Category: Labour

Roots of the Windrush scandal: The contempt the system has for black, working class people

The Parliamentary Joint Committee on Human Rights uses some pretty blunt language in its recently published report to express its disapproval of the performance of the Home Office in what has come to be known as the Windrush Generation scandal.

Not enough was in place, it tells us, to “minimise the likelihood of such mistakes being made.” “Such mistakes”, it spells out, being the lack of awareness of the rights of the individuals concerned; ignoring evidence provided by family members, lawyers and MPs and letters from Government bodies like HMRC; wrongly placing the entire burden of proof on the people under suspicion when critical information could have been obtained from another department by Home Office officials; failure on the part of the officials to adequately satisfy themselves that they had a power to detain (and deport) individuals even when evidence on the case files strongly suggested that there was no lawful power to detain these individuals; and so on and so on.

All this amounts to ‘systems failure’ rather than a bundle of errors made by a bunch of inept Home Office officials. The question it brings to mind is exactly what system is judged to have failed in this instance. Is it the one that requires civil servants to check and double-check that their decisions comply in all respects with the requirements of the law? Or is it the bigger system, which sets out the grounds in which a group of people will be considered good immigrants, and therefore worthy of due process; or another type all together whose status as undesirables is so obvious they can be shunted off into the fast tracks that allow for detention and deportation?

Latest chapters

The Windrush migrants have had plenty of experience of the latter category, having been subjected to ‘colour bar’ discrimination in jobs and housing when they arrived in the 1950s and 60s and subsequent treatment that rarely raised their position and that of their children above that of second-class citizens of the UK. Mauled by the education system, winnowed out of the jobs market, and so many hauled up before the courts by criminal justice procedures, the sense of being part of a big family that appreciated them has been poorly developed across all these years.

The two cases featured in the Human Rights Committee report as exemplars of the bad treatment meted out to the Windrush immigrants, that of Paulette Wilson and Anthony Bryan, ought to be read as merely the latest chapters in the history of the racism to which black working class people have been subjected for decades. It is necessary to say black working class people because Ms Wilson and Mr Bryans’ status as, respectively, cook and painter/decorator, are as a significant part of the story as the blackness of their skin.

When it comes to immigration control, two great negatives feature as a fundamental part of the schema. The first is coming from a poor country, conceived as a place where people of colour are predominant among the general population. The second is being a wage-earner looking for work opportunities amongst the middle group of trades, requiring skills learnt on the job rather than the classroom. Being both black and a seeker of a position offering a living wage is part and parcel of any visa official’s basic definition of an undesirable immigrant.

“Turning the tap on and off”

It is important to hold this in mind as the options for immigration policy post-Brexit start appearing on the table. Liberal-types working out of the policy think-tanks encourage themselves with the knowledge that immigration will continue under whatever system is put in place, and if it can be honed down to those who the focus groups tell us are acceptable – skilled professionals and international students – then all might be well. But by accepting this as a defensible position they are acceding to the prejudice that remains entrenched against non-professional, working class migrants.

Labour MP Caroline Flint, apparently ignorant of the fact that she was speaking in the midst of a scandal about the treatment of Windrush immigrants, offered up a vision of what her ideal post-Brexit immigration policy would look like during a debate in the Commons in mid-June. She set out a yearning for an immigration system in which “… we can turn the tap on and off, when we choose.”

Yet when we treat people as a flow of commodities which we can be turned on and off, then we assuredly create the very situation which Flint’s parliamentary colleagues excoriated just weeks previously in a memorable debate in the same Commons. Years spent as members of communities, as workers in pursuit of a decent living, as people raising families and doing their best to fit in, count for little or nothing when it comes to deciding when the tap has to be turned off.

Getting beyond Windrush

The Parliamentary Human Rights Committee was right to point to systems failure rather than a mere cascade of mistakes in its judgment on the Windrush affair. But it is a failure that has its root in the deep contempt that the middle-class Britain made up of people with property-portfolios and assets yielding a stream of rent-income has for those who get by as best they can by selling their labour to whoever will buy it by the week, day or hour.

Getting beyond the Windrush scandal will mean forming an entirely different perspective on those who come from any part of the world looking for the chance to earning a living denied to them in their own countries. It should not be that only the passage of forty or more years of living the life of working class Britain wins grudging admission that you have ‘contributed’ and therefore accumulated at least a few rights. Rights ought to be the basis of immigration policies, available equally to the cooks and painter/decorators of this world as anyone from the more esteemed professions.

1968: The year it all went horribly wrong for immigration policy

The UK will be marking two significant anniversaries with regard to the history of immigration policy during the course of 2018, neither of which give any cause for rejoicing.

In chronological terms, the first of these occurred on 1 March, which marks 50 years since Royal Assent was given to the Commonwealth Immigrants Act of 1968.

This was the second piece of legislation addressing the issue of the migration of people from the countries of the former British empire, the now Commonwealth, who once had the right to freely enter the United Kingdom to take work and settle. The first Act, passed in 1962, had ended this open door policy and had made Commonwealth citizens the subject of immigration control.

The 1968 legislation is best known for its effect in stripping a group of people who had the status of British citizen (at that point known as ‘Citizen of the United Kingdom and Colonies’) of the right to the UK with exemption from immigration control. The target groups were people primarily from the countries of the Indian subcontinent who had migrated at the time of British colonial rule to a group of countries in East Africa to serve roles in railway construction, trading, administration and as civil service officials in the new countries.

As the East African colonies became independent states during the course of the 1960s the issue of the status of these people became ambiguous. The main countries concerned – Kenya, Malawi and Uganda – adopted constitutions which automatically awarded citizenship to people considered to be native African but withheld it from those who, even though long-settled and even born in the country concerned, were of south Asian ethnicity. Most in this category retained the status of Citizen of the UK and Colonies, which until then had been identical to that held by a person born on the territory of the island of Great Britain and the province of Northern Ireland.

The 1968 Act was famously rushed through all the stages of Parliamentary procedure in 48 hours by a Labour government keen to appease feelings of antipathy towards these ethnically south Asian British citizens who were beginning to exercise their right to come to Britain in response to the ‘Africanisation’ policies being pursued by the governments in the countries in which they had been residing. This meant imposing immigration controls on people who had an indisputable claim to be citizens of the United Kingdom because of, as it was put at the time, their service to the ‘mother country’. It achieved this through the use of a cynical device which aimed to distinguish between different types of British citizen based on the invention of a concept of ‘patriality’.

The patriality scam

Patriality referred to the route by which a British citizen had acquired that status. Patrial British citizens were usually people who had the right to a UK passport because they were either born (or naturalised) in the UK, or, if born outside the UK, it was to a parent who were themselves born in the UK, or otherwise naturalised in the UK at the time of the person’s birth.

The category of non-patrial citizen referred to people who had the status of Citizen of the UK and Colonies but had acquired this through a connect with a British colony or protectorate rather than the ‘homeland’ territory of Great Britain and Northern Ireland. The significance of all this was that the vast majority of patrial British citizens were white, whilst their non-patrial counterparts were brown. By making this distinction between two groups the UK government had enshrined a racially discriminatory principle, not just into law, but into an area of law which is considered by be fundamental to the constitution of all law and governance itself.

The 1968 Act revealed attitudes in the ruling political circles which showed that the views of Conservatives and Labour figures differed very little when it came to the position of immigration. The cabinet minister and political diarist, Richard Crossman noted that only one Labour minister, the Commonwealth minister George Thomas, objected to the proposed legislation on the grounds that “would in effect discriminate against the Asians from East Africa because of their colour.” Thomas complained that, “This would contradict all that we had said on the subject.” The Labour Home Secretary, and later prime minister, James Callaghan, had no truck with this. Crossman noted in his diary that, “Jim arrived with the air of a man whose mind was made up. He wasn’t going to tolerate any of this bloody liberalism.”

The Commonwealth Immigration Act was now in place. Though modified by the passing of a further Immigration Act in 1971, the principle that immigration law could discriminate against people on the basis of their ethnicity, was as solid as a rock, and that this continued to apply to groups of black and Asian citizens who had other attributes of British citizenship.

It might have been the case that British Labour politicians felt justified in bringing racially discriminatory principles into the heart of immigration and nationality law because the public debate at that time had become so polarised around the issue of ‘coloured immigration’ that some sort of concession of the patriality type had become necessary. Some no doubt took the view that once the poison had been drained then the famed British tolerance would begin to kick in and new standards of justice applied to the newcomers. In fact, rather than contain and reduce the problem of racist antagonism to immigration, the 1968 Act only increased the intensity of the public appetite for more measures of this type.

Anniversary number two: ‘Rivers of Blood’

This is the point where we have to mention the second anniversary to be marked during the course of the current year: that of Enoch Powell’s ‘Rivers of Blood’ speech.

The former Conservative minister for health and, at the point of making the speech, opposition spokesperson on defence, delivered this most notorious contribution to the public discussion on 20 April 1968 to a meeting of members of his party in Birmingham. Whilst the controversies around the Commonwealth Immigrants Act raged on he acted to maintain heat around the subject with a dose of rhetoric that was shocking for the explicit racism of its tone. In his delivery he predicted that “In this country 15 or 20 years time the black man will have the whip hand over the white man.” He claimed that he was giving voice to “the decent, ordinary fellow Englishman, who in broad daylight in my own town says to me, his Member of Parliament, that his country will not be worth living in for his children.”

The speech’s language worked hard to portray “ordinary English people” as a “persecuted minority”, beset by “grinning piccaninnies” and steadily being deprived of hospital beds, places at local schools, homes and access to opportunities for employment in decent jobs. In setting out this narrative Powell aimed to build on the recent achievements of the right wing in the form of the two Commonwealth Immigrant Acts and to extend this further by measures that would bring about the wholesale repatriation of the resident ‘coloured’ community.

In its own terms the speech was a sinister but brilliant inter-weaving of anecdotes and supposed facts about the significant challenges that exist during times of rapid social change but set firmly within the context of a profoundly racist view of the world. He opined that the “marked physical differences, especially of colour” inevitably made integration a difficult prospect that only a portion of the newcomers would be able to accomplish. The rest, giving the Indian Sikh community as an example, would insist on “communal rights” that would lead to a fragmentation of British society.

Powell threw out the challenge to his audiences to escape the fate that was portended by immigration. Though his own chronic aloofness from the people on whose behalf he claimed to speak prevented him from playing the role of a genuine leader of a populist Powellite movement, the Rivers of Blood and other speeches given during these fateful months did spark an insurgency in support of the demand for repatriation which made an impact on sections of the trade union movement. It also encouraging a revival of the hard-line fascist right wing under the banner of the National Front movement which worked to stir up antagonism against black communities right up until the mid-1970s.

Hardwired principles

The 1960s appear as crucible years for the forging of immigration policy and they have continued to have their effect until the present time. The principles that were hammered out made it legitimate to draft new laws and policies in accordance with populist, anti-immigrant moods. A ratchet effect operated that held in place the restrictions on rights that had been conceded to the waves of xenophobia across the years and held this as the starting point for the next wave of measures considered necessary to address sets of supposed crises dealing with, depending on the times, a family reunion, refugees, or, most recently, migrant workers. Liberals argue that such concessions are necessary to ‘steady the ship’ and signal to insecure citizens that the elites understand their anxieties. But this comes at the high price of forever stripping away fresh layers of what were once considered to be the rights due to any person living a reasonable life and causing no harm to any fellow resident.

The legacy of the legislation and the political debates of these earlier decades is the ‘hostile environment’ which embraces all immigrants – and now no longer just those who can be distinguished by their colour. There are hopefully signs that at long last social movements are coming into existence which acknowledge the fact that you can go so far in foreclosing on the rights of immigrants that you reach the point that the civil and human rights of all citizens are in jeopardy. We reached that point some decades ago. As younger voices begin to be raised against immigration injustices there are signs that informed, educated public opinion is finally moving, but still at a rate that is rather slower than what is needed.

New Labour Campaign for Free Movement is a great start that needs to be built on

The news that a Labour Campaign for Free Movement has been ushered into existence is to be heartily welcomed. The website for the campaign went live at the end of this week and managed to get a fair bit of coverage in the media, with reports worth noting in the Guardian and the Independent.

The campaign has begun with a statement setting out the core argument as to why the Labour Party should be speaking up in defence of the freedom of movement which is in danger of being lost because of Brexit. After setting out the reasons why a progressive, leftist party should repudiate attempts to scapegoat immigrants as the cause of the present-day crisis the statement goes on to say:

A system of free movement is the best way to protect and advance the interests of all workers, by giving everyone the right to work legally, join a union and stand up to their boss without fear of deportation or destitution. Curtailing those rights, or limiting migrants’ access to public services and benefits, will make it easier for unscrupulous employers to hyper-exploit migrant labour, which in turn undermines the rights and conditions of all workers.

In other words, by making migration a right to freedom of movement we create the conditions where newcomers are able to stand up for themselves in circumstances where they would otherwise be vulnerable to discrimination and exploitation. Much needs to be done to make trade unions into organisations that truly welcome people who are still finding their feet in the UK. But by working to end the threat of arrest and deportation for immigration status reasons will increase opportunities that workplace organisers to build up a strong membership amongst those who most need the protection of industrial organisation.

Migration without rights?

This is particularly so at a time when just about everyone, including many people who were prominent in the Leave movement, are now agreeing that immigration is going to continue at high volume after the date when the UK formally exits the EU. The report that Home Secretary Amber Rudd has commissioned from the Migration Advisory Committee, as I argued in my blog last week, seems designed to provide employers with a stellar platform in which they can set out their arguments why they should continue to have access to the valuable resource which migrant labour provides to the UK labour market.

The problem is that in all these versions migrant workers from the EU are to be stripped of the rights to equality of treatment, protection against discrimination, and access to the social security system which current exists under the provisions of the European treaties. Without these rights EU citizen migrants will be deprived of the leverage they need to resist employers who wish to push their earnings down to minimum wage levels and below. The need to get prior approval from the Home Office for taking a job will lead to greater risks of deportation in the event that employers seek to deal with protesting employees by dismissing them and thereby cancelling their residence permits.

The Labour Party and the trade union movement ought to be speaking up much more clearly to say they oppose increasing the levels vulnerability to exploitation which exist across workforces in this age of ultra-flexible gig employment and zero-hour wage contracts. Ending all the rights associated with free movement would multiple these risks and entrench the worst practices of the modern-day labour market even more deeply in the UK economy.

Rights for non-EU migrants too.

More than that – and this a point that the new Labour campaign can be expected to take up and develop – we should be prepared not only to defend existing free movement rights, but also raise the question of why these are not being extended to people from outside the UK who are filling vital vacancies in scores of industries.

This is already being raised by groups of ‘third country’ migrant workers already. Domestic workers, amongst whom nationalities like Filipino, Indian, Indonesian and groups of Africans predominate, have been demanding a visa specially tailored to their circumstances, giving them greater security and the right to change jobs when it is on their interests to do so. The website of the campaign group Justice for Domestic Workers gives more details of the fight that is being waged for these rights.

The appearance of the Labour Campaign for Free Movement is a really encouraging start for a programme of work which we must hope will win the support of tens of thousands of party members and trade unionists and put some backbone into the stance of the leadership of the party, which many view as disappointing on this issue. Within hours of the campaign being launched a further 400 people had come forward to ask for their names to go onto the already long list of people who backed the founding statement. It’s a great beginning – let’s build on it!

If you are a member of the Labour Party or an affiliated organisation and wold like to support this new campaign, visit its website and sign-up to the launch statement.

The speech Jeremy Corbyn should make at the start of Brexit negotiations

Jezza’s stunning advance in the election campaign has placed him in a commanding position to dictate the terms of the political agenda. What he says and does during the course of the Brexit negotiations is his next big challenge.

It is time to tackle the ambiguity around some of the positions that have come out from his front bench over the course of the last few months. He should aim to give real heart to Labour’s new and returning supporters by combining his anti-austerity message with the a clear statement of support for the important right of freedom of movement.

Here’s my take on the speech he should give to declare his intention to really shift the debate on Brexit.

Press release

Date: (Before time runs out…)

Labour will not make the ending of free movement a pre-condition for the best deal on Brexit

“The Labour Party, like everyone else, has been facing up to the challenges that will confront our country as the business of negotiating our departure from the European Union gets underway.

“We have made it clear that we will fight for a Brexit that protects jobs and the public services which together make up the standard of life of our citizens, and also reinforce the sense that we live in communities in which everyone works for each other.

“How do we now plan for our exit of the EU in a way which will not do damage to all the things we value in our society, as well as the degree of prosperity we have achieved from being a member of the world’s largest trading bloc?”

Positive benefits

“Labour has always recognised that immigration has been a big part of the positive side of life in Britain, helping to strengthen the country by bringing in skills and an aptitude for work which we have always seen from newcomers, from the Huguenots, to the post-war Commonwealth citizens, right through to the EU nationals of today: all those who have made their homes here.

“Contrary to the claims of migration’s opponents, immigration has helped maintained the buoyancy of the UK economy, particularly in recent very challenging years, helping hundreds of thousands of businesses remain viable so that they can support the high levels of employment we have enjoyed, even during the worst years of the downturn.

“Claims are made that it has depressed wage levels. Yet we know these have been held back most severely in parts of the country where immigration not taken place on any large scale. The over-long, too-weak recovery from the Great Recession of 2008-12 is the most obvious reason why wage earners in Britain are experiencing real pressure on their stand of living.

“It is also said that immigrants are responsible for the declining state of our public services, with healthcare and education being cited as examples.

“I will now say that Labour categorically refutes this accusation. As we now know from reports of a 96% fall in the number of nurses from the EU countries being recruited to work in the NHS, and that fact that one-third of those already here are considering returning abroad because of the uncertainty that has been created about their long-term residents’ rights, the real danger lies in fact that immigration will cease to bring these much-needed workers into our hospitals and clinics.

“The same can be said about our schools and universities. In parts of the country which have received most immigrants in recent times we have seen educational standards rising to their highest points. One in six of our school teachers across the UK were born in other countries. The government has been failing to meet targets to recruit and retain teachers from domestic sources for several years now, and this has resulted in higher recruitment of much-valued entrants into the profession from abroad”.

Concerns of business and the trade unions

“I have had the opportunity to travel the length and breadth of the country since my election as Labour leader in 2015. During this time I have spoken to the owners of businesses operating in IT and the creative industries, social care, hospitality, construction, food production and many others, as well the people running our great public services. They all tell me that Britain must remain an open and friendly place for workers from other countries if they are to continue to provide opportunities for decent jobs both for the newcomers and, crucially, for those UK-born citizens who continue to benefit from an economy generating work for all.

“I have spoken to the trade unions and am aware of their concerns about the higher risks of exploitation that have emerged in recent times as a result of poor regulation of the jobs market and, in some instances, because of EU measures regarding the agencies and the posting of overseas staff.

“We understand these concerns and we are determined to address them. A Labour government will favour industry-wide collective bargaining. The agreed rate for the job will apply to all, whether UK citizen or newly-arrived migrant worker on a temporary contract. There will be no need to fear the under-cutting of agreed wage rates and employment conditions once these measures are in place.”

Regional policies with the powers to deal with impacts

“People have said that there has not been a problem with migration as such, but rather with the fact that there has been too much over too short a period of time. Yet even this is contradicted by the fact that the parts of the country with some of the highest levels of newcomers are reporting the least negative views about the impacts of migration.

“We accept that there are places where, because industries have expanded in relatively short periods of time, that the arrival of workers to fill the job vacancies has brought about stresses and strains. Labour will deal with this by instigating regional planning policies which ensure that economic growth that brings in new workers will go hand-in-hand with investment in housing, publics services, including healthcare, schools and public transport. We will ensure that local government in these districts will be sufficiently well-resourced to support community inclusion programmes, including English language classes and activities to promote contact and bridge-building across communities.”

Social justice and fairness

“Labour’s approach to immigration is part and parcel of our approach to social justice and human rights. I have spoken of workers and wage-earners up until now because we know that is the biggest reason why people come to Britain. But we reject the idea that people can be reduced to commodities, to be used and discarded when their work is done.

“Our politics for immigration include support for the families that the newcomers will be raising. When action and policies are needed on our part to help redress hardship and suffering, particularly that which has been experienced by refugees, migrants with disabilities, and other vulnerable groups, then Labour will ensure that an active and energised civil society is in a position to provide it.

“We are also aware that the opportunity to move beyond borders is a vital part of the outlook of a rising generation of young people who are now making their impression on the shape and direction of our democratic politics. They will not forgive us if the advantages that have been enjoyed by their parents and grandparents, to live, study, work and settle in other places are withheld from them. They will not be by any Labour government.

“Labour is confident in its firm view that migration has and will continue to benefit us all. We expect that it will play a part in the plans of businesses and communities to forge ahead in the future. We see no issues on the agenda that cannot be addressed by a positive and inclusive approach. We believe that British citizens are reaching out for this future and this viewpoint becomes a majority as we move into the millennial generation.

“It is for this reason that I can say, as negotiations begin with our European friends for the best possible Brexit deal, that Labour will not make an end to the freedom of movement that has prevailed for so long a pre-condition for any deal which will carry us forward into our future partnership.

“There is much to consider in the matters of our future relationship with the single market and the customs union, but on this point it should be clear: freedom of movement between our countries can and should be preserved into the post-Brexit future!”