Proper Gander: Regulations, nations and alienation (2026)

The Proper Gander column from the June 2026 issue of the Socialist Standard

BBC News  made sure to emphasise that a Home Office investigation which led to a couple of arrests was prompted by the findings of an episode of its Scams & Scandals documentary series. As its title indicates, The Immigration Fraudsters revealed misconduct among ‘legal advisers’ preparing applications for their clients to remain in the UK. Presenter Billy Kenber tells us ‘we’ve gone undercover to expose this hidden world of illegality’, which means that much of the programme consists of blurry, shaky footage from a concealed camera worn by his colleague. Posing as a foreign national, he visits law firms and advisers who can arrange the necessary paperwork for a claim to the Home Office as an asylum seeker. The covert footage reveals that some advisers gather fabricated evidence to meet the criteria, and Kenber suggests that possibly thousands of people have been granted leave to remain on fraudulent grounds.

Those who make claims for asylum include people who have newly arrived in the UK and others who originally entered under a temporary student or work visa or as the spouse of someone with leave to remain. A successful application confers refugee status, which doesn’t automatically mean permanent entitlement to live in the UK, but permits official employment and being able to claim benefits, apply for ‘social housing’ and use all NHS services. People without official approval to be in the country have ‘no recourse to public funds’, meaning they don’t have access to these aspects of the state. Those in this position without the funds to buy their way out have to rely on cash-in-hand work for an income and are more likely to be trapped into slave labour or homelessness.

For a claim for asylum to be granted by the Home Office, a fear of persecution in the applicant’s country of origin is required. As Ejel Khan of the Muslim LGBT Network explains, homosexuality is illegal in many countries, so fleeing one could be grounds for a gay person applying for asylum in the UK. The undercover reporter meets an immigration adviser who says that for a four-figure fee she can arrange a claim on this basis. He says that he isn’t gay, which doesn’t prevent her from offering to provide a letter declaring that he has had sex with a man, and also membership of the ‘Worcester LGBT Asylum Seekers Group’. The reporter goes to one of its meetings in London which has over 200 attendees, some of whom say next-to-none of them are gay.

The Immigration Fraudsters also covers another route for making asylum claims, on the grounds of being a victim of domestic abuse. This applies in situations where someone has come into the country on a family visa, so their entitlement to remain relies on being in a relationship with their partner who already has official status. If the relationship were to end, the partner under the visa would ordinarily lose their right to remain in the UK, unless they were a victim of domestic abuse. The undercover reporter records an adviser offering to arrange a fake claim (under the 2013 Migrant Victims of Domestic Abuse Concession) of being a victim of psychological cruelty from his wife.

The documentary’s producers contacted the dodgy advisers about their activities and received replies bluntly denying any wrongdoing. This wasn’t enough to satisfy the Home Office, hence their announcement of an investigation following the programme’s broadcast, which led to raids by its Immigration Enforcement team and arrests. One way of looking at this is that the BBC, as one branch of the state, was carrying out the ‘due diligence’ which fell within the remit of another branch of the state, the Home Office.

Kenber meets with above-board legal experts who say that people who apply fraudulently make it harder for those with genuine claims, a sentiment echoed by immigration minister Mike Tapp after the raids. The Immigration Fraudsters doesn’t include discussion about the wider context of the issue, beyond quoting some statistics about the number of asylum applications. Having a situation where people lie about being persecuted in order to stay in the UK comes from a combination of factors, each illustrating how society’s capitalist framework alienates us. Fundamentally, the division of the world into countries, as territories of different states, reduces people to being subjects of those states. This accords us differing status in relation to other countries, according to our wealth, nationality, immigration rights and even our family role. Alongside this bureaucratic alienation, there’s also that caused in those states and cultures which are particularly oppressive, including towards anyone who isn’t heterosexual. Understandably, people will want to leave those countries for another where their prospects may be better. Domestic abuse, and especially being trapped in a violent relationship, is another effect of living in a divisive, alienating society. Fleeing these situations means being processed and accorded the status of asylum seeker and, maybe, refugee. While many staff work hard trying to help people navigate the system, the framework they work within is complicated by its legal and financial constraints. This doesn’t prevent some people wanting to manipulate it, leading to fake claims for asylum. While there’s nothing admirable about pretending to be a victim of abuse, those who do would have to be in a dire enough situation to push them towards this. The suspect advisers are exploiting their clients’ grim position, but they’re also products of their circumstances. Presumably, this career pays better than their other options. A capitalist economy encourages people to try to make money out of anything, including desperation. The arrests which followed the programme’s broadcast may lead to some disruption of the network of ‘legal advisers’, and the Home Office is likely to tighten up its legislation. Such measures can’t change the conditions which have created the issue, nor resolve the plight of people seeking asylum, with or without fabricated paperwork.

Mike Foster

Editorial: Labour sinks even lower (2025)

Editorial from the December 2025 issue of the Socialist Standard

Somebody has said, ‘What Powell says today, the Tories say tomorrow and Labour legislates on the day after’. There is some evidence for this, going back to 1968, the year Enoch Powell delivered his notorious ‘rivers of blood’ speech. The Labour government of the day then brought in the Commonwealth Immigrants Act to end the free entry into Britain of people from the old Empire. Extending the colour bar to Commonwealth citizens required careful drafting to avoid keeping out ‘white’ people. In the end Labour found a solution — that only those whose father or father’s father were born in Britain would have free entry.

It was in that same speech that Powell talked of the ‘existing population’ finding themselves ‘made strangers in their own country’. A refrain taken up by Starmer in his notorious ‘island of strangers’ speech last May, given in response to the rise of the latter-day Powellites of Reform UK. Now, in a bid to stop losing more votes, the Starmer government has decided to steal Reform UK’s clothes and introduce legislation making it even more difficult for refugees to obtain permanent residence; some are going to have to wait twenty years just to apply (instead of five as now) and during this period will be liable to be sent ‘back to where they came from’ at any time. This, in addition to previously announced measures to make it more difficult for ‘strangers’ to become a British citizen.

No capitalist state is going to allow free entry — and socialists are not so naive as to expect them to. States seek to control entry in accordance with the requirements of the labour market and so as to decide who can come in and who can’t. Most European states, as they have an ageing population, do currently need working-age immigrants to keep production and profits flowing.

They need immigrants, but who? That’s where choice — and prejudice — come in. As in 1968, the Labour government has chosen the path of prejudice.

The Home Secretary, Shabana Mahmood, has said it is her ‘moral responsibility’ to bring in the legislation. What sanctimonious humbuggery! The Labour leaders and most of their MPs are unprincipled careerists whose main concern is to stay in office or at least keep their seats. Dragging morality into it just makes them more despicable. And then there is the sheer vindictiveness of some of the proposed measures. Why keep individuals living for twenty years in fear of deportation?

It is true that, by clever propagandising and media help, many have become convinced that there is ‘mass immigration’ and that stopping ‘too many’ immigrants would lead to an improvement in their life. But it wouldn’t, because the problems they face over housing, health care, and education derive not from there being too many immigrants but from the fact that meeting these needs is not a priority under capitalism where the aim and driving force of the economy is to make a profit. Even if all immigration were stopped and all ‘illegal’ immigrants rounded up and deported these problems would remain.

Letter: Immigration: one view . . . (1976)

Letter to the Editors from the September 1976 issue of the Socialist Standard 

Immigration: one view  . . .

The front over of the Socialist Standard (July) is emblazoned with a definition by Ambrose Bierce: “Immigrant: an unenlightened person who thinks one country better than another.”

Presumably, this means the Socialist Standard regards Karl Marx as an “unenlightened person”. He left Germany and spent most of his life living in Britain. Actually, the development of socialist theory was fostered as a result. Con Lehane (an unenlightened Irish immigrant) became the SPGB’s first general secretary. Hans Neumann (an unenlightened German immigrant) arranged the first meeting of the SPGB’s executive committee. Charlie Lestor (an unenlightened Canadian immigrant) was for many years one of the finest orators the SPGB possessed. Does the SPGB condemn Lehane for being an immigrant? Hapless Lehane could not secure employment anywhere. Is the Socialist Standard suggesting that he should have continued looking for work in Ireland rather than coming over to Britain and helping to form the SPGB?

Doubtless the fascists of the National Front go a long way to agreeing with Bierce’s definition: in the opinion of Tyndall and his thugs “immigrants are unenlightened people”. Socialists should have an entirely different approach. Hunger and poverty in the underdeveloped countries is directly as a result of imperialism. Dire necessity forces thousands of people to leave these regions and look for a better life elsewhere. Like British workers, they are victims of exploitation, but of an exploitation of a much more intense kind.

It is vital that socialists strive to build links of solidarity between British and coloured workers. Essentially we have the same class enemy: only through unity can the enemy be overcome. For this reason, the demand must be made for the repeal of the immigration laws, racist legislation which excludes people from this country merely because of the colour of their skins. If, as the Communist Manifesto says, workers have no fatherland, then the barriers created by immigration laws must be swept aside. Workers must be free to leave and enter Britain as they choose.

To be in accord with these sentiments, the definition of Ambrose Bierce requires modification: “An opponent of immigration is an unenlightened person who thinks one country better than another.”

Dr. Raymond Challinor 

Whitley Bay

Reply:

The quotation to which you object was used because it disparages nationalism and comments, aptly in our opinion, on the situation of very many migrants. Its tone is ironical, and we ran the risk of someone’s not perceiving that. To spell it out, the word “unenlightened” relates to the remainder of the sentence: a person who thinks one country better than another requires enlightenment in that respect, but not necessarily in others. Marx and the other people you mention were not under that impression. As for racists finding that issue of the Socialist Standard agreeable — see the letter from John Binder below.

However, you appear not to have read the article on immigration inside the cover. Doing so would have dispelled the misunderstanding in the later part of your letter as well as the above one. The article pointed out that “legislation which excludes people from this country merely because of the colour of their skins” is swept aside when that suits capitalism in Britain and elsewhere. This is, precisely, the trap into which reformism leads. Liberal-minded reformers urge, as you do, that a legislative change will benefit the working class; and then find it does the ruling class a good turn instead.

To say Socialists must “strive to build links of solidarity” between white and black workers is a grandiose way of ignoring the important questions. The majority of black workers, like the majority of white, uphold the capitalist system. They include nationalists, Tories, and people who themselves hold strong race-prejudices. If it were suggested that we aim at "links of solidarity” with white people holding such views, that would cause indignation; but you ask us to do so on the grounds, apparently, that colour transcends everything else. We do not accept such a position. The task for Socialists is to spread among all workers and understanding of their class standing and interests, which come first and foremost. This means the rejection of all ideas of race and national superiority. If you are intent on re-wiring the quotation, here is another version: Opponents and advocates of immigration alike are hidebound by the idea of national frontiers which Socialism will abolish.

Editors.

This Superiority Notion (1963)

From the June 1963 issue of the Socialist Standard

It should be obvious, really. Whenever they test another H bomb, or run into another economic crisis, or whenever a politician opens his mouth and puts his foot in it, or whenever we think about the strain and ugliness which are the modern substitute for living, it should be obvious. Capitalism, is not a desirable or a sensible method of running human affairs.

But instead of being obvious it is infuriating. There are the facts, there is the mass of evidence, all screaming for attention. Yet the message gets through, if at all, only slowly. For one reason or another the working class still like capitalism. This is not to say that they like war, or any other problem that capitalism brings with it. They think of these things almost as elements outside human control, like the weather. But capitalism they do like, they support the system which leaves the ownership of the means of life to a very few of the world’s people. They support the system of rich and poor, of palaces and prefabs, of ripe pheasant and Spam.

If at any time the workers have to think about why they like capitalism they may say that it gives everyone his chance and that it is our own fault if we are not all like Paul Getty or King Saud. Or perhaps they will offer some equally inane reason. But mostly the working class do not think about why they support capitalism. They absorb the ideas of the system effortlessly. As if by instinct they build up a wall of ignorant, indefensible ideas which all play their part in sustaining1 the social system of destruction and insecurity. And that can be very infuriating.

It would take up many issues of the Socialist Standard to enumerate every one of these ideas. In any case, they have all been dealt with at some time in the past. Let us now take a look at just one of the strange notions with which capitalism is supported on its pedestal of ignorance. This idea is a popular one among the working class. It is also, in some ways, a surprising idea. Let us call it the Superiority Notion. It is, simply, the conviction which many workers hold that they are in some way better than anybody who comes from another working class group.

In one of its most easily identifiable forms, the Superiority Notion is. race prejudice. White workers think that they are better than coloured workers; even if they do not want to discriminate against Negroes they often feel sorry for them, just as they would for someone who had cancer. Colour prejudice is so widespread partly because its victims are most easily recognised. Race prejudice itself extends beyond mere white-against-black antipathy, reaching out to embrace anyone who is “foreign” It is almost a tradition among English workers, for example, to distrust some types of foreign workers. (Some, on the other hand, they may trust; many English workers think that Chinese people are naturally honest.) They are content at one time to blame the troubles of the world onto French temperament, at another onto German belligerence, at another onto American irresponsibility. (Although we should notice that this particular fallacy has its fashions. Young workers nowadays think it glamorous to be Italian, but that is not what their fathers, in 1941, thought.) In England, in other words, many workers think that the only person who can be trusted, the only person who makes a desirable neighbour or workmate, is English, while and gentile. In other countries they have their own version of this particular prejudice. A popular idea on the Continent is that everyone in England is a horsey fop.

The Superiority Notion does not end at race prejudice. It is common for workers in one part of a country to think that they are better than those in another part. In Southern England they think of the North as an endless slag heap, with flat-capped dinosaur-brained inhabitants to match. In the North they think the South a cissy lot, a pretentious bunch who sound their aitches alright but are strangers to a good day’s work. This feeling can even extend to different parts of the same town. There is at least one dilapidated area in London, dissected by a dirty canal, in which the slum-dwellers on one bank think themselves better than those on the other. These examples could go on for a long time.

The basic ingredient of the Superiority Notion is that, no matter how depressed a worker may be, he can always look down upon somebody else. Even those who are themselves the victims of widespread prejudice have their own Notion. Some Negroes look down upon other coloured people: some Jewish workers regard Negroes as inferior, and so on. And if we ask why the Notion is so popular, is the answer that the working class occupy such an inferior situation in society, and eke out such restricted lives, that it is practically essential to their peace of mind to be able to console themselves with the idea that somebody, somewhere, is lower than they are?

The Superiority Notion is booming, for example, in Southall in Middlesex. Southall has a rubber factory, a massive lorry works, a cereal factory, a canal, a gas works and a ten pin bowling alley. It also has a large Indian and Pakistani population, who have taken some of the jobs at the rubber factory and the gas works for which it is now difficult to get white workers. So Southall also has a race ignorance problem because, apart from any personal objections there may be to the immigrants, there is also the usual deep-rooted opposition to strange men whose skin is a different colour and who speak a language which sounds incomprehensible.

So the Southall workers feel superior. Yet a walk around the place quickly puts their Notion into perspective. Street' upon street, the dingy houses stretch away. Sometimes they are houses which were built in the 18th. Century; sometimes those which were built since 1900. Some are even post-war. But the drab sameness, the cheapness and the restrictions, are all there. These houses, standing in the richly combining vapours of the molten rubber, the exhaling gas works, the oozing canal and the roasting cereals, each day feed the local industry with its supply of human ability. To be blunt, Southall is one of the dreariest imaginable working class areas. It is a problem to appreciate how anybody who lives there could keep up the pretence that he is better than anyone else. But the Southall workers manage it.

There is only one way to deal with this ridiculous situation and that is to cut right through the middle of it with the facts. Socially, there are only two types of people living under capitalism. One type is the capitalist who can live without going to work because he owns places like the gas works and the canal and he gets the profits from them. The other type is the worker who does not own any factories or anything like them and who can only live by working for a wage. For the worker, capitalism is an unpleasant system. It brings him problems like war and insecurity and the ever present strain of balancing his budget. It puts him to live in places like Southall.

But capitalism does something else. It separates and illuminates the fact that all workers all over the world, whatever language they speak and whatever the colour of their skin, are suffering the same sort of problems. The capitalist world has innumerable Southalls—and many worse places besides. Thus capitalism makes it plain that the interests of workers everywhere are the same; to get rid of their problems, to get rid of capitalism. To do this, they must get rid of their Superiority Notion, in all its forms, and of the other baseless, ignorant ideas which keep capitalism going. Capitalism itself, day by day, piles up the evidence in favour of its own abolition. It stares the working class in the face.

It should be obvious really . . . But this is where we came in.

Ivan.

News: Do the bosses still need the “race card”? (2001)

From the February 2001 issue of the Socialist Standard

Do the bosses still need the “race card”?

According to a Home Office report released last month, Britain is facing its biggest rise in immigration for a generation. A combination of asylum seekers and people moving to join relatives are among the obvious reasons cited for this new trend, but, as the Times points out, “Britain’s need for workers has also fuelled the trend. The IT industry will need to recruit a further 540,000 people up to 2009, and the report suggests that the custom of employing migrants for seasonal work on farms could be extended to other areas”.

The message should be unequivocally clear. The needs of capitalism are always paramount, so, since a skills/labour shortage and an ageing society has emerged, we can perhaps expect to hear less perjorative language in the media about being “flooded” or “swamped” by “foreigners”. Indeed, Home Office minister Barbara Roche greeted the report by extolling the virtues of immigration.

This European-wide phenomena was picked up by the Economist last year, which ran a cover story telling non-EU workers to “go for it!”. Quite pragmatic, it would seem, for a right-leaning journal.

However, this will come as no surprise to anyone familiar with the history of capitalism. Immigrant workers have always been used to correct a disequilibrium in the labour market. The mass immigration of the 1950s, which underpinned the post-war boom, is a case in point. All things being equal, a labour shortage causes wages to rise and thus puts workers in a comparatively stronger bargaining position vis à vis overall working conditions. Naturally, our masters will always seek to counteract such a situation by importing (often cheaper, more compliant) workers, which in turn intensifies competition among workers, potentially fermenting xenophobia and racism. Needless to say, when demand for labour and/or skills slackens off, the capitalists play the infamous ‘race card’ in order to keep the working class divided.

Historically, this does not depend upon which party is in government. Both the Conservatives and Labour have promoted immigration and denounced it according to the dictates of the markets. Ideology alone does not pay capitalism’s bills!

The working class needs to remember that despite the nationalist and patriotic poison which is rammed down our throats from an early age, our bosses are actually quite open-minded. They will invest anywhere in the world, blazing a trail in their blood thirst quest for profit. Our class enemies may indeed be international,, we, however, are global

The Peter Principle

The resignation of Peter Mandelson from the Cabinet for a second time—an act unprecedented in British political history—has brought allegations of sleaze back to dog the government. Mandelson proved to be a Mr Fix-it in more ways than one but he was caught out and has now paid the price quite publicly. The danger for Labour is that the Party is now tainted in the eyes of the electorate by allegations of financial sleaze and collusion, haunted for the foreseeable future by ghosts like Mandelson and Geoffrey Robinson. Luckily for them, of course, the Tories still have political ghouls of their own to exorcise in Jonathan Aitken, Jeffrey Archer and Neil Hamilton, and so do not present any coherent or principled threat.

In truth, every government since the war has been beset by scandals at some point. Even the Liberals can’t afford to sound pious as it was Lloyd George who made a habit of selling peerages at a time before the phrase “cash for questions” was ever heard of.

When people delve under the surface of these scandals only one thing of real importance emerges. It is that there was nothing uniquely corruptible about any of these people, any more so than there is about Mandelson today, even if so many people love to demonise him. All scandals like this really go to prove is that it is the system we live within—the system of ruthless competition, greed and the power of money—that corrupts individuals, not individuals who corrupt an otherwise irreproachable system.

No more yogic flying

The Natural Law Party has announced that it is giving up contesting elections in Britain. So we are no longer to be amused by Party Political Broadcasts which promise to reduce violent crime and international tensions by the mass practice of “yogic flying”. Laughable, but in the end no less incredible than the claims of other parties to be able to solve capitalism’s problems by less outlandish, reformist measures.

The NLP never got many votes but that was never the aim. Contesting elections—and getting nation-wide television broadcasts and the free distribudon of millions of rnanifestos— was a marketing ploy by an international business empire headed by an Indian fakir calling himself the “Maharish Mahesh Yogi”. The aim was to get people to buy its transcendental mediation courses, herbal remedies, oils, aromas, “healing” gems, Hindu horoscopes, books, tapes, etc.

The NLP’s reason for giving up was that “the election system is stacked against new parties”. Maybe, but the real reason will have been the coming into force of the Political Parties, Elections and Referendums Act which requires registered parties to disclose their accounts. This would have exposed the accounts of the “transcendental” business empire that financed the NLP to public gaze.

The NLP never was as amusing as it seemed, but was a flagrant example of how, under capitalism, Big Money can undermine the proclaimed principle of political democracy according to which everybody is supposed to have an equal say. In fact, the more money you have the louder you can proclaim your views.

Transport workers on strike in London and Belgium

As London Transport workers ballot on whether or not to go on strike, and the employers and the media prepare to whip up a campaign against them for “inconveniencing the public”, they could consider copying what their counterparts in Brussels did recently. From 22 December to 1 January, the buses, trams and metro in Brussels were free, as workers continued working but prevented the ticket machines from functioning as they pursued a claim for better wages and conditions. The public were not all inconvenienced. Just the reverse. And it showed that it is workers, not money, that make the world go round. What would the Evening Standard and the Daily Mail be able to say if this happened in London? No doubt they would accuse both the public and the workers of cheating the employers. Technically, this would be true and the courts might enforce it.

Ironically, less than a month previously, a court in Brussels had done just that. Three members of a group advocating free transport were fined £300 each for deliberately travelling without a ticket, using instead a “right to transport card”. In court they pleaded that the Declaration of the Rights of Man proclaimed a “right to free movement” which charging for using buses and trains infringed. A good point. The judge replied that “this right can be exercised by going by foot”. Which about sums up the value of grandiloquent “rights” under capitalism.

Letter: Silly ceremony (2008)

Letter to the Editors from the January 2008 issue of the Socialist Standard

Dear Editors,

“I, […], do solemnly, sincerely and truly declare and affirm that on becoming a British citizen, I will be faithful and bear true allegiance to her Majesty Queen Elizabeth the Second, her Heirs and successors, according to law.”

The above is the Affirmation of Allegiance required to be taken by applicants for British citizenship, at one of New Labour’s more inane gifts to the nation, the Citizenship Ceremony. Any applicant for British citizenship has to attend such a ceremony within six months of their application being accepted. Failure to do so means that one’s application is deemed unsuccessful, and that the whole tortuous process must be started again.

I recently found myself attending such a ceremony as a guest, struggling to keep a straight face as the Lord Mayor of Bristol, in his full regalia, informed us, while standing in front of a picture of the Queen, that, in Britain, “No-one is above the law.”

Twenty-three new citizens, plus their guests, were present to hear the Lord Mayor eulogise about the Greatness of Britain and its democratic institutions. Tellingly, however, he opened his speech by reiterating a couple of questions from the Citizenship Test (analogous to the Theory component of a driving test), which all of the new Citizens were required to have passed before reaching this stage. Unaccountably, not one of them could remember the literal meaning of Prime Minister or how many members the Welsh Assembly has.

I took some small encouragement from the fact that slightly more citizens chose to take the Affirmation of Allegiance, rather than the Oath (which beings, “I […] swear by Almighty God). However, the overall effect reminded me of nothing more than a school assembly, with a hall full of bored students intoning words to prayers which they find more or less meaningless.

And this, of course, is the point. The whole process has less to do with “citizenship” per se than with reminding workers who have often overcome massive difficulties and obstructions in order to be allowed to settle here (admittedly not the case for the person whose guest I was) of precisely who is the boss, and showing that they are expected to be good little boys and girls.

Needless to say the proceedings ended with the playing of the National Anthem. Not wishing to embarrass my partner, I confess that I did stand up for the wretched dirge (albeit with my fingers firmly crossed throughout!).

Surely the world can be organised more sanely than this? Why should it not be the birthright of every human being to settle in any part of our planet (or even to continuously travel around it, should one so require), and be accepted as an equal member of one’s community without having to participate in silly ceremonies to prove one’s worthiness to do so? Why should we have to swear (or affirm or whatever) Allegiance to anyone? As Leon Rosselson wrote in his song “The World Turned Upside Down”, “This world was made a common treasury, for everyone to share.” However, until the world’s working class unites consciously and politically to ensure that the treasury can indeed be shared, a minority class with retain control and the rest of us will continue to be expected to be grateful when we’ve passed enough of their patronising “tests” (and, of course, have sufficient funds) to be able to relocate from one part of the planet to another.

Shane Roberts,

Bristol.

Material World: ‘Too old to work, too young to die’ (2020)

The Material World Column from the November 2020 issue of the Socialist Standard

People are living a lot longer which should be good news but not so under capitalism. Ageing populations are viewed as a threat to prosperity, rather than a sign of human achievement and progress.

With a lower fertility rate (see last month’s article), the ageing of the population is inevitable. For the first time in history, the number of people aged 65 years and over will exceed the number of children under 5. With the ‘greying’ of the world’s population, governments are struggling to support the elderly.  As long as women are not willing to return to being baby-breeders to counter-act the trend, by 2030 there will be one billion more older people, accounting for 13 percent of the total population.

 While some of the developed nations are raising the age of retirement, making their old people work for longer, the increased longevity and the growing proportion of elderly are raising serious economic concerns. In particular, population ageing is resulting in growing financial stresses on retirement pensions, health systems and social care programmes. Reluctant to raise taxes on the capitalists, the state attempts to address the mounting costs by largely adjusting benefits, contribution rates, savings plans and raising the age of retirement. But socialists possess a greater vision: that we shouldn’t be aiming to extend the domain of work into old age, but to extend the domain of non-work into young age.

The current pension problems in the advanced capitalist countries will pale into insignificance compared with what is coming for the rest of the world  that has no welfare system, where the ratio of elderly people will rise faster than in the industrialised world, casting vastly more numbers of their old folk into poverty. An indication of the rate of this ‘population ageing’ is the time it takes for the proportion of people over a retirement age of 65 to double from 7 percent of the overall population to 14 percent. In France this process took more than a century. In China, it is projected to take less than a quarter of that time, perhaps just 25 years. In Vietnam ‘population ageing’ is set to rise even faster with the proportion of elderly projected to double over a mere 17-year period.

Centenarians represent a small fraction of the world’s current population of 7.3 billion, about one centenarian out of every 16,000 people. Over the coming decades, however, this rate is expected to increase rapidly and by the close of century is projected to reach one centenarian out of every 425 people. Other studies have been more optimistic about the chances of becoming a centenarian, estimating that more half of the babies in advanced industrialised nations can expect to live 100 years. Bringing more women into the workforce and lengthening the working years of older workers may well not be sufficient to solve the demographic problem. The other alternatives will be to increase productivity either by automation or with more immigration.

Many believe robotics can help a country overcome the handicap of a fast-ageing population and a declining workforce. The source of all unearned income is what Marx called the surplus value produced by workers over and above what they are paid. It is out of this unpaid labour that not only the rich but the whole non-productive superstructure of capitalist society (the armed forces, civil service, legal system, banking) has to be maintained. What allows capitalism to maintain an enormous non-productive sector is its high level of productivity in the productive sector. Pensioners too are maintained out of this surplus. Pensions are a transfer payment from the profits of the capitalists, even if ultimately these profits come from what workers produce. It is the increasing productivity that will determine how well society will be able to support the expected increased proportion of retired people in the population.

The data make the case that there requires a general increase in immigration. Migration can offset many of the adverse effects of an ageing population on the labour market, with the average age of migrants being lower than the host population. Immigration is a sensitive issue in numerous countries. Paradoxically, those countries facing dropping birth rates and increased ageing, are opposed to immigration. In addition to rising public opinion opposing immigration, many governments are tightening border controls, erecting fences and walls, adopting policies to significantly restrict immigration. And it’s not just about the numbers – migrants bring new ideas and a new dynamism to a society’s culture.

The Socialist Standard could fill its pages with articles about the appalling care given to the aged and infirm under capitalism today. Many charities strive to improve conditions for the elderly but ultimately they will fail because they try to reform capitalism instead of changing it. When workers decide to abolish the wages system and produce for human needs instead of profit, then hardship and insecurity in old age could become a memory of capitalism’s barbaric past. Join us and help to build a new system of society where young and old can live out their lives with respect and dignity in a world where the true meaning of community prevails. Socialism will abolish the concept of retirement and fulfil the promise of a world providing all the prerequisites of a good life, regardless of age or physical ability.

ALJO

So They Say: Nearest and Dearest (1973)

The So They Say Column from the October 1973 issue of the Socialist Standard

Nearest and Dearest

The case last month in which an Englishman married a Malawi-born woman to prevent her deportation, the couple intending to divorce immediately, was treated by the press as unique. It is not. Five years ago the celebrated small-ads pages of International Times were regularly carrying advertisements from seekers and offerers of nationality-by-marriage. They are currently to be found in the Personal column of Private Eye:

Englishman (26) offers citizenship by marriage. Best offer.

Englishman offers British citizenship £800.

Englishman offers British citizenship. Best offer over £1,000.

Socialist Standard readers are invited to think of a new answer to the question: Would you let your daughter marry a black man? As Byron wrote, “ready money is Aladdin's lamp”. In its light can be seen the fatuousness of legal marriage vows as well as the stupidity of national boundaries and immigration laws.

Growing Stunts Your Growth

The classic definition of inflation is “too much money chasing too few goods”. The aim of western governments wrestling with it has been to try to hold back wages and prices on one hand, and promote productive growth on the other. More goods, less currency: it seems logical. “Growth” is not only the answer to the inflation problem, but the source of the ecological one. With growth, pollution comes; without it, we are in the economic mire.

That is what they say, at any rate. But a report from Japan (Guardian, 1st September) turns the economic picture another way up. There, to try to stop inflation the Cabinet has framed measures “aimed at moderating the growth rate of Japan’s economy”. The programme has familiar features like cuts in bank lending, hire-purchase restrictions, etc., but goes on to a series of limitations on development. They include the postponement of public works and the reduction of outlays on new plant and equipment in the motor industry. The Ministry of International Trade and Industry will also

ask six industries to reduce capital spending plans in fiscal 1973 by 102 billion yen, centring on long-lead-time projects. These include the steel, petrochemical, electronic and electrical machinery, aluminium smelting and rolling, electric power and retail sectors.

Pay Attention, There !

In fact, capitalists in Japan, like their counterparts everywhere else, recognize that they must follow not the theories of government but the market. On 10th September the “City Comment” columnist of the Guardian asked an industrialist if his company was affected “by the thought that the Government was committed to the expansion of the economy and running immense economic and social risks apparently on industry’s behalf”.

The blunt answer was no. The company was paying no attention whatsoever to Mr. Heath’s obstinate growth policy in forming its new investment plans. It was working on the assumption that by 1975 demand for its products would be slowing down markedly, for other industries the deceleration would come earlier. As for Mr. Heath’s expansionist propaganda, it was dismissed as ‘politicians’ talk’, for public consumption.

Making A Crow Grow

One company whose “profit growth record” has been checked is Acrow Engineering group. Due to the losses of a newly-acquired subsidiary, Steel Group of Sunderland, Acrow's pre-tax profits for 1972-73 rose by only 3 per cent., from £2,617,000 to £2,697,000, instead of the 10-13 per cent, shown in the last five years. According to the annual report (1st September) the difficulties at Sunderland are now being resolved; and “the original Acrow companies had performed well”.

“Performed” is an appropriate word. Students approaching an Acrow works in south-east England for vacation work this summer were offered employment as labourers for 20p. an hour. A 44-hour week in factory conditions at that rate brings a wage of £8.80p. before deductions. Perhaps it is a scheme for teaching economics students the meaning of “surplus-value”, first hand.

Rising Tally

Another interesting report is that of the Provident Clothing company. Its profits have been rising for some time, and in the six months to 30th June this year they jumped 35 per cent. Provident Clothing’s figures have to be given in an unusual way. The leap in the current year is from £71.2 millions to £127.6 millions in amounts due from customers and from £12.5 millions to £25.6 millions in deferred revenue.

Financial-page comment has put this surge down to “buoyant consumer sales”. However, Provident is the best-known name in the check and voucher business — hence the statement of incomes “due” and “deferred”: like the weekly payments for clothes and household goods. Nothing “buoyant” about that. Provident Clothing prospers through poverty and working people trying to make ends meet. No doubt employees of Acrow Enginering are among its regular customers.

Liberal Sentiments

The recent Liberal Party gains have produced euphoric visions of capitalism humanized by Liberals’ “concern for the individual”. It is more to the point to know what economic policy the Liberal Party would try if in power. On 11th September it published a document which proposes “a prices and incomes policy enforced by fiscal penalties”.

The penalties envisaged are for exceeding laid-down rates of increase in prices and wages. For companies they would be additions to Corporation Tax; for workers, surcharges on graduated National Insurance contributions. John Pardoe, MP, defending this policy in a letter to the Guardian, called it “foolproof” and asserted:

It needs no policemen and no prisons, and it removes the Government from day to day interference in wage and price settlements.

Oh, marvellous: away with all this cumbersome machinery, and let us return to straightforward pay cuts.

It would be interesting to learn how the obviously large addition to Inland Revenue work is to be accomplished. Tax officials have complained continually of understaffing and overwork. Is the solution to raise wages to recruit more clerks, and then cut the wages to defeat inflation ?

A Freudian Misprint

“No doubt it is possible for a well led, well educated, well housed individual ... to come to the conclusions reached by your correspondent.” (Letter from a clergyman to The Guardian, 7th September; our emphasis. If he did not mean it, he should have.)

Robert Barltrop

Material World: No Borders! (2023)

The Material World column from the August 2023 issue of the Socialist Standard

Socialists want a world without countries or borders or passports, where people are part of the great human family and can come and go as they wish, with no concept of migration or asylum. This is part of our aim of a global society with no poverty or hunger or war, where people co-operate for the common good and the resources of the planet belong to everyone, are used to meet human need and are subject to democratic control.

Borders, frontiers and walls are usually seen as an essential part of capitalism. The ruling capitalist class determine the laws and policies within the area they control, at least to the extent that capitalism allows them to do so. Among other things, this means laying down regulations about immigration, who can enter the country, where they can come from, which requirements they must meet, how long they can stay, which kind of jobs they can hold. Brexit was in part motivated by the desire to limit immigration and ‘control our borders’, rather than the EU having the final say in such matters.

However, there are some supporters of capitalism who advocate ‘open borders’, at least to the extent of allowing migration without any restrictions. For instance: ‘if workers could move freely around the world, the market would generally match people and jobs efficiently, but when governments intervene selectively, obstructing some workers from moving while actively encouraging others to do so, the market becomes distorted’ (Philippe Legrain: Immigrants).

The point is that capitalism often needs to ‘import’ workers from elsewhere, perhaps because of a shortage of those with the relevant skills or of those willing to do back-breaking labour; in Germany, for instance, a law was passed recently to make it easier for workers from outside the EU to move there. Borders and immigration controls are not compatible with the supposed ‘free market’, where supply and demand (of workers just as much as cars and chairs) will allegedly match each other by a kind of magic. After all, if you believe there should be no restrictions or taxes on movement of consumer goods or the export of capital, then logically neither should there be limits on workers moving around the globe.

Other arguments along similar lines can be found on the website of the Future of Freedom Foundation (fff.org), a ‘libertarian’ US think tank that stands for the more-or-less unfettered freedom of capitalists to exploit workers. A talk in 2014 by its president Jacob Hornberger included the absurd claim that ‘immigration controls are nothing more than socialist central planning’. His solution was ‘a free market in immigration’, with open borders, across which people could move freely. In such a system, ‘people would be free to come to the United States and enter into mutually beneficial labor relationships with American employers who would be willing to hire them.’ Borders would still exist, separating the world into different jurisdictions, but people would be free to cross them as they wish.

This is of course based on a ludicrous idea of how capitalism works. The relations between capitalists and workers are not ‘mutually beneficial’ but based on exploitation and a real gap in status between the two parties to the relationship. Wealth and power on one side, poverty and insecurity on the other. Supposedly open borders will not change this in the slightest.

Tim Marshall’s book Divided also deals with the issue of open borders. He refers to an article by the American economist Nathan Smith, which argues that ending migration controls would (in Smith’s words) ‘increase liberty, reduce global poverty, and accelerate economic growth.’ Labour would be allocated more efficiently, resulting in ‘global increases in productivity, leading the world economy to nearly double in size.’ This would ‘disproportionately benefit the world’s poorest people.’

Marshall objects to this proposal on two grounds. The first is that the initial migrants from impoverished countries would be those who could afford to do so, meaning fewer doctors, teachers and so on in the countries concerned. The second relates to ‘human nature’ or ‘group identity’: people tend not to like it when large groups of ‘outsiders’ descend on them. But this relates to what often happens now, in a society based on competition and shortages and ‘us versus them’, and is not a general feature of how people live. His book is full of examples of the appalling consequences of walls, such as the 2,500-mile fence that the Indian government has built along most of its border with Bangladesh. Over a third of the world’s countries have physical barriers along their borders.

These ideas (Legrain, Hornberger, Smith, and Marshall’s doubts too) are rooted in capitalism, a system which is based on dividing people and setting them against each other. Further, in a society where global heating and environmental damage are major problems, the idea of doubling the size of the world’s economy is not attractive. One of the priorities of socialism will be to provide decent food, housing, healthcare and education for all the world’s population. We cannot say now just what that would involve in terms of committing people and resources, but it will take place in a world where there really are no borders, no classes, no rulers and no governments. Decisions will be made democratically, at whatever level (local, regional, etc) is deemed appropriate. Having no borders does not mean there are no sub-divisions for administrative purposes, just that people will not be seen as belonging to some arbitrary part of the Earth and as somehow different from those who ‘belong’ elsewhere.

Paul Bennett

Frontierless World (2022)

Book Review from the August 2022 issue of the Socialist Standard

Against Borders – The Case for Abolition. By Gracie Mae Bradley and Luke De Noronha. Verso. Paperback £9.99. 2022. 

Where at first glance Against Borders… has a single-issue focus, it becomes a multi-faceted explainer of how ‘migrants’ are seen under the terms of capitalism and how we could interact with our fellow humans in a future, more open world.

The book regularly refers to André Gorz’s concept of ‘Non-Reformist Reforms’ (bit.ly/3z1mXui) but gives socialists something to think about in terms of how borders can be abolished and other related issues solved in a future freed from capitalist constraints.

The book is broken down into chapters on race, policing and prisons and counter-terrorism among others but possibly the most thought-provoking is simply entitled ‘Capitalism’. Bradley and De Noronha refer to the ‘myth of race and nation’ and how these and other similar concepts persuade us to perceive a worker from abroad differently from someone who hails from the same locality. There is discussion around how and to what end migrant workers are criminalised and treated by police forces, and the book includes interesting explanations of how ownership of land and ownership of territories differ.

In a 2018 article, author, broadcaster and professor Gary Younge described how when his Barbadian mother came to Britain in 1962 to work as a nurse she was already a British subject – ‘My mother didn’t cross the border to come to Britain – the border crossed her.’ In Against Borders… Bradley and De Noronha include a chapter on race and what it means to be a ‘citizen’ including critique of the ‘hostile environment’ (bit.ly/3ALCqju). Why, for example, do we need to be a ‘citizen’ in order to claim basic human rights from a state and how might campaigns for particular groups of migrants be considered to be defeatist by virtue of their reformist nature, rather than attempting to get to the root of the issue.

Ultimately, the book could be judged as a modern revision of concepts around the position and power (or lack thereof) of the worker, both regarding capital and people’s ability to determine their own lives. The authors explicitly and interestingly leave open some questions about how we may restructure after borders are deemed obsolete. There are two thought-provoking utopian ‘interlude’ sections with imagined futures of people on the move and how this could play out in a post-capitalist world.

If Against Borders… is to be a (figurative) call to arms for a new audience to recognise that a radical change is possible in terms of how a state treats people from other (current) nations and possibilities around the building of a new realm, then the message is a positive one.

‘The abolition of borders requires that we challenge all of the social structures underpinning their permanence’ (p149).

TJ

Greasy Pole: Two brains? (2000)

The Greasy Pole column from the July 2000 issue of the Socialist Standard

When a prime minister takes over after winning an election victory, what are the jobs awaiting attention? There is the triumphant waving to the crowd, there is the speech saying how humbly proud they are to be given this sacred trust which they will keep by running a government of all the people. There are the ministerial jobs to be dished out, to award faithful acolytes on the one hand and to pay off old scores on the other. Then, very soon, there is the business of planning the next election. Because that must never be far from their mind. Alastair Campbell, the spin doctor supremo of this government, recently told the magazine Vanity Fair that every morning he and Tony Blair get up thinking “Right, how can we lose the election”. That may not be exactly true but it does illustrate the fact that any government must be persistently pre-occupied with pulling off at the next election the same kind of confidence trick which succeeded before.

As the election gets nearer the matter takes on a greater urgency. We are subjected to a kind of electoral auction, in which Tories and Labour make bids to buy off votes with extravagant promises to solve economic and social problems, as if it was all suddenly blindingly obvious and simple.

Criminals and Immigrants

An ever-popular subject of the electoral auction is crime, with each party bidding to outdo the other with schemes which are presented as the final, all-consuming remedy. No more drug addicts mugging old ladies for their pension. No more burglaries while we sleep in our beds at the dead of night. No more stolen cars. The inhabitants of inner city slums, of high rise housing estates, will learn to live with their misery without taking it all out in offending. The last Tory Home Secretary, Michael Howard, was a past master at thinking up such schemes and his Labour successor has carried on where he left off and beyond.

Since the Fifties immigration has been another item at the auction. From the first Commonwealth Immigration Act of 1962 both parties have rolled out laws to cut immigration which have had the effect of pandering to, or stimulating, some of the ugliest of racist prejudice. In the Nineties the immigrants have become asylum seekers, who are often characterised as “bogus” or “economic”. Ace auctioneer Jack Straw has been most active here, restricting the income of the asylum seekers and forcibly dispersing them around the country, often to places where they have no family or friends. Straw’s Tory rival, Ann Widdecombe, has tried to outbid him with her call to slap all asylum seekers into detention centres—a sort of “lock up first and ask questions afterwards” policy.

Pensioners

At one time it seemed that this government had written pensioners off as a significant source of votes so it didn’t really matter if they upset them, for example by upping the basic pension by the staggering sum of 75p a week. There had to be a re-assessment when it became clear that this miserly rise had provoked a lot of anger and then when the Tories saw that there were votes in the issue. Pensions, like most state benefits, are not simple. A pension starts at a basic sum which can be increased or reduced according to the pensioner’s circumstances. In addition there is an extra £10 a week at Christmas, which would not even buy a bottle of whisky and each winter £150 to pay for extra fuel. Anyone over 75 gets their TV free of a licence fee. Taking everything into account, it needs a mathematically alert brain and a calculator to work out exactly how much a pensioner should get.

The Tories put the matter into the auction with William Hague’s bid to raise the basic pension by between £5 and £10 a week—at once, if the Tories win the next election, which could mean next April. This may have sounded pretty tempting to anyone eking out a spartan existence on their pension but when Labour ministers had got their breath back they were able to show that Hague was not really offering a rise because his offer was intended to replace the £10 Christmas pay-out, the fuel payment, the free TV licence and a few other things. The Tory scheme was based on the argument that pensioners don’t like being forced to accept a bonus for Christmas, for winter fuel and so on and would prefer a straightforward increase to spend how they like. Anyone who thinks that people who struggle to get by on a state pension are able to spend their money how they like—blow it all on a luxury cruise instead of on food, perhaps—is seriously out of touch with reality.

How Many Brains Have You Got?

The person responsible for the Tory bid was not William Hague but his social security spokesman David Willetts, who is known as “Two Brains” Willetts because he is so much cleverer than normal people.

He went to Oxford, where they know when they are in the presence of a great mind so they gave him a first class degree. After Oxford he became one of John Major’s earliest gurus, which would mean a lot more were it not that Major was famous for making disastrous choices in the people he promoted. In the 1992 election Willetts was elected as MP for the safe Tory seat of Havant. His progress in penetrating into the world of the brash and brilliant was illustrated when he became a regular at Peregrine Worsthorne’s lunches at the Sunday Telegraph, where they may well have discussed clever ideas like raising pensions with one hand and lowering them with the other. Willetts was welcome at these exercises in pretentious futility until his overbearing conceit got on everyone’s nerves—which, since none of those present were short of self-esteem, is saying quite a lot. The crunch came when he put his feet on the lunch table and began lecturing Michael Howard on how to run his ministry—something which Howard, who was hated by his civil servants and a few million other people, did not need. “No further invitations,” recorded Worsthorne, “were forthcoming for Mr. Willetts.”

Dissembling

It took Willetts rather longer to reach serious fame when, as a junior Tory whip, he earned the severe displeasure of the House of Commons Standards and Privileges Committee. This committee, as its name implies, is supposed to watch over the standards of conduct of those people quaintly called Honourable Members, which means that anyone who deals with them is supposed to tell the truth. In October 1994 the committee were expecting to get a complaint about the conduct of Neil “Cash for Questions” Hamilton. It was an embarrassing episode for the government. It is at such times that whips, especially if they got a first at Oxford, come into their own. Putting both his brains to work at the same time, Willetts came up with a brilliant idea designed to obstruct the work of the committee and so get the government off the hook.

In a note to the Tory Chief Whip, he suggested that the committee should either set aside the complaint against Hamilton until the MP’s libel action against the Guardian had been settled—by which time much of the embarrassment should have subsided—or investigate the complaint as quickly as possible “…exploiting the good Tory majority at present”. Referring to the Tory chairman of the committee, Willetts wrote “He wants our advice”—in other words the chairman wanted to be told the best way of stopping the committee doing the job it had been set up to do.

Unluckily for Willetts the note was leaked and he was hauled up before the committee to explain himself, when he was stupid enough, instead of making a clean breast of the matter, to try to get away with the feeble excuse that his phrase “he wants our advice” really meant “he is in want of advice”. With the media hot on the trail, this attempt to wriggle out of the problem had no chance of succeeding. The chairman sensibly wanted none of it; he described Willetts version of the affair as “astonishing”. Left hanging in the wind, Willetts had to absorb the committee’s censure: “. . . very concerned . . . dissemble on his account . . . substantially aggravate the original offence”.

Comeback

For anyone with fewer brains—or with less arrogance—that might have been a crushing blow. But not so for Willetts, who came bouncing back and is now shadow spokesman for social security—which cannot be reassuring for anyone who depends on state benefits for their survival. But that is the reality of life under capitalism, for the millions of people who do all the useful work in society and whose lot is to be exploited in the interests of sustaining the system responsible for it all—and to be patronised by arrogant, conceited cynics into what might be called the bargain.

Ivan

All quiet in Glasgow (1965)

From the June 1965 issue of the Socialist Standard

Certain historical facts have ensured that racialism has never been prominent in Glasgow. For instance, anti-Semitism rarely shows itself, except in the odd golf club, and even during the ’Thirties Mosley’s sole appearance in the City ended in complete fiasco.

The late arrival of the Jews (mid-19th century) was a help, for this meant that the ancient antagonism so typical on the Continent is absent here. Later on, the importation of Irish religious influences provided other means whereby the frustrations of wage-slavery could be worked off without the presence of any other “races”. The roles of “them” and “us” were adequately filled by the Orange and Catholic elements who have been hating one another ever since.

And unless a few pedlars and seamen, could be counted, Afro-Asians were an unusual sight in the City until the early ’Sixties when, it seemed to the Citizens, a flood of “Paki’s” suddenly descended in their midst. This impression was helped by the newcomers finding employment almost exclusively on the Municipal Transport, thereby assuring themselves of a constant place in the public eye, while their habit of taking up group residence gave the impression of whole areas being taken over.

In fact Glaswegians might be surprised to know that compared to Birmingham, which has a similar population, of just over a million, Glasgow's immigrants are rather thin on the ground—about 7,000 against Birmingham’s 70,000.

The reasons for the low numbers are obvious. Glasgow’s unemployed rarely falls below 20,000 while the light industries which can absorb the unskilled immigrant are practically non-existent here. Clydeside is synonymous with heavy engineering and shipbuilding so the demand is for skilled men only and what light industry there is can, in an area where wages are well below the national average, find an abundance of married women to fill any available vacancies.

Anyway, the big problem in Scotland is not immigration but emigration. Around 11.000 left here for overseas in each of the six years between 1958-63 while another 87.000 found work elsewhere in the U.K. during the 1950’s. So concerned with this state of affairs are the local Nationalists and Labourites that they don’t even have a policy on immigration at all, devoting themselves solely to preventing the mass escape of wage-slaves to other parts!

The Trade Unions have discussed the matter and at the 1962 Conference of the Scottish T.U.C. the Association of Scientific Workers, appropriately enough, moved an anti-racialist resolution which concluded ”. . . no barriers on grounds of race, creed or colour should be erected against those who wish to live and work in this country”. The motion was unanimously adopted. Another resolution condemning Apartheid is due to come before the 1965 Conference and doubtless it, too, will carry the day. All of this hardly reflects the attitude of the average union member. As the seconder of the 1962 resolution admitted “. . . we had to be honest. . . there were still some of our own people who had prejudice against a person’s race, religion or colour”.

So even if Glasgow’s record is comparatively clean it must be remembered that the conditions for real prejudice seldom crop up. The immigrants live almost as a separate community and follow their own cultural activities. They aim simply to stick it out for a few years, save enough money, and return home to open a small business. Few intend to stay.

Nor have they added to the local housing or unemployment problems. The ten year residential qualification rules them out for a Council so they live mainly in tenements which were slums years ago, and the jobs they find are usually those which do not, at present, attract local men anyway.

When the necessary conditions have arisen, in isolated instances Glaswegians have shown the same lack of class consciousness as workers elsewhere. Only recently, when some immigrants moved into a once posh street in the City, their neighbours raised the usual howl about the adverse effect this would have on the value of their property. Last Autumn a racial strike occurred at the Gavinsbum Bus Dept, just outside Glasgow, when the strikers claimed too many Pakistanis were getting jobs in an area of high unemployment. Nor should we forget how—earlier immigrants—Italian Cafe owners—had their shops smashed up by patriotic mobs when Italy entered the war in 1940.

The coming of the Immigration Act, plus the existing state of industry, make any immediate influx of immigrants unlikely. It does not follow, however, that the present peacefulness must continue. Capitalism has shown that no great change is required in its socio-economic climate to produce, here, the outbreaks of intolerance so common in other parts of the country.

Vic Vanni (Glasgow)

Labour Party and Immigration (1965)

From the June 1965 issue of the Socialist Standard

High-flown phrases about "the brotherhood of man” fall thickly from the lips of the Capitalist politician, and perhaps some of them are sincere, at least some of the time. Fenner Brockway, until last October the Labour M.P. for Eton & Slough, tried and failed no less than seven times to interest the Commons in a bill to outlaw racial discrimination. "When a child is born", he said with a note of Christian piety on December 13th, 1961, “ it is not its physical form or the pigment of its skin which makes it sacred—it is the spiritual life, the personality within ”,

The precise meaning of those words is a matter for discussion, but what is undeniable is the anxiety of Mr. Brockway and other M.P s over the growing signs of racial friction in Britain. However, it is one thing to condemn racialism, but quite another to deal with it effectively in a world of private property, where antagonisms and prejudices of all sorts are fostered. In any case, whatever Mr. Brockway’s opinions may have been, he was a Labourite and cannot escape responsibility for his party's actions over the question of racialism and immigration control.

Indeed, despite fierce Labour opposition to the Commonwealth Immigration Bill in 1962 (and we shall come to that later), it may not be generally remembered that it was two Labour members, H. Hynd (Accrington) and M. Lipton (Brixton) who over four years before (on April 3rd, 1958) had said in the Common that “. . . the time has come for reconsideration of the arrangement whereby British subjects from other parts of the Commonwealth are allowed to enter this country without restriction ”. At that time, it was the Tory spokesman, Miss P. Hornsby-Smith, who resisted their motion and reminded the freedom lovers of the Labour benches of the part coloured workers had played in taking jobs rejected by whites:

Anyone who uses public transport in our big cities, will know that they have filled a very great gap in staff and . . . have done a very good job.

But as she also had to admit, the heavy demand for labour was easing, and coloured workers were finding it more difficult to find employment than before. Here we can detect one of the economic pressures which made the question politically explosive in the early sixties, and perhaps cost the Labour Party three constituencies in 1964-5.

It was convenient for the Macmillan government that so many people seemed to forget that housing and employment problems existed long before coloured immigrants set foot here in any numbers. The Tories saw the issue as a political godsend, among other things an opportunity to deflect criticism of their own failures to solve these problems onto the innocent shoulders of the coloured minority. And despite their assurances to the contrary, the subsequent Immigration Bill was far from colour-blind in its provisions. The Tories were in fact pandering to the worst prejudices of public opinion and, by using a minority as a scapegoat, were taking crafty advantage of racist sentiment without incurring the stigma usually attached to it.

Here it was that the Labour opposition under Gaitskell committed a first class tactical blunder in assuming that it was still enough to label a party racialist to condemn in in the eyes of the public. Conditions in British politics were changing, but Gaitskell showed little awareness of this when commenting on the Queen’s speech on October 31st, 1961:

. . . whatever hon. Members opposite may say, whatever the Home Secretary may say . . . this will be regarded very largely throughout the world as the imposition of a colour bar over here.... To impose restrictions is a very grave step indeed, and , one that I personally hope the Government will not, when they come to it, actually take.

This bitter and unqualified attack was resumed the following day by George Brown. He threw the words of the Tory Cyril Osborne into the Government’s face (“This is a white man’s country and I want it to remain so ”), and ended by saying:

The proposal to take these powers is not really to solve the difficulties and the real consequences of the proposal is to give themselves gn alibi for what they are refusing to do, whether for brown, black or white.. . . The casual way in which this is dealt with is a gross reflection on H.M. Ministers, and if the house were easily to accept it, it would be on the house.

It is old news now, that the government’s measure was passed in the teeth of fierce labour opposition, something which was to cost Gordon-Walker his seat at Smethwick three years later. By then, however, Labour policy under Wilson’s leadership hail undergone a right-about-face on the issue. Forgotten were Gaitskell’s words (“ immigration from the Commonwealth has been of economic benefit to us.”) for the new leader was wily enough to see that the old stand was a positive vote loser.

So the 1964 Labour manifesto talked of retaining the very measure of which they had been so scornful, and indeed since their return to power, Labour have actually tightened control at all points of entry. Of course, they are at one with their Tory sparring partners in denying any racial bias, but in the light of this, the words of their home secretary, Sir Frank Soskice, have a strange ring. In a Commons debate on Match 23rd, he resisted any extension to the law because:

I should have to ask you to give these powers to be used against Canadians, Australians and New Zealanders, against all members of the old Commonwealth countries as well as the new. They would have to be operated against visitors and students, from all these countries with complete impartiality.

True, the Labour government have since introduced a bill outlawing racial discrimination in certain spheres, but this is as much a question of public order as anything else. Statesmen can learn from the mistakes of their counterparts elsewhere and British capitalism cannot afford another Selma or Little Rock in Smethwick or Brixton.

However, even if immigration restrictions achieve their purpose, there are almost a million coloured workers in Britain and they are here to stay. They will have children and their numbers will swell. They will suffer the same problems as their white brothers, but with the added indignity of resentment and prejudice which no law enactment can cure. The coloured vole will also increase and this is something which no Labour or Tory politician will be able to ignore when trying to keep the situation in check.

They have all pandered to ignorance and bigotry in the furtherance of their vote catching—racially prejudiced workers are always impressed by government restrictive measures against minorities—but the boot may not always be on the same foot. The present set-up could conceivably produce an offspring in the shape of mounting coloured resentment against while workers in the future; already some ugly signs of this are appearing elsewhere in the world. But whatever happens, it should be interesting to watch Labour and Tory antics as the drama is played out. and should prove as instructive a lesson in political tightrope walking as we have ever seen.

Eddie Critchfield

All that glitters . . . (2021)

Book Review from the January 2021 issue of the Socialist Standard

The London Dream. Chris McMillan. Zero Books. 2020. £19.99

Subtitled ‘migration and the mythology of the city’, this is a critical look at London and the immigrants who are attracted to live and work there. McMillan writes broadly through a lens of Marxist class analysis, though also draws heavily on some of the ideas of non-Marxists such as Richard Florida, who has written extensively about the ‘creative classes’ within capitalism and the dynamic turbulence of which they are an intrinsic part. In London’s case, much of this is perceived as being centred on the so-called ‘flat white economy’ and Silicon Roundabout in Shoreditch, though it stretches much further and wider than this.

For McMillan, the ‘struggle between the hope of the London dream and the exploitation it fuels’ is the main focus of his investigation. Through analysing a variety of themes and sectors (the cleaners that service the City of London travelling in on the night buses, to jobbing actors and writers seeking their fortune but struggling to make any sort of living, through to the Uber drivers), McMillan does a good job of laying bare the exploitation that keeps the city going. He interviews a number of people who have come to London to chase their dream and is mature and reflective in analysing their success (or – largely – otherwise). In this respect he knowingly treads some similar ground to Ben Judah’s excellent This is London, which we reviewed in the Socialist Standard in June 2016.

London is now very much the ‘world city’ and whereas in 1951 as few as 5 percent of the population was born outside the UK, now the total is well over a third and growing – indeed two thirds of children born in London today have at least one parent who was born outside the UK. The Huguenots and Jewish refugees of earlier stages of capitalism have been replaced by Afro-Caribbeans, Bengalis and latterly eastern Europeans and those seeking their fortune and new experiences from the old colonies like Australia and New Zealand. But it is the low-paid, gig-economy jobs they typically fill – the waitresses, bartenders and delivery drivers. While two-thirds of registered London black cab drivers identify as ‘white British’ this only applies to 6 percent of Uber drivers, many of whom sometimes earn as little as £2 per hour net pay.

Though the book seems to be marred periodically by an unusually large number of typos and similar errors, McMillan is a good writer and brings the city and its people to life. He ends by saying: ‘London is a city of hope, a city of misery. A city where there is always something to do and no shortage of precarious workers struggling to do it. It is all part of the London dream. And still, they come. But for how much longer?’ (p.258). True enough, though what the book really lacks most is a re-imagining of the city in a way that transcends capitalism itself and the exploitation it engenders. But it is a stimulating read and a book that demonstrates that all that glitters in not all gold – and why.

DAP

Letter: Hypocrisy over immigration (2009)

Letter to the Editors from the July 2009 issue of the Socialist Standard

Dear Editors

The perpetual media discussion about immigration, conveniently forgets the countless numbers of people who have migrated from the British Isles (including Ireland when it was part of the British Isles) over the  past 400 years. When one considers for example that the current population of the Republic of Ireland is some seven million approximately, while the current Irish descendant population in the USA alone is estimated to be around seventy million (to say nothing of the Irish descendants in the other former  “black” countries of Canada/New Zealand/Australia/South Africa, etc, etc), the hypocrisy of the anti-immigrant debate becomes evident. The same applies to the so called “white British” historical emigration to “black” countries around the world. The white British descendant population in East and South Africa, Oceania, North and South America etc runs into countless dozens of millions.

Further this debate ignores the fact that Britain was built exclusively on the profits generated by slavery and the pillaging of its colonies. Prior to the 16th century England was an impoverished backwater – even Christopher Columbus when he was trawling the Royal Courts of Europe to fund his New World adventure, never considered asking the English Court for assistance, as England was the Haiti of Europe at the time.

 

Anti-immigrant types need to acquaint themselves with their own history. Many of them fail to even appreciate that they themselves are recent arrivals in the British Isles – their Anglo-Saxon invader ancestors were not here when the Romans with their British based African regiments, were building Hadrian’s Wall.

The immigration debate needs to have these facts discussed.

Lalu Hanuman, 

Barbados

Reply:

We get your point, even if there is some exaggeration. For instance, the population of the Republic of Ireland is about 4 million not 7 million. And the wealth of British capitalism was not built “exclusively” on the profits of slavery and the pillaging of its colonies. This was certainly a key factor in the original accumulation of capital to start capitalism going, but after that the main source of profits was – and still is – the unpaid labour of the working class in Britain.

Editors.