,
religious beliefs or legal status.
You cannot fight racism by pandering to racist
views; these must be challenged, debated and changed – not condoned or
excused. We expect racism from professional bourgeois politicians like Ms
Hodge and her party but we should be able to expect those who call themselves
communist not to be a part of the practice of making immigrants scapegoats for
imperialist crimes. Further we should be able to expect them to actively work
against parties that do use immigrants as scapegoats. The misnamed Communist
Party of Britain (Marxist-Leninist) and its paper ‘Workers’ has earned
itself the title of BNP of the left for its nationalism and anti-immigration
policies, but some of those who deride them for this are little better. When
the New Communist Party (NCP) and the Communist Party of Britain (CPB) both
call on workers to vote Labour they put themselves, whether they intend it or
not, in a position of supporting this warmongering and racist party. We
commend to readers the clause on immigration in the Party Programme of the
Communist Party of Great Britain (Marxist-Leninist), to be found on their
website at www.cpgb-ml.org as a very good example of what a correct attitude
of a communist party towards immigrants should be. Furthermore, the CPGB-ML
gives no support to either the Labour Party or any other bourgeois,
pro-imperialist party.
Down with racism!
Down with imperialism!
Long live proletarian
internationalism!