Our rulers use their own decay to divide the exploited

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The news media have been full of the demonstrations calling for closing the hotels housing asylum seekers and for mass deportations of ‘illegals’. Inhuman demands in the name of patriotism have been supported by a widespread hanging or painting of Union Jacks or England flags, while the far right demagogue Tommy Robinson succeeded in mobilizing up to 150,000 people for his “Unite the Kingdom” demonstration” in London. In reaction the ‘anti-racist’ left has organised counter-demonstrations. And then Epping council brought the legal cases against migrants being housed at the Bell Hotel there, and the government appealed against the ruling that they should move.

The demonstrations outside migrant housing can only terrify the people living there, particularly in the context of the riots and attacks on migrant housing last year after the Southport murders. But it is not only Britain where such things are happening: in the USA we see the ICE raids on ‘’illegal’ migrant workers, in the region of Murcia in Spain in July North Africans were violently attacked, and in Australia the far right has been actively involved in marches against immigration.

So how should we understand all this? We need to look beyond the immediate sparks that lit the flames, such as the false claim that the Southport murderer  was an asylum seeker, or the arrest of an asylum seeker for indecently assaulting a child in Epping. This new outbreak of the spirit of the pogrom is clearly an example of the rotting of capitalist society as a whole. In its terminal stage, capitalism cannot help spewing out irrational ideologies which look for scapegoats to blame, while it is this vey social system which is responsible for the economic crisis, local wars and ecological destruction which are forcing millions to flee their place of origin in search of  a more tolerable living conditions.[1] And there is no doubt that the parties and groups of the far right are directly involved in spreading this hateful discourse  and deliberately provoking confrontations on the streets.

All the main parties compete in anti-migrant rhetoric

But we also need to recognise that all the main parties have, for decades now, been competing for who can be toughest on the question of asylum seekers, illegal immigrants and the people-smuggling gangs.  In order to hold on to their influence and position, the ‘respectable’ parties are very willing to use racial, gender , regional and other conflicts to divert, divide and mystify their main enemy: the working class.

We can begin by looking at what is not appearing in the news: the attacks on the working class demanded by the economic crisis, in particular the massive weight of debt and the need to boost the war economy. In its first year in office the Labour government, despite its large majority, has had difficulty pushing through cuts in the winter fuel allowance for pensioners and massive cuts in welfare payments. It is now pushing through cuts in civil service and NHS jobs much more discretely while the media divert everyone’s attention onto other questions such as whether asylum seekers should be housed in a hotel in Epping, or in camps removed from urban centres. We should note that the campaign on the Bell Hotel in Epping is very timely in this respect, whereas the widespread riots last year, just after the elections, were not[2].

We should not be fooled into thinking that the government, or any part of the ruling class, will defend immigrants and refugees. The worst attacks come from the state, and from the Labour government just as much as any other. We can give only a few examples of many. It is the state that denies asylum seekers the right to work, and packs them into crowded hotels, multi-occupancy houses or other unsuitable accommodation to live on far lower benefit than the unemployed. The Starmer government has continued to attack immigrants, just as the previous Tory government did. For instance, in February they announced anyone who arrived illegally would be unable to apply for citizenship, while citizenship has been made harder for all immigrants. They closed the care worker visa route to entry, increased the salary required for skilled worker visas to £41,700, and reduced the number who can bring relatives and dependents in. The Labour government is quite brazen about competing with Reform in anti-migrant rhetoric, so much so that Nigel Farage has had to develop unrealistic claims of how many he would deport just to outflank the others – is it 288,000 or 600,000 a year? And that he would build secure immigration detention for 24,000 in 18 months, costing £12billion, a level of prison building never achieved!

 The Socialist Workers’ Party, which has played a major role in the 'anti-racist’ mobilisations in the UK, would have us believe the Labour government’s part in this is due to the influence of the far right: “Reform UK MP Richard Tice, boasted this week that Starmer was ‘listening and learning’ from the far right party'” (Socialist Worker,12.5.25) when he said we are “becoming an island of strangers”. They want us to forget the history of Labour governments over decades.  Jack Straw, Home Secretary in the Blair government, spoke about “bogus” asylum seekers and, introduced a ministerial instruction to immigration officers (under the provisions of the Race Relations (Amendment) Act 2000) saying that people “must be examined more rigorously, detained more freely, and refused entry more swiftly if ‘there is statistical evidence showing a pattern or trend of breach of the immigration laws by persons of that nationality’” (The Guardian, 24.4.2001). And the same the Race Relations (Amendment) Act 2000 also said that if there is someone who’s not familiar with the English language and they need information that “is not available in a language which the person understands, it is not necessary to provide the information in a language which he does understand” (ibid). “In other words, if the British state wants to target some particular ethnic or national groups, they’ve now got another weapon at their disposal”[3]. 

In January 2003, the Downing Street chief of staff of Tony Blair, Jonathan Powell, sent a report titled “Asylum: The Nuclear Option”, to him in which “he suggested the proposals 'to send a shockwave through the system'”. Proposals were among others: “sending asylum seekers to holding camps on the Scottish island of Mull and removing them to ‘safe havens’ in third-party countries such as Turkey, South Africa and Kenya, was among the ‘nuclear options’ considered by Tony Blair’s government”. (Rwanda-style asylum plan was ‘nuclear option’ for Blair in 2003, records reveal, The Guardian, 29 December 2023). “Labour certainly has nothing to learn from the Tories when it comes to racism”[4]

Even if it is rank hypocrisy, the Labour Pary – as a party of the left – likes to present itself as anti-fascist, anti-racist and democratic and it gets help in this from those further to the left on the capitalist political spectrum, as when it is accused of giving in to the Tories or to Reform, and from the right when it is accused of not being tough enough on migration. However, it is dangerous to think we can appeal to the state or to the Labour Party or any other bourgeois party to defend immigrants against the attacks that  they themselves are initiating and imposing. Similarly, it is dangerous to assume that we can rely on a liberal or democratic state to defend workers, and particularly the most vulnerable immigrant workers, from injustice, summary withdrawal of visas and deportation. Remember the hostile environment in 2012, with the civilian population required to snitch on migrants and deny jobs or services (whether as employers, landlords or, potentially lethally, the NHS), leading to the Windrush scandal.[5] It may have been Theresa May who announced this in 2012, but the term was introduced by Labour immigration minister Liam Byrne in 2007. And today it is the Labour government which is restricting entry, detaining migrants, making asylum appeals harder and doing the deporting.

Above all, the claim by Labour and the left that it can ‘stand up to racism’  serves to divide the working class into ‘pro’ and ‘anti’ migrants and to prevent it from focusing on the central question: the attacks on working class living standards that the economic crisis, and the drive towards militarism, obliges the bourgeoisie, both right and left, to increase and intensify.

Alex ,September 2025

 

[1] Racist attacks and pogroms have taken place many times throughout history, not only in the period of decomposition over the last 3 or 4 decades. However, the circumstances in which events take place varies and in this period we can see it as part of the bourgeoisie’s loss of control of its political game, increased divisions and irrational policies such as keeping out skilled workers needed by the economy –  in the USA this is being taken to the extreme of arresting agricultural workers in fields leaving produce to rot. We will take up this question, and the fact that the working class is a class of immigrants, in a future article.

[5] This affected thousands who came over from the Commonwealth as children in the 1950s, when they were British citizens, because at the time the national capital needed their parents for an influx of labour, particularly cheap labour, to rebuild the country after World War 2. If they didn’t have the documentation to prove their right to live in the country where they had spent all their lives they also faced the hostile environment, ie loss of job, no benefit, no passport, no right to NHS treatment.

Rubric: 

Campaign around migrant hotels