November 2008
Following the latest government reshuffle, Phil Woolas, MP for Oldham East and Saddleworth, was made minister for Immigration. He used this occasion to deflect attention away from the then-daily collapse of the banks by attacking migrant workers.
In an interview with the Times on the 18the October, Woolas warned of increased racial tension during a recession, advocating as the solution a 70 million cap on population, and employment discrimination in favour of the “indigenous population”.
“In times of economic difficulties, racial stereotyping becomes stronger but also if you've got skills shortages you should, as a government, attempt to fill those skills shortages with your indigenous population.”
Addressing the average BNP voter on the BNP’s terms he said:
“We need a tougher immigration policy and we need to stop seeing it as a dilemma. It's not. It's easy. I'm going to do my best to help the British back to work. The message to them is, if you want less immigration you're going to have to respond with helping us get everyone working who can.”
Appeasing the BNP can only strengthen them and exacerbate the racism that underpins their support. But what is more frightening about Phil Woolas' legitimization and adoption of the BNP’s anti-immigration rhetoric racist rhetoric is that this man holds the lives of migrants and refugees in his hands; whether to let them in, deport them, detain them, or force them into destitution.
GMB members can be proud that their union has in many ways rejected these vile racist, nationalistic and anti working-class politics. The GMB has been at forefront of organizing migrant workers into the union movement in recent years. We call upon all members of the union to demand that GMB funding be immediately withdrawn from Phil Woolas alongside a denunciation of these politics and a call for his resignation not just as a Minister but as a Labour MP.
The problem facing workers in Britain and around the world is not freedom of movement. The problem is IMF-enforced global inequality, capitalist-sponsored resource wars, corporation-induced climate change, the refusal to build social housing, the privatization of public services: the problem is capitalism. Border controls are only used against workers and poor people, black and white: the products of labour - capital - and the capitalist class move freely. But it should be no surprise that a New Labour Minister, of a party that has rejected working-class politics and has sided with the bosses and the bankers, can offer no solution to the problems they have created.
Some bosses (and neo-liberals) have been argued for unlimited immigration on the basis of “the economy”. They seek to use migrant workers to undercut existing wages and conditions as an indentured and super-exploited workforce, establishing an effective caste system in many cities with Africans, Asians, Latin American and Eastern Europeans doing the cleaning, cooking, labouring and factory work. Phil Woolas offers this work back to the white working-class at a time when Minister for Welfare, James Parnell is trying to introduce workfare.
We do not support these bosses. Our answer to these bosses and the likes of Woolas is to fight for unity and equal rights - trade union organization of everyone together in struggle regardless of immigration status. That is the way to make sure that we all have decent wages and conditions. AN INJURY TO ONE IS AN INJURY TO ALL!
The international working-class movement has a mixed history on this issue, having at times capitulated to racism, nationalism, supporting the bosses’ immigration controls as a seeming solution to the insecurity of life as a worker. We need a fighting movement that wins people around to the only just solution: the abolition of immigration controls. There can be no “fair immigration” policy under capitalism, only misery, super-exploitation and death – and increased control of capital over labour.
Just as in this economic crisis, the choice presented to us (though actually we are given no choice) is to bail out the banks or face social chaos, the New Labour choice on immigration is equally destructive. These false choices are the ones trade unionists will be familiar with, job cuts or pay cuts (as in JCB), Academy schools or no new schools, ALMOs or run-down housing, Heathrow expansion and climate change or redundancy, being thrown off benefits or thrown into terrible low-paid work…
We must reject these false choices, the choices of capitalism. We must see these choices as being proof that capitalism and capitalist governments cannot deliver.
This last year we have faced an escalation of paper checks, workplace raids and deportations that have included GMB and other union organized workplaces. In fact immigration controls have been used by bosses to victimize, sack and deport trade unionists. This is not an attack on migrant workers alone. Immigration controls act as a mechanism to discipline all workers.
The fight back for a world without borders has started in the GMB in its organizing of migrant workers. This needs to go hand in hand with a rank-and-file political strategy of resistance, non-compliance and a political policy of regularization for all and open borders. Our fight for social housing, a democratic controlled NHS, workers’ control in industry and society is the working-class means to end immigration controls. We can see in the lives of bankers and bosses, in their wars and over-production, the immense wealth available. We will not accept “austerity”, inflation and bigotry as a response to this crisis but fight for equal rights for all, freedom of movement and community and workers’ control of society.
We hope that GMB members will discuss these aims with the Campaign Against Immigration Controls, in branch meetings and public forums. We believe that to allow Phil Woolas funding from the union is to betray working-class interests and to take a step further towards fascism in Europe. We believe that the union has the principle and capacity to play an important role at this juncture. We hope that at all levels of the union, the GMB will rise to it.
NO GMB SPONSORSHIP FOR PHIL WOOLAS! KICK HIM OUT OF THE HOME OFFICE! KICK HIM OUT OF PARLIAMENT!
In Solidarity
The Campaign Against Immigration Controls
www.caic.org.uk
contact@caic.org.uk