Racism has become a key political weapon deployed more and more frequently
by mainstream capitalist parties in western Europe, Australia and the
United States over the last decade. A recent example is the governing
Christian Social Union (CSU) campaign in Bavaria which featured a poster
stating: 'If you want more foreigners don't vote CSU'. The head of
the CSU parliamentary caucus in Bonn stated in July 'Foreigners and
criminals are two topics which unfortunately go together'. The campaign
was so racist that the local far right withdrew their candidates on
the grounds that the CSU had already adopted all of their policies!
Aided by the cynical use of racism by respectable capitalist parties,
far right parties now have 22 per cent of the vote in Austria, 16 per
cent in Italy, 15 per cent in France - where the National Front has split
the traditional right and roughly 10 per cent in Belgium and Denmark.
In the US, racist measures have included scrapping bi-lingual education
in California, abolition of affirmative action programs and racist murders
like that of James Byrd. In Australia, Pauline Hanson has risen to prominence
on the basis of anti-aboriginal rights and anti-Asian immigration campaigns.
In Europe, racist legislation and attacks have focused on refugees from
the wars, economic and social dislocation of the Balkans, Africa, Asia,
the Middle East and eastern Europe.
European social democracy, terrified of being laballed soft on immigration,
has responded by supporting the kinds of crack-down on asylum and immigration
which legimates racism.
The Labour government to date has followed a path of, on the one hand,
introducing a number progressive reforms directed against racist attacks
- making them a specific criminal offence and launching the Lawrence
Inquiry - while, on the other hand, in its public statements on immigration
and asylum pandering to the racism of the gutter press.
The government's new White Paper on asylum and immigration takes this
further. Jack Straw's original promise to restore welfare benefits to
asylum seekers is abandoned. Instead the government proposes to withdraw
benefits and housing rights from all asylum-seekers. In a scheme first
floated by Tory Westminster Council, refugees will be issued with vouchers
for food and other 'essential' items. Refugees will only get one appeal
and in order to make it easy to kick them out of the country, they will
be confined to a cashless economy and forced to live in hostels, as in
Germany - where such hostels are the favourite target for the racist
arson attacks which have claimed numerous lives. Jack Straw now says:
'What the genuine asylum seeker needs is food and shelter, not a giro
cheque.' The White Paper would make detention routine for asylum-seekers
awaiting appeal.
The government also plans to attack the black communities by continuing
immigration checks in the workplace and requiring cash bonds to guarantee
that visitors from countries requiring visas leave Britain at the end
of the visit.
These proposals, and the debate they will promote, will legitimise more
racist campaigns by the tabloid press and the racist culture in which
black people like Stephen Lawrence, Ricky Reel and Michael Menson were
killed and nobody brought to justice. They give a foretaste of what we
can expect from Tony Blair when the economy turns down.
The left wing of the labour movement must put anti-racism at the top
of its agenda by:
* launching the broadest possible united campaign against the proposed
attacks on immigration and asylum rights;
* demanding the sacking of the Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police
and the sacking of all officers implicated in racism;
* support for black self-organisation and black representation in proportion
to the weight of the black communities at every level of the labour movement
and society.