Alena Ivanova, from Labour for Free Movement, said: “Truly, a historic day for Labour. This is the day we bury detention, we bury the ‘control on immigration’ mugs and fight alongside our brothers and sisters for a truly democratic and representative Labour government, which would give me the franchise to vote Labour for the first time in my life.”

Ana Oppenheim, one of the Labour members behind the campaign, called the move a “transformational policy”.

The text follows:

“Free movement, equality and rights for migrants. are socialist values and benefit us all.

Confronted with attacks on migrants – from the racist Hostile Environment to the Conservatives’ Immigration Bill that plans to end free movement and strip the rights of working-class migrants – we stand for solidarity, equality and freedom.

Scapegoating, ending free movement and attacking migrants’ rights are attacks on all workers. They make migrant workers more precarious and vulnerable to hyper-exploitation, pressing down wages and conditions for everyone. They divide us. making it harder to unionise and push back.

Labour offers real solutions to fix the problems which are unfairly and incorrectly blamed on migrants themselves: public funding for good jobs; homes. services and social security
for everyone; scrapping anti-union laws to support workers organising for improved conditions and wages. Migrant workers are already central to trade union campaigns beating low pay and exploitation, in spite of prevailing attitudes and Tory legislation.

Labour will include in the manifesto pledges to:

. Oppose the current Tory immigration legislation and any curbing of rights.

. Campaign for free movement, equality and rights for migrants.

. Reject any immigration system based on incomes. migrants’ utility to business. and number caps/targets.

. Close all detention centres.

. Ensure unconditional right to family reunion.

. Maintain and extend free movement rights.

. End “no recourse to public funds” policies.

. Scrap all Hostile Environment measures, use of landlords and public service providers as border guards, and restrictions on migrants’ NHS access.

. Actively challenge anti-immigrant narratives

. Extend equal rights to vote to all UK residents.”

Source: Infernal Machine

In framing the problem of the far-right as a problem of integration, it shifts the blame and the onus of responsibility for these movements onto migrants themselves.

Now no less an intellectual authority than Tony Blair has lent his money and his wisdom to this issue, and found the explanation for it.

In a forward to ‘The Glue that Binds: Integration in a Time of Populism’ by the Tony Blair Institute for Global Change, the Great Man notes that

failures around integration have led to attacks on diversity and are partly responsible for a reaction against migration. On the other hand, the word multiculturalism has been misinterpreted as meaning a justified refusal to integrate, when it should never have meant that…In this report, we make it clear that there is a duty to integrate, to accept the rules, laws and norms of our society that all British people hold in common and share, while at the same time preserving the right to practise diversity, which is fully consistent with such a duty.

Blair goes on to argue that:

…government cannot and should not be neutral on this question. It has to be a passionate advocate and, where necessary, an enforcer of the duty to integrate while protecting the proper space for diversity. Integration is not a choice; it is a necessity.

This is not the first time that Blair has made these arguments.  In a 2006 speech as Prime Minister he warned that Britain’s different communities had a ‘duty to integrate’ and that that ‘basic values’ should take priority over ‘separate beliefs and customs’.

Blair also insisted that ‘Our tolerance is part of what makes Britain, Britain. So conform to it; or don’t come here.’ These warnings were clearly aimed at Muslims in Britain, and in case anyone had any doubt,  Blair also noted that the July bombings had thrown the question of  ‘multiculturalism’ into ‘sharp relief.’

So it isn’t surprising to find him making similar arguments now as an antidote to far-right populism.  The report is more nuanced and balanced in its conclusions than its media coverage suggested, but its basic line is that the rise of the far-right is primarily due to ‘ Anxiety in host communities ….driven by the rapid pace of change, fears of segregated communities, competition for scarce resources, fears over values and fears of crime.’

There is a lot to unpick about these claims.   Which communities are ‘segregated’ and how did this happen?  Is such ‘segregation’ due to a failure on the part of governments or the ‘host communities’,  or is it due to migrants who have interpreted ‘multiculturalism’ as a ‘justified refusal to integrate?’

Why do ‘fears of crime’ always equate with ‘anxiety’ about migrants and immigration?  What basis do ‘fears over values’ have in reality,  and why are they always raised in regard to migration?

The report does not really answer these questions clearly.  It doesn’t engage at all with the possibility that these anxieties have been deliberately fueled, for example in coverage like this:

Though its authors include case studies of integration policies by some governments, the report avoids specific analyses of the rise of Trump, Salvini, Golden Dawn, UKIP etc, and makes no attempt to analyse the common threads that connect these movements.

Instead it concentrates almost exclusively on the absence of integration as a common explanation for the rise of the far-right:

One of the principal fears associated with immigration is that it undermines the norms and values that bind society together. These fears are exacerbated when newcomers are perceived as not adapting to the host country’s language, culture and identity—or, worse, when newcomers are perceived as retaining cultural norms and practices seen as fundamentally in conflict with those of the majority. Communities that live apart from the mainstream, whether religiously, ethnically or linguistically segregated, reinforce these fears and make publics wary of growing diversity.

Once again such observations do not ask why migrants are ‘perceived’ in this way, nor do they address the constant slippage between perception and reality. Usually these notions of ‘segregation’ refer to Muslim communities, though the report does not spell this out.

It does not address the extent to which questions of culture, religion, values and identity have replaced ‘race’ in the new ‘identity politics’ of the far-right and its populist variants. It does not consider the possibility that white supremacist, white nationalist and fascist movements have an ideological worldview and political salience of their own that has always used the supposed unwillingness or inability to integrate as a justification for racial Othering.

There was a time, for example, when the supposed unwillingness of Jews to assimilate was constantly used by antisemites as a justification for their exclusion and removal. Similar arguments are now routinely used in the depiction of Muslim ‘no go areas’ and ‘Londonistans.’

The report’s unwillingness to look at the continuities and differences between the new far-right and its predecessors, or between the fringe movements and their more mainstream populist representatives is not entirely surprising.

After all, Blair himself once declared that we should ‘build bridges’ with Steve Bannon and the far-right – a generosity of spirit that he has never extended to the left.

In keeping with his political ecumenism, Blair also a ‘friendly meeting’ last year with the Lega’s Mateo Salvini in Italy, where according to Salvini they discussed ‘immigration, Brexit and energy polices.’

One wonders if this discussion covered the ‘anxieties’ that led Salvini to block boats of refugees and impose a curfew on  ‘ethnic shops‘ because their clientele consists of ‘drunk people and drug dealers’ who ‘ piss and shit everywhere.’

Salvini was clearly not trying to assuage ‘anxieties’ about immigration when he said this, anymore than Trump was when he referred to undocumented migrants as ‘animals’ and criminals.

Whether intentionally or not, the unwillingness of Blair’s foundation to consider that racists might actually be racists because they are racist effectively shifts the blame for such movements on migrants themselves  or on ‘progressive governments’ that have supposedly failed to take the interrelated issues of integration and national identity seriously.

Few people would disagree with the report’s suggestion that ‘ respect for the law, democratic norms, the ability to speak a common language and the desire to contribute positively to society’ are essential elements for integration.

But the report suggests that migrants are not doing this, and that perhaps they are not willing to belong to a model that favours a ‘ single unified story over parallel lives and asks every group to contribute to a common culture.’

Last but not least, the report ignores the obstacles to integration emanating from within the ‘host communities’ – that have resulted, for example, in EU citizens who have lived in the UK for decades being told to ‘go back where they came from’ and physically and verbally abused for speaking their own languages or even speaking with an accent.

The report is not without useful proposals, though many of them are common sense.  As a tool for combating the far-right it is worse than useless.  It does what too many governments – including the ones that Blair once headed – have done again and again.

Instead of challenging the ‘anxieties’ that far-right movements feed on, the report’s framing and use of language only confirms these anxieties.

In framing the problem of the far-right as a problem of integration, it shifts the blame and the onus of responsibility for these movements onto migrants themselves.  Without actually endorsing forced assimilation it flirts with vague authoritarian notions of coercion that are not far removed from it.

This didn’t work when Blair was in power, and the experience of the last decade makes it clear that it is not going to work now.

Matt Carr is a writer, campaigner and journalist.  His latest book is The Savage Frontier: The Pyrenees in History and the Imagination (New Press/Hurst, 2018).  He blogs regularly at The Infernal Machine.

Creeping Fascism: What It Is and How To Fight It
By Neil Faulkner with Samir Dathi, Phil Hearse and Seema Syeda

How can we stop a ‘second wave’ of fascism returning us to the darkest times? How do we prevent the history of the 1930s repeating itself?

READ MORE…

You don’t have to look for to see the immense anti-immigration and anti-refugee sentiment that’s spreading within the United States and around the globe. This music video from the Hamilton Mixtape portrays all kinds of immigrant experiences, and the underpaid jobs they often take in the service industry. The sweat-shop like environment of laborers sewing American flags feels especially symbolic—this is a nation built on immigrants that depends on immigrants.

Immigrants (We Get The Job Done)
featuring Residente, Riz MC & Snow Tha Product

And just like that it’s over, we tend to our wounded, we count our dead
Black and white soldiers wonder alike if this really means freedom…
Not yet

[K’Naan:]
I got 1 job, 2 jobs, 3 when I need them
I got 5 roommates in this one studio but I never really see them
And we all came America trying to get a lap dance from lady freedom
But now lady liberty is acting like Hillary Banks with a pre-nup (Banks with a pre-nup)
Man I was brave sailing on graves
Don’t think I didn’t notice those tombstones disguised as waves
I’m no dummy, here is something funny you can be an immigrant without risking your lives
Or crossing these borders with thrifty supplies
All you got to do is see the world with new eyes

[Chorus:]
Immigrants
We get the job done
Look how far I come
Look how far I come
Look how far I come
We get the job done
Look how far I come
Look how far I come
Look how far I come
Immigrants
We get the job done

[Snow Tha Product:]
It’s a hard line
When you’re an import
Baby boy it’s hard times
When you ain’t sent for
Racist feed the belly of the beast
With they pitchforks, rich chores
Done by the people that get ignored
Ya se armó
Ya se despertaron
It’s a whole awakening
La alarma ya sonó hace rato
Los que quieren buscan
Pero nos apodan como vagos
We are the same ones
Hustling on every level
Ten los datos
Walk a mile in our shoes
Abrochenze los zapatos
I been scoping ya dudes
Ya’ll ain’t been working like I do
I’ll outwork you, it hurts you
You claim I’m stealing jobs though
Peter Piper claimed he picked them he just underpaid Pablo
But there ain’t a paper trail when you living in the shadows
We’re Americas ghost writers the credit is only borrowed
It’s a matter of time before the checks all come
But…

[Chorus:]
Immigrants
We get the job done
Look how far I come
Look how far I come
Look how far I come
We get the job done
Look how far I come
Look how far I come
Look how far I come
Immigrants
We get the job done
Not yet

[Snow Tha Product:]
The credit is only borrowed
It’s Americas ghost writers the credit is only borrowed
It’s Americas ghost writers
It’s Americas ghost writers
It’s Americas ghost writers the credit is only borrowed
It’s Americas ghost writers the credit is only borrowed
It’s Americas ghost writers the credit is only borrowed
It’s Americas ghost writers the credit is only borrowed
It’s…

[Part Chorus:]
Immigrants
We get the job done

[Riz MC:]
Ay yo aye immigrants we don’t like that
Na they don’t play British empire strikes back
They beating us like 808’s and high hats
At our own game of invasion, but this ain’t Iraq
Who these fugees, what did they do for me
But contribute new dreams
Taxes and tools swagger and food to eat
Cool, they flee war zones, but the problem ain’t ours
Even if our bombs landed on them like the Mayflower
Buckingham Palace or Capitol Hill
Blood of my ancestors had that all built
With the ink you print on your dollar bill, oil you spill
Thin red lines on the flag you hoist when you kill
But still we just say “look how far I come”
Hindustan, Pakistan, to London
To a galaxy far from their ignorance
Cause immigrants, we get the job done

[Residente:]
Por tierra o por agua
Identidad falsa
Brincamos muros o flotamos en balsas
La peleamos como Sandino en Nicaragua
Somos como las plantas que crecen sin agua
Sin pasaporte americano
Porque la mitad de gringolandia es terreno mexicano
Hay que ser bien hijo de puta
Nosotros les sembramos el árbol y ellos se comen la fruta
Somos los que cruzaron
Aquí vinimos a buscar el oro que nos robaron
Tenemos mas trucos que la policía secreta
Metimos la casa completa en una maleta
Con un pico, una pala
Y un rastrillo
Te construimos un castillo
Como es que dice el coro cabrón?

[Chorus:]
Immigrants
We get the job done
Look how far I come
Look how far I come
Look how far I come
We get the job done
Look how far I come
Look how far I come
Look how far I come
Immigrants
We get the job done
Look how far I come
Look how far I come
Look how far I come
Immigrants
We get the job done

Not yet

Source: War On Want

“The real crisis here is not a crisis of migration, it is a crisis of humanity – the mantra and response is always about walls and fences, and militarised borders, instead of compassion, humanity and commitment to create a fairer, safer and more equal world for us all. “– Asad Rehman, Executive Director, War On Want

Two-hundred and thirty desperate men, women and children seeking safe haven in the UK is not a ‘crisis’. Politicians and sections of the media are seeking to make political capital out of a story of human misery. In seeking to stoke fears of migrants they are taking a page out of the far-right’s handbook – used all too effectively by Donald Trump and fascist leaders across Europe.

The truth is that the 277 million people on the move around the world are moving simply to survive and have the right to a dignified life. The overwhelming majority of those forced from their homes do so inside their own country or to neighbouring poor countries who offer them safe haven. Very few ever make it to the global North, and when they do they are scapegoated for social ills that are the result of disastrous policies of austerity and cuts to public services. It’s a classic of case turning the most marginalised against each other.

The real crisis taking place is that of a broken economic model of neo-liberalism, where 0.7% of the world’s population has amassed half the world’s wealth and grows ever richer, whilst 70% of all working people own just 2.7%.

It’s a crisis of inequality, where half the world’s population – 3.5 billion – people survive on $5 a day. Billions are denied the right to housing, shelter, education and health – fundamental rights, enshrined in international human rights law – whilst the bosses of big business award themselves millions.

It’s a crisis of climate injustice, where 1°c warming has unleashed killer floods, droughts and famines, devastating the lives and livelihoods of millions of people, those who are the least responsible for causing climate change.

It’s a crisis of human rights, where 70 years after the signing of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, millions around the world are still denied the right to live free from persecution and injustice.

Yet the UK adds fire to conflict by doubling its arms sales in the past year to countries on its own list of human rights abusers such as Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Egypt, Israel and Pakistan.

If politicians were serious about tackling global migration, they would be focusing on the structural reasons why people are forced to move from their homes.

They would be clamping down on big business and ensuring that everyone has a living wage – no matter where they live. They would be committed to ensuring that the UK had an ethical foreign policy and that it stops arming human rights abusers.

They would be overhauling trade policies, which deliberatively impoverish so much of the global South so that UK banks and corporations can get richer and richer.

They would be at the forefront of tackling the climate crisis, doing their fair share of global effort to keep below 1.5c and helping poorer countries deal with the devastating impacts.

They would be talking about safe and fair asylum policies, and an end to the hostile environment. They would put a stop to militarised border policing, and the offshoring of border controls which has resulted in 35,000 people drowning in the Mediterranean.

And they would be standing up to the toxic message of the far-right and racists – with a message of compassion, humanity and a commitment to create a fairer, safer and more equal world for us all.

If we could solve the refugee crisis in 1945, I know we can do it again as long as we all pull together.

It’s why I am gratified by the help I’ve received so far in my quest to travel to Europe and the world’s refugee hot spots to shed real light on this preventable tragedy.

When I was in the Calais Jungle, in 2015, I remember thinking not far from this modern hell of desperation were the beaches of Dieppe where in my youth young men, British soldiers, waited to be rescued from the approaching Nazi army. I looked around at ramshackle Calais Jungle and reflected no flotilla boats will come to rescue these people also trapped by politics and belligerent forces.

On that journey into the Calais Jungle, I met a young lad who was no more than 24. I thought when I first encountered him that his face looked as young as a teenagers except for his eyes that looked older than my own eyes that had been looking at the world, since 1923.

I quickly found out that the weariness of life displayed in those eyes was justified. In good English, he told me that his village in Sudan had been burned down, by government forces and that some family members and friends of his had also been killed by them . He was a polite man and after showing me the squalid tent he lived in and taking me for a tour of the shambles that he now called home; he bid me good bye.

As I was about to move on and meet some other refugees, he called out to ask me in angry puzzlement, “why doesn’t anyone care if I live or die?” I was silent for awhile because I remembered that when I was young and struggling in the Great Depression, I felt the same way and I knew he was right-nobody gave a tinker’s damn for him or his kind.

It’s why I had no real answer for him but I touched his shoulder and said I cared whether he lived or died. But I knew as did he that wasn’t enough because I was just an old man. I needed to make others feel like me about him and the 60 million refugees that languish in camps around the world in subhuman living conditions.

It was right then and there, I resolved that I would do my utmost to speak out against this refugee crisis and hope that my voice in the wilderness would be heard by others. I think we have a fighting chance of turning the tide on the refugee crisis, if enough of us do our part, like we did in the Second World War to stop evil in its tracks.

If we could solve the refugee crisis in 1945, I know we can do it again as long as we all pull together.

You can donate to Harry’s Last Stand Refugee Tour here…

Harry Leslie Smith is a 94 year old survivor of the Great Depression, a 2nd Word War RAF veteran and an activist for social justice. He is the author of 5 books.

Cuts between high concrete borders, barbed fences, hazardous paths and laden, overcrowded boats. Whatsupwiththat?

Source: SpeakerTV

There’s no doubt the clip is a passing comment to the serious refugee crisis, a crisis so large that it sadly remains in the fast, online undercurrent of First World issues. “The world I talked about 10 years ago is still the same,” she recently commented on Twitter before ‘Borders’ were released, “that’s why it’s hard for me to say it again on a new LP.”

Being a British artist of Sri Lankan descent, ‘Borders’ is entirely staged in its construction. Curating invisible lines between herself and the people neighboring her, there’s a visual barrier that disconnects M.I.A. to the passing business and calm around her. As if she were the personification of pop-culture, the lack of interactivity between her and the systematically chaotic only solidifies her message: “whatsupwiththat?”.

Self-directed by Mathangi Arulpragasam herself, the clip goes beyond each sonic hook to chastise political responses and materialise the arrival, troubles and hazards refugees face in the continuing migration crisis. Flooding each montage with a series of confronting frames, ‘Borders’ cuts between high concrete borders, barbed fences, hazardous paths and laden, overcrowded boats. Again: “Whatsupwiththat?“.

Borders

Source: Medium

Unsurprisingly, the political classes sitting at the apex of this unsustainable reality are in denial, but such a world cannot last, neither does it deserve to.

There is much the ancient world can teach us. One of its key lessons is that mass migration — motivated by war, societal collapse, and/or extreme poverty — is capable of destroying even the most powerful of empires.

At its height the Roman Empire was so vast and powerful it was run on the same basis of St Augustine’s later dictum in support of Papal infallibility: “Roma locuta est, causa finita est” (Rome has spoken, the matter is finished).

The names of its most powerful figures, despite the passage of millenia, remain entrenched in our culture: Pompey, Caesar, Augustus, Nero, Hadrian, Vespasian, Constantine — men whose rule over the ancient world was so dominant that the only threat they faced came from within Rome itself. Indeed, it would have been the very definition of insanity to claim that an empire which stretched from the Italian peninsula all the way across Western Europe and down into North Africa and the Middle East, enforced by legions whose very presence in the field of battle induced terror in any army unwise enough to challenge its writ, was anything less than invincible, its existence perpetual.

Yet in 476 CE the Western Roman Empire came to an end after a century of successive barbarian invasions succeeded in bringing it to its knees. The symbols of its power — in the form of the emperor’s imperial vestments, diadem, and purple cloak — were sent to Constantinople (present day Istanbul), the seat of power of the eastern half of the empire, to bring the curtain down on its 1000-year history. It came as proof that no empire, no matter its economic and military strength, lasts forever.

Rome’s demise had been a long time coming. The contradictions of an empire run on the basis of slavery, tribute, and plunder were so great it was inevitable they would become insurmountable in time. Under Rome’s rule millions lived in poverty and squalor, supporting an elite whose wealth and ostentation was obscene and increasingly untenable.

Any economic system that operates on the basis of coercion, domination, and super exploitation gives rise to resistance. This in turn leads to more force, more military power having to be deployed to maintain the status quo. However this can only succeed in fomenting further resistance and with it destabilisation, which in turn acts as a catalyst for the mass movement of people seeking sanctuary from the chaos and mayhem that results.

This, in sum, is what brought down the Roman Empire, in a process the early stages of which are evident today with a growing migration crisis that is starting to chip away at the foundations of Western hegemony.

Both in Europe and the United States the issue of immigration and migration has already succeeded in producing a sense of panic within governments and the political classes, to the point where political formations, parties, and movements have come to the fore in direct response to it.

In the US Trump’s election to the White House in 2016 was fuelled by the moral panic whipped up over immigration, which he utilised to full advantage in vowing to build a wall “greater than the Chinese Wall” along the US-Mexico border if elected, while citing ‘illegal immigration’ as the most important issue facing America.

You would think the dehumanising language he employed so liberally when it came to migrants from south of the border — depicting them as rapists, criminals, murderers, etc. — would have been so unpalatable and objectionable he would have seen his chances of winning the nomination for any political office, much less that of US president, end before they began. On the contrary, with every speech and interview Trump streaked further ahead of his rival candidates for the Republican nomination, before going on to defeat Hillary Clinton in the presidential election which followed.

It confirmed that the false consciousness sown by the country’s ruling class and mainstream media when it comes to proclaiming the innate goodness of America and its promise of opportunity for all, despite stark evidence to the contrary in the wake of the 2008 financial and economic crash, had succeeded in its objective of confusing the public mind.

In Europe, meanwhile, migration from Africa and the Middle East has likewise resulted in an increasingly irrational and militant response on the part of the political mainstream, to the point where it spawned a recrudescence of the far right — dripping with xenophobia and blood and soil nationalism — last witnessed in the 1930s in similar conditions of economic dislocation.

The desperation of people suffering under the juggernaut of Western hegemony in a time of deep global economic rupture and military disasters in Iraq and Afghanistan and Libya — not forgetting the role of Western governments in the conflict in Syria — to reach Europe is no surprise. It brings into sharp relief the fact that the development and wealth of the northern hemisphere is rooted in the under-development and crippling poverty of the southern hemisphere.

All of the conflict and seemingly unconnected crises we are living through is connected to this one indisputable fact.

Unsurprisingly, of course, the political classes sitting at the apex of this unsustainable reality are in denial, refusing to countenance for a moment their role as authors and architects of a world that creeps ever closer to the abyss. It is a congenital disorder they share with their Roman antecedents. Like them they are increasingly attached to the deployment of force and hard power to deal with the symptoms of the gross inequality and inequity that underpins the global economic and political system they preside over. Yet in so doing they continue to deepen rather than alleviate the problem.

As the Roman philosopher Seneca reminds us: “For greed all nature is too little.”

The scenes of desperate humanity we continue to witness making perilous attempts to cross the Mediterranean are symptomatic of a world underpinned by greed and might is right.

Such a world cannot last. What is more, neither does it deserve to.

Source: Counterpunch

Without military interventions, economic exploitation and political meddling, a refugee crisis – at least one of this magnitude – could not exist in the first place.

On June 11, Italy’s new Interior Minister, Matteo Salvini, blocked the Aquarius rescue ship, carrying 629 refugees and economic migrants, from docking at its ports. A statement by Doctors without Borders (MSF) stated that the boat was carrying 123 unaccompanied minors and seven pregnant women.

“From now on, Italy begins to say NO to the traffic of human beings, NO to the business of illegal immigration,” said Salvini, who also heads the far-right League Party.

The number of refugees was repeated in news broadcasts time and again, as a mere statistic. In reality, it is 629 precious lives at stake, each with a compelling reason why she/he has undertaken the deadly journey.

While the cruelty of refusing entry to a boat laden with desperate refugees is obvious, it has to be viewed within a larger narrative pertaining to the rapidly changing political landscape in Europe and the crises under way in the Middle East and North Africa.

Italy’s new government, a coalition of the anti-establishment Five-Star Movement and the far-right League party, seems intent on stopping the flow of refugees into the country, as promised on the campaign trail.

However, if politicians continue to ignore the root causes of the problem, the refugee crisis will not go away on its own.

The disturbing truth is this: Europe is accountable for much of the mayhem under way in the Middle East. Right-wing pundits may wish to omit that part of the debate altogether, but facts will not simply disappear when ignored.

European politicians should honestly confront the question: what are the reasons that lead millions of people to leave their homes? And fashion equally honest and humane solutions.

In 2017, an uprising-turned-civil-war in Syria led to the exodus of millions of Syrian refugees.

Ahmed is a 55-year old Syrian refugee, who fled the country with his wife and two children. His reason for leaving was no other than the grinding, deadly war.

He told the UN Refugees Agency: “I was born in Homs and I wanted to live there until the end, but this vicious war left us no other choice but to leave all behind. For the sake of my children’s future we had to take the risk.”

“I had to pay the smuggler eight thousand US dollars for each member of my family. I’ve never done anything illegal in my whole life, but there was no other solution.”

Saving his family meant breaking the rules; millions would do the same thing if confronted with the same grim dilemma. In fact, millions have.

African immigrants are often blamed for ‘taking advantage’ of the porous Libyan coastline to ‘sneak’ into Europe. Yet, many of those refugees had lived peacefully in Libya and were forced to flee following the NATO-led war on that country in March 2011.

“I’m originally from Nigeria and I had been living in Libya for five years when the war broke out,” wrote Hakim Bello in the Guardian.

“I had a good life: I was working as a tailor and I earned enough to send money home to loved ones. But after the fighting started, people like us – black people – became very vulnerable. If you went out for something to eat, a gang would stop you and ask if you supported them. They might be rebels, they might be government, you didn’t know.”

The security mayhem in Libya led not only to the persecution of many Libyans, but also millions of African workers, like Bello, as well. Many of those workers could neither go home nor stay in Libya. They, too, joined the dangerous mass escapes to Europe.

War-torn Afghanistan has served as the tragic model of the same story.

Ajmal Sadiqi escaped Afghanistan, which has been in a constant state of war for many years, a war that took a much deadlier turn since the US invasion in 2001.

Sadiqi told CNN that the vast majority of those who joined him on his journey from Afghanistan, through other countries to Turkey, Greece and other EU countries, died along the way. But, like many in his situation, he had few alternatives.

“Afghanistan has been at war for 50 years and things are never going to change,” he said.

“Here, I have nothing, but I feel safe. I can walk on the street without being afraid.”

Alas, that sense of safety is, perhaps, temporary. Many in Europe are refusing to examine their own responsibility in creating or feeding conflicts around the world, while perceiving the refugees as a threat.

Despite the obvious correlation between western-sustained wars and the EU’s refugee crisis, no moral awakening is yet to be realized. Worse still, France and Italy are now involved in exploiting the current warring factions in Libya for their own interests.

Syria is not an entirely different story. There, too, the EU is hardly innocent.

The Syria war has resulted in a massive influx of refugees, most of whom are hosted by neighboring Middle Eastern countries, but many have sailed the sea to seek safety in Europe.

“All of Europe has a responsibility to stop people from drowning. It’s partly due to their actions in Africa that people have had to leave their homes,” said Bello.

“Countries such as Britain, France, Belgium and Germany think they are far away and not responsible, but they all took part in colonizing Africa. NATO took part in the war in Libya. They’re all part of the problem.”

Expectedly, Italy’s Salvini and other like-minded politicians refuse to frame the crisis that way.

They use whichever discourse needed to guarantee votes, while ignoring the obvious fact that, without military interventions, economic exploitation and political meddling, a refugee crisis – at least one of this magnitude – could not exist in the first place.

Until this fact is recognized by EU governments, the flow of refugees will continue, raising political tension and contributing to the tragic loss of lives of innocent people, whose only hope is merely to survive.

Dr. Ramzy Baroud is a widely published and translated author, an internationally syndicated columnist and editor of http://PalestineChronicle.com . (Romana Rubeo, an Italian writer contributed to this article.)

Source: The Independent

I want my memories to be a testament of what must not happen again, especially when it comes to the treatment of those who flee their countries because of war or persecution.

I cannot sit back in good conscience while the world my generation built is left to turn feral in the hands of right-wing populists and indifferent capitalists. Too many people died and too many lives were cut short or mangled by the Great Depression and the Second World War for me to accept that the architecture of fascism being built by Donald Trump along with demagogues in Europe and Asia should be allowed to go unchallenged.

I am a very old man whose only weapon is that I have endured the catastrophic history of the 20th century and I am not afraid to tell younger generations what I saw and experienced in my youth. I want my memories to be a testament of what must not happen again, especially when it comes to the treatment of those who flee their countries because of war or persecution.

So even though I am close to 100 years old, I travelled two days ago to Ottawa because I think Canada has shown leadership when it comes to the current refugee crisis. I came to meet with Justin Trudeau’s principal secretary Gerald Butts because I wanted to explain why, at the age of 95, I am making the refugee crisis my last stand.

In this meeting I was asked how my journey towards refugee advocacy started. For me, it began near dusk on a day near the end of April 1945 when my RAF unit made camp close to the Dutch-German border.

In the distance, artillery rumbled, sounding to my ear like thunder did when it struck the moors, miles from my mother’s one-up-one-down house in an ugly part of Halifax. The fragrance of spring flowers coming into bloom jarred against the remnants of war that surrounded me, from burnt-out German vehicles to the bloated corpses of horses that lay at the side of the roadway.

All of Europe ached from the pain of battle, hunger, injury, loss, and death. We were a generation bleeding out from the madness of fascism that had butchered a continent. Humanity, however, hadn’t deserted my generation even if the war had stolen our innocence.

That’s why, on that night, when scores of refugee children came to our perimeter fence enticed by the smell of stew that cooked on our camp stoves, we didn’t turn our backs on those children, like so many well-fed people do today in Europe and America. No, we fed them, played with them and gave them a safe place to kip until the Red Cross arrived and took them to safety.

I look back and think how different life was because all we wanted was the right to grow old in dignity under the umbrella of a welfare state. Think about it: out of the ashes of the Second World War, the United Nations was conceived and the declaration for human rights written, enacted and for decades held as sacred and inviolable. Whereas from the funeral pyre of the Iraq War was born the furies of Isis and total destabilisation in the Middle East.

In this era we live in grotesque inequality and ignorance. Populism and fascism ride about the world stage like a victorious sports team in a city parade. The United States under Donald Trump cages refugee children, pulls out of the UN Council and uses dehumanising terms about other races; doing so has, from Nazi Germany to Rwanda, always been a harbinger of genocide.

In Italy, a new government coalition comprising a right-wing faction which would make Mussolini proud bars the refugee rescue ships that trawl the Mediterranean Sea searching the waters for desperate souls who left Africa in boats that wouldn’t be safe to punt down the river in Maidenhead. These men, women and children make this crossing because staying in their home countries means certain death, perpetual rape or devastation from economies that only benefit the wealthy.

Even worse, the interior minister in Italy is drawing up lists like Nazis of old against the Roma to deport them from their nation’s borders, making them eternal refugees.

Most disturbing to me are the people I encounter every day who have food in their bellies, a job to go to and holidays to eagerly await, and yet they judge refugees who have endured horrible privations as corrupt swindlers. They in their selfish, racist myopia become a tide of malevolence that drowns the aspirations of too many people who have on an individual level suffered the same horrors as people in the death camps of the Nazis or the gulags of Stalin.

Right now, there are 64 million people the world over who are displaced. They are either living in squalid camps or fleeing for their lives over dangerous terrain, looking for sanctuary in western countries who are ignoring the warning signs of this crisis with same tenacity as the ancient people of Pompeii ignored the rumblings of Vesuvius.

It’s why at 95, I cannot be silent any longer about this growing threat to humanity’s survival. I am spending the little time I have left to live on earth travelling the world to visit refugee camps, government leaders and ordinary people to try to end this madness.

There is a good chance because of my age that I will die on my travels, but I am not worried about my end. I am more worried about the end of a world that believes that all human beings have a right to peace and prosperity, not just the entitled few.

We cannot let the candle of civilisation be blown out by the likes of Donald Trump, which is why, to resist him, you must in your way help end the refugee crisis. So I ask you to flood your government representatives with letters, emails and tweets in support of refugees – because it is only the slender thread of fate that separates our destiny from theirs.

Harry Leslie Smith is the author of ‘Don’t Let My Past Be Your Future’, published by Little Brown

Next time someone says that Britain has a proud history of welcoming refugees, it’s time to reply that it has a shameful history of creating them. 

Source:  Open Democracy

Spending time in the Calais ‘Jungle’ refugee camp last year I asked people there what they thought of British politicians’ words. I heard one answer again and again: ‘You know Britain came uninvited to our countries, and created many problems we experience now’.

Returning from Calais to a research role with the Quakers, I embarked on my own process of self-education. I began by looking up the UN figures on where cross-border refugees are displaced from. Of 22.5 million people, 5.5 million came from Syria, 5.3 million from Palestine, 2.5 million from Afghanistan, 1.4 million from South Sudan. And so it continues – 1 million from Somalia, 646,000 from Sudan, 432,000 from Eritrea, 308,000 from Iraq…

I then began the process of reading up the histories of each of these countries. I knew some of it – but not from my school-time history lessons. In common with many people educated in Britain, the history I was taught principally covered the Roman and Norman invasions of Britain, a quick jump forward to Henry the Eighth’s wives, and then the Second World War, three times over (although mainly the European bits).  The only British occupation we learnt about was in post-Nazi Germany.

Missing from the curriculum was Britain’s involvement in the same countries from which people are fleeing now, many of them attacked or ruled by Britain in my grandparents’ lifetimes:

Palestine: Occupied by Britain in 1917, part of which in 1948 became Israel after the British mandate ended.
Afghanistan: Invaded by Britain in 1838, continued military actions in 1920s and 30s, invaded with others again in 2001.
Somalia: Occupied by European powers including Britain in 1888, and ruled in part (Somaliland) until 1960.
Sudan: Divided and ruled by Britain from 1898 to 1956.
Eritrea: Occupied by Britain in 1941, ceded to Ethiopia in 1952 laying the groundwork for the long running civil war that followed.
Iraq: Invaded by Britain in 1917, 1941, 1991 and 2003.

The list continues: Bangladesh, Egypt, Ghana, India, Iran, Myanmar, Nigeria, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Zimbabwe. All of them countries which thousands of people have fled from, all of which have been occupied or ruled by Britain or British interests within living memory.

End all immigration controls. Immigrants are not the problem. Borders are…

Taken together, they account for well over half of the world’s refugees. Include Syria – being attacked by British forces right now for the third time in a century, and it’s more than three quarters.

With my heart in my mouth I then made my way to the figures for what proportion of the world’s refugees reside in Britain. There it was: around 0.5%.

The point of this exercise is not to make British people feel bad. It’s to say that the story of people being forced to flee their homes did not begin in 2015 when it reappeared on our television screens. This is the effect of a decades-old cycle of violence – fuelled by resource exploitation and arms sales – which can have effects for generations.

It’s a cycle of violence which has been accelerated in the past fifteen years. As with the rise of IS/Daesh – beneficiaries of the recent British military interventions in Iraq and Libya – the effects can sometimes be both rapid and catastrophic.
So now, in the week that marks a hundred years since Britain’s broken promise of the Balfour Declaration it’s time to call out the half-truth.

Next time someone says that Britain has a proud history of welcoming refugees, it’s time to reply that it has a shameful history of creating them.

Source: The Guardian

“I was a child refugee,” writes Ai Weiwei. “I know how it feels to live in a camp, robbed of my humanity. Refugees must be seen to be an essential part of our shared humanity.”

Because my father, Ai Qing, was the most renowned poet in China then, the government made a symbolic example of him. In 1958, my family was forced from our home in Beijing and banished to the most remote area of the country – we had no idea that this was the beginning of a very dark, long journey that would last for two decades.

In the years that followed, my father was sentenced to hard labour cleaning latrines in a work camp in north-west China. He was also forced to criticise himself publicly.

From my youth, I experienced inhumane treatment from society. At the camp we had to live in an underground dugout and were subjected to unexplainable hatred, discrimination, unprovoked insults and assaults, all of which aimed to crush the basic human spirit rooted in my father’s beliefs. As a result, I remember experiencing what felt like endless injustice. In such circumstances, there is no place to hide and there is no way to escape. You feel like your life is up against a wall, or that life itself is a dimming light, on the verge of being completely extinguished. Coping with the humiliation and suffering became the only way to survive.

I share this personal background because it sheds light on my emotional connection to the current global refugee condition, which I documented in the film Human Flow. My experience clarifies why I identify so deeply with all these unfortunate people who are pushed into extreme conditions by outside forces they are powerless to resist.

During two years of filming, we travelled to 23 nations and 40 refugee camps. Some of the camps are relatively new, coping with those who have fled from the war in Syria. Other camps – such as the Ain al-Hilweh camp in Lebanon – have existed for decades and have now sheltered three generations of refugees.

In the months since the film’s release, some of the areas we covered have deteriorated even further. The Rohingya refugee situation in Myanmar, for example, has erupted in a wave of more than half a million newly displaced people, adding to the already existing 65 million refugees worldwide.

Observing and researching recent and historical refugee events makes some conclusions abundantly clear. Not a single refugee we met had willingly left their home, even when home was impoverished and undeveloped. The promise of economic prosperity is not more important than place. People left their homes because they were forced to by violence which caused the deaths of family members, relatives and fellow citizens. Often it is not just a single house that is destroyed, but entire villages vanish under indiscriminate bombing. There is simply no way for them to stay. Fleeing is the only choice they have to preserve their own lives and the lives of those they love.

A common argument is that many of the people who try to reach the west are economic migrants who wish to take unfair advantage of its prosperity. However, this view ignores the contradiction between today’s physical borders and the real political and economic boundaries of our globalised world. Also implicit is a refusal to acknowledge that through globalisation, certain states, institutions and individuals have greatly profited at the direct expense of those in many parts of the world who are vulnerable and increasingly exploited.

At this moment, the west – which has disproportionately benefited from globalisation – simply refuses to bear its responsibilities, even though the condition of many refugees is a direct result of the greed inherent in a global capitalist system. If we map the 70-plus border walls and fences built between nations in the past three decades – increasing from roughly a dozen after the fall of the Berlin Wall – we can see the extent of global economic and political disparities. The people most negatively affected by these walls are the poorest and most desperate of society.

In nature there are two approaches to dealing with flooding. One is to build a dam to stop the flow. The other is to find the right path to allow the flow to continue. Building a dam does not address the source of the flow – it would need to be built higher and higher, eventually holding back a massive volume. If a powerful flood were to occur, it could wipe out everything in its path. The nature of water is to flow. Human nature too seeks freedom and that human desire is stronger than any natural force.

Can physical borders stop refugees? Instead of building walls, we should look at what is causing people to become refugees and work to solve those conditions to stem the flow at its source. To do so will require the most powerful nations in the world to adjust how they are actively shaping the world, how they are using political and economic ideology – enforced by overwhelming military power – to disrupt entire societies. How do we think the poor, displaced or occupied can exist when their societies are destroyed? Should they simply disappear? Can we recognise that their continued existence is an essential part of our shared humanity? If we fail to recognise this, how can we speak of “civilised” development?

The refugee crisis is not about refugees, rather, it is about us. Our prioritisation of financial gain over people’s struggle for the necessities of life is the primary cause of much of this crisis. The west has all but abandoned its belief in humanity and support for the precious ideals contained in declarations on universal human rights. It has sacrificed these ideals for short-sighted cowardice and greed.

Establishing the understanding that we all belong to one humanity is the most essential step for how we might continue to coexist on this sphere we call Earth. I know what it feels like to be a refugee and to experience the dehumanisation that comes with displacement from home and country. There are many borders to dismantle, but the most important are the ones within our own hearts and minds – these are the borders that are dividing humanity from itself.

• Ai Weiwei is a contemporary artist, activist and advocate of political reform in China

We can’t allow Trump’s UK visit to distract us from our own shameful treatment of migrants, writes Matt Carr.

Source: Ceasefire

There is something of this trope in the response of the UK public to the political horror film starring the orange-haired beast known as Donald J. Trump.

Last week a poll revealed that 1 in 10 people would be willing to protest against a putative ‘working visit’ from Donald Trump next year on a date that has yet to be determined. It is still not certain that this visit is even going to take place. Yet already the community networks that helped organise last February’s Stop Trump/Stand Up to Trump protests are bracing themselves for the occasion and putting dates into their diaries.

On one level this response is admirable. It’s a healthy sign that so many people are willing to disregard the grovelling decision by May and her hapless cronies to invite Trump anywhere near these shores. But we should not allow the beast in the White House to distract us from our own political monsters already in our midst. Because like Godot, Trump may not come. And as far as migrants in the UK are concerned, Trump is by no means the most pressing threat that this country faces right now.

On the contrary, for the past eighteen months the lives and futures of 4.4 million people have been placed in limbo as a result of Brexit – and more particularly by the stunningly cynical decision of our own government to use EU citizens as bargaining chips in its cack-handed negotiations with the European Union.

Right now, the UK government is implementing a ‘hostile environment’ policy, which is intended to strip ‘illegal immigrants’ of the basic components of survival in a modern society, from healthcare, driving licenses, bank accounts, to the right to rent a place to live.

Until it was declared illegal by the High Court last week, this policy was extended to include EU citizens — who are not technically ‘illegal’— have become homeless. Last week, a Polish man who reported to the police that he and his wife had been terrorised by their landlord was arrested and placed in detention prior to deportation. Last week the Nigerian boxer Bilal Fawaz, who once boxed for England, was told he would be deported. Two weeks ago, the Home Office told a Jamaican woman who has been living here for fifty years that she would have to return to her “own” country. Every week — indeed, almost every day — the Home Office makes ‘mistakes’ like this.

The UK is unique in Europe in that it has a policy of unlimited detention. According to the Children’s Commissioner for England, some 15,000 children are permanently separated from their parents as members of “Skype families” — as a result of being subjected to the arbitrary income thresholds imposed on married couples by the UK government.

The vicious treatment of migrants by the British state is, to some extent, a product of a more general hostility towards immigrants and immigration that has become powerfully embedded in the British media, the public and the political class, and which reached a dismal apotheosis in the Brexit referendum.

You will have to look a long way to find much condemnation of these developments by British politicians. Even the Labour Party in its current, more leftist, incarnation, has largely kept a distance from the May government’s scandalous refusal to guarantee the rights of EU nationals, fearful as it still is of being seen as ‘soft’ on immigration or unresponsive to those famous ‘concerns’ on which Labour believes its political future will be decided.

Indeed, Corbyn and his circle often appear alarmingly willing to accept arguments from the ‘Lexit’ left, not only in regards to the EU’s supposedly ‘hardwired neoliberalism’, but also in respect to migrants and migration. A significant section of the Labour movement continues to regard EU migrants as a problem, to be dealt with by restricting or even rescinding the free movement of people — one of the great progressive achievements of the European Union — regardless of the fact that labour exploitation of migrant workers is liable to be easier without free movement.

One section of the left — most notably represented by the Communist Party and Trade Unionists Against the EU, an organisation part-funded by Arron Banks — continues to depict migrants as if they were little more than vapid commodities shifted from one country to another by ‘the bosses’ — an argument that in its worst incarnations, dovetails neatly with the UKIP narrative of a culturally beleaguered (white) working class marginalised in its own heartland by the neoliberal bureaucrats in Brussels.

We shouldn’t be entirely surprised by this. Trump and Trumpism are products of many of the same political forces that were instrumental in driving Brexit: ethnonationalism, anti-immigrationism, xenophobia, nostalgia for a vanished ‘greatness’, cultural anxieties about national identity and loss of white status, and outright racism, a populist rage against ‘elites’ that has too easily emboldened and legitimised the exclusion, persecution and ‘othering’ of foreigners – or people who ‘look like’ foreigners.

All these forces were present during the referendum and have continued to course alarmingly through our body politic. It’s not for nothing that Trump and even his failed nominee Judge Roy Moore have praised Brexit, or that Arron Banks and Nigel Farage rushed off to Trump Towers within weeks of Trump’s election, or that Farage has campaigned for Moore and idolizes Steve Bannon. These are all chips off the same old far-right bloc, lubricating fake revolts against the ‘ establishment’ by stoking a steady drip-drip of hatred — whether directed at Muslims. immigrants or foreigners — and we should not need Trump to remind us of their existence.

Many UK opponents of Trump have rightly condemned the violence and the potential for violence in Trump’s rhetoric and in the actions of some of his supporters. But over here, we have had an MP shot dead as a ‘traitor’ by a follower of the same movement whose videos Trump has just retweeted. We have regular death threats directed against any prominent figure who appears to be getting in the way of Brexit — or who even has the temerity to suggest that Brexit should be subjected to parliamentary scrutiny. When that person happens to be a woman — and a woman of colour at that, as is the case with Gina Miller — such threats come marinated in a savage mixture of sexism and racism.

Yet when Miller revealed a few months ago that she was thinking of leaving the country because of the threats made against her family, no major political figure saw fit to denounce this state of affairs. Arron Banks, the architect of Leave.eu, even joked about it.

The abuse directed against Miller, high court judges and Tory ‘rebels’ is just the most prominent expression of the rage that burst across the country during the referendum. According to a recent survey by Migrants Rights Network, hate crimes have risen by 29 percent in the last twelve months. Anecdotally, EU citizens and even third- or fourth-generation migrant-heritage UK citizens routinely report verbal and even physical violence, as well as incidents in which they have been told to ‘go back where they came from.’

Such tendencies are not entirely new. Racists may feel emboldened by the referendum, but they were not created by it. Only today, Bristol police and town council were accused by the Safer Bristol Partnership (SBP) of ‘institutional racism’ for the way they responded to the horrific murder of Iranian refugee Bidram Ebrahimi, who was beaten to death in 2013 after being wrongly suspected of paedophilia.

Once again, we should not need a ‘working visit’ from Donald Trump to galvanise us to act in response to these developments. Yet Trump’s grotesque barbarity often seems to eclipse the everyday barbarities that have become part and parcel of the post-referendum UK.

As one of the organisers of the 1 Day Without Us campaign in solidarity with UK migrants, I’ve seen how difficult it is to persuade people to stand up alongside the migrants who are already here. When we organised our first day of action, last February, the Stop Trump campaign  declared its own ‘Day of Action’ on the same day. To their credit, the organisers of the campaign went to great lengths to highlight at their event the issues we were already raising, and to include them within their own anti-Trump message. But it should not have needed Donald Trump to bring this about, and the UK’s shameful treatment of migrants should not be added as an afterthought.

Next year we are planning another day of action around the slogan ‘Proud to be a migrant/Proud to stand with migrants.’ We are asking people to join us – not just to ‘Stop Trump’ but to stand with and for the migrants who live in our communities across the country. We are asking them to help us reclaim the word ‘migrant’ from the debased coinage that it has become in UK political discourse, and turn it into a source of pride.

In the face of ever-more strident demands from the ethnonationalist right for a monocultural, migrant-free UK, we are asking the public to celebrate and embrace the society that the UK has become – diverse, open, multicultural and multi-ethnic.

If Trump is foolish enough to come to the UK, by all means let’s see hundreds of thousands of people in the streets to say that we reject his politics. But it’s worth remembering that when he has gone, this country will be the same as it was before. And, right now, as we scan the horizon for the monster who may or may not come shambling towards us, we ought to bear in mind that we have our own monsters to fight, that many people are threatened by them, and that our solidarity will always be incomplete until we stand with them.

Together Against Trump: National Demonstration
Friday 13 July London | Assemble 2pm
BBC Portland Place | London W1A 1AA
Details…

Source: The Guardian

Nation states are a relatively new concept; migration is as old as humanity. By Gary Younge.

At that age I reflexively rejected most dominant narratives about race, class and nation. During a period of sus laws and anti-union legislation, I already understood there had to be another version of freedom out there that included me, and I was busy piecing together the fragments of my own worldview. And yet no amount of rationalisation could shake my conclusion that people whom I disagreed with about pretty much everything else were right about the wall.

Clearly, built with the deliberate intention to trap people in a place they might not want to be, the wall was heinous – not just a bad idea, but morally wrong. As such, it was the most obscene symbol of the broader case against the eastern bloc. The fact their governments would not allow residents to travel to the west was prima facie evidence of their lack of freedom: they were understood to be like open prisons.

Not long after the wall came down, this entire logic went into reverse. As country after country shed its Stalinist overlords and went into free-market freefall, the case for their peoples’ right to leave was eclipsed by the fear that they might actually come. In the west their “freedom” was welcomed; their presence was not. While they were demolishing the wall, we were building a fortress. Politics kept them in. For more than a decade, before they gained admission to the European Union, economics would keep them out.

“A map of the world that does not include utopia is not worth even glancing at,” wrote Oscar Wilde. “For it leaves out the one country at which humanity is always landing. And when humanity lands there, it looks out, and, seeing a better country, sets sail.”

The map of my utopian world has no borders. I believe in the free movement of people. As a principle, I think we should all be able to roam the planet and live, love and create where we wish. I could squander the rest of this column parrying caveats and concerns regarding everything from security to wages. But it is the last in a series on utopian thinking: that demands imagining beyond what is possible and practical to what is desirable. So why dream small? Martin Luther King could have climbed the steps of the Lincoln Memorial and called for a 10-point plan for better legislation. But then who would have remembered that?

Benedict Anderson once famously described nation states as “imagined communities”. I’d like to imagine mine without border guards, barbed wire, passport control, walls, fences or barriers. The world would be a better place without them.

Some of this stems from personal history. I am from a travelling people. My parents were born and raised in Barbados, a small island in the Caribbean caught in the crosswinds of colonial ties and postwar labour scarcity. I have 14 aunts and uncles. Along with my parents, nine of them left Barbados for lives in Britain, the US and Canada. I have cousins scattered across the globe. Borders are no friends to diasporas. They privilege form-filling over family.

“Do you plan to work while you are here?” the UK immigration officer asked my grandmother when she came to see us one time. “You have cane here?” she asked wryly – she who worked in the canefields her entire life.

Like my granny, though for different reasons, borders have always been a tense issue for me. With those in uniform struggling to match the colour of my face to the crest on my passport, how could it be otherwise? To be black and on the move in the west is to be an object of suspicion. The documents are supposed to speak for themselves; but somehow there was always more explaining to do. And these personal objections are intimately connected to a more sweeping philosophical and political opposition.

Borders exist, by definition, to separate us from others. The primary two issues then become which “other” that will be, and on what basis we should be separated. As such they are both arbitrary and definite. Arbitrary because they could be anywhere and often move – just look at how Europe’s borders have changed over the past century. Definite, because wherever they are we have to deal with them, and because the process that determines who is allowed to move where and why is exercised with extreme prejudice.

America’s 1882 Chinese Exclusion Act, the White Australia Policy – a series of measures lasting 70 years – or Britain’s Commonwealth Immigrants Act of 1962 are among the more crude filters. But while the “othering” changes with time – the shift from race to religion as grounds for suspicion over a generation has been breathtaking – the fact of it remains the same. Some people won’t be welcome, not because of what they have done but because of who they are, even if the groups of people in question may change.

This has long been true and long been a problem. Recently, however, it has been compounded by the fact that even as borders have become tougher for people, they have all but been lifted for capital. Money can travel the globe virtually without restriction, in search of regulations that are weaker and labour that is cheaper.

When it does, it often displaces people: sucking investment and resources from one place at the flick of a switch; shutting down factories and shifting them to the other side of the world; or introducing automation that renders some professions obsolete. But those who find their lives turned upside down by the free movement of capital are often prevented from moving country and looking for work. People should have at least the same rights – or more, since humans are more valuable than money.

Sadly, that is not a principle that underpins the system we live in. The rich can buy themselves citizenship in about 20 countries, cash down. Meanwhile, desperate people are turned away at borders all the time. Others are incarcerated for having the audacity to cross borders we have created, to escape wars we have started, environmental chaos we have contributed to, or poverty we have helped create. Others die trying.

It is a fact, rarely stated but generally acknowledged and accepted, that the global poor should not be allowed to travel. That’s most of the world. As such, from the refugee camp in Calais to the rickety vessels on the Mediterranean, from Trump’s wall to the Berlin wall, the border stands as an ultimate point of confrontation in the broader dystopia we have made possible.

Nation states are a relatively new concept; migration is as old as humanity. Borders seek to regulate and restrict that basic human custom for the distinct purpose of excluding some and privileging others. They discriminate between all people with the express intention of then being able to discriminate against some people. They do not simply set boundaries for countries, but are metaphors for the boundaries of how we might think about other human beings. Immigrants are not the problem. Borders are.

17 Feb 2018 | National Day of Action celebrating the contributions of migrants to UK society | Details

Lyrics

[Verse 1]
No one knows how many on the boat
Violent skies won’t show us where to go
Huddle close, we wanna, shall we jump?
Kinda sad, my joy [?]

[Chorus]
Oh, let us in
We never bite
Me and the four kids, show some love
Then it will be right
We won’t stay
Grand promise in every way
It’s just the boat’s going down
And I don’t think we wanna stay
Immigrant boogie

[Verse 2]
I was dreaming of a better life
With my two kids and my lovely wife
But I can’t swim and water’s in my lungs
So, here it ends, well, life has just begun

[Chorus]
Oh, let us in
We never bite
Me and the four kids, show some love
Then it will be right
We won’t stay
Grand promise in every way
It’s just the boat’s going down
And I don’t think we wanna stay
Immigrant boogie

[Outro]
Immigrant boogie
Immigrant boogie
Immigrant boogie
Immigrant boogie
Immigrant boogie
Immigrant boogie
Immigrant boogie
Immigrant boogie
Immigrant boogie
Immigrant boogie

Hesham Modamani fled Syria following the disappearance of his brother and swam the eastern Mediterranean Sea with fellow Syrian Feras Abukhalif. Sean Cooney of The Young’Uns wrote the song Dark Water about what happened to Hesham and Feras. It was performed live at the Shrewsbury Folk Festival on 2 September 2017 as part of the acclaimed song cycle, The Transports – A Tale of Exile and Migration. Narration is by Matthew Crampton.

Hesham Modamani now lives in Berlin.

The Young ‘Uns acclaimed new album, titled Strangers, was released on 29 September 2017. They are touring across the UK from 11 October. The Transports – A Tale of Exile and Migration tours nationwide in January 2018, tickets on sale now. Matthew Crampton’s’ latest book is Human Cargo.

Source: GlobalFaction

Lyrics

his young life was as delicate as the wing of a butterfly
and as fragile as a spider’s web

for him we cry
because when he dies
we all do
did ahmed not deserve a life?
ahmed never hurt a fly
ahmed never knew the politicians he was murdered by
certain times ahmed wished that he could be a bird and fly
beyond the sky
escape the curse of birth that he was burdened by
ahmed never grew to let your racism internalise
water poured from every pore in his corpse while the nurses cried
ahmed was a beautiful person like you or i
but are we?

ahmed could have been a doctor, lawyer or an engineer
could have been a superstar but his life ended here
guess he was a shooting star burn bright and disappear
to some he seems to represent a menace in this hemisphere
let me here make the very essence of this message clear
he was precious, many die like him every year
ahmed was a victim of resentment and relentless fear
now his soul surfs the waves i wish we could have kept him here

the sea, the sea, the sea, it holds our secrets [holds our secrets] the sea, the sea, the sea, it holds his soul [holds his soul] they call him ahmed
the sea, the sea, the sea, it holds our secrets [holds our secrets] the sea, the sea, the sea, it holds his soul [holds his soul] they call him ahmed

ahmed’s ancestors introduced to europe greek philosophy
brought with them irrigation, mathematics and astronomy
symbolically, the irony of this horror isn’t lost on me
trying to get to europe via greece where he’s lost at sea
ahmed not achmed, it’s ahmed
he’s that dead
toddler lying lifeless on the beach with his back bent
arms spread, reaching the direction that his dad went
if he made it here would have been bullied for his accent
he was captured by the ocean
paralysed and frozen
while these parasites sat and typed, analysing clothing
now for resources we all compete
beyond the talk of war and peace
and talk of porous border there is corpses on the shore of greece
they found a teddy next to where his body was found
the sea swallowed him, politics has swallowed him now
and those responsible, ahmed’s ghost will follow them now
to the family all we can say is we are sorry he drowned
because…

the sea, the sea, the sea, it holds our secrets [holds our secrets] the sea, the sea, the sea, it holds his soul [holds his soul] they call him ahmed
the sea, the sea, the sea, it holds our secrets [holds our secrets] the sea, the sea, the sea, it holds his soul [holds his soul] they call him ahmed

This is Diane Abbott’s contribution to a new book, Free Movement and Beyond: Agenda Setting for Brexit Britain, published by Public Reading Rooms.

Last year’s Tory party conference represented a sharp rightwards turn. The rhetorical focus for all their attacks was foreigners, in work, in schools, in our health service. The political strategy was formed by the realisation that we cannot be in the Single Market and opt out of freedom of movement. So they have opted for anti-immigration and impoverishment, getting out of the Single Market in order to pursue a reactionary agenda on immigration.

When Jeremy Hunt announced his anti-foreigner plan for the UK to become ‘self-sufficient’ in doctors, he also included a reactionary new measure to be imposed on UK-trained doctors. But this was only one of the barrage of assaults on overseas workers announced at the conference.

The Tories were forced to retreat on their plan that companies are to be named and shamed for employing overseas workers. Yet students and scientists will still be turned away. The whole conference was an exercise in scapegoating. The crisis is caused by Tory policy and their allies and supporters, exploitative employers, rapacious landlords, rip-off private owners of formerly nationalised industries. It is not caused by immigrants.

Now under the Hunt plan, doctors trained in this country will have to work in the NHS for four years. Otherwise, they will have to repay the cost of their training, which the British Medical Association estimates at over a quarter of a million pounds minimum.

This demonstrates a general law that the labour movement has understood for a long time: an injury to one is an injury to all. Attacks on overseas workers always rebound and include regressive measures against domestic workers too. So, in a futile effort to restrict overseas workers the Tories are also ordering restrictions on workers trained here too, curbing their freedom of movement.

For the NHS, the drive towards a foreigner-free doctor workforce would be a disaster. There are 100,000 overseas doc-tors in the UK. There is already a significant shortage of doctors. Of course we should be training more doctors and other health professionals in this country, just as we should be training all sorts of skilled and highly-skilled workers across a range of sec-tors. But the idea that that we could or should seek to eliminate overseas doctors from the NHS and become ‘self-sufficient’ is a reactionary fantasy.

Even if all of Hunt’s additional new 1,500 UK-trained doctors don’t drop out, and even if he successfully compels them all to work for four years, this would not close the doctor shortage. It will grow and the number of overseas doctors will rise under current plans. Otherwise the NHS will go into absolute crisis.

It is a scandal that Theresa May and Liam Fox want to use EU workers here as a ‘bargaining chip’ in negotiations with EU countries. They should be offered guarantees of work and residency. But these existing workers here will also need replacing, and we cannot force UK-trained doctors to work here indefinitely. We need freedom of movement for doctors and other health professionals simply for the continued existence of the NHS.

The demagogic campaign against foreigners that was first championed by UKIP and is now mainstream Tory policy obscures a key point. It is important to remember that freedom of movement is a workers’ right.

In all societies where there are significantly greater freedoms for business and for capital than for workers, then in practice workers’ rights are severely curtailed. Business is at a huge advantage. This reaches an extreme in the most authoritarian countries.

So for example, the ‘pass laws’ in apartheid South Africa made black workers non-residents without rights in their own country, while they suffered the most brutal exploitation in the mines and elsewhere. Even in this country, the Poor Laws formerly restricted the movement of workers from one parish to another. They could not seek poor relief outside their own parish if they were unemployed and went looking for work. The Poor Laws were only effectively abolished by the Labour Government in 1948.

In all these cases, business was able to freely establish wherever it chose. The effect is that workers’ bargaining rights were severely curtailed, in some cases eliminated. They had to accept whatever jobs, and at whatever wages and terms that the employers in their locality chose. This is one of the key, overlooked issues in the current widespread assault on freedom of movement.

Economists for Brexit, the only grouping which produced economic arguments in favour of Leave, argued that UK manufacturing would be eliminated by the adoption of free trade and that inequality would widen dramatically as financial services would grow dramatically. This may be an exaggeration. More sober analysis from the UK Treasury is that in a European Economic Area agreement, government finances for services like the NHS will be £20 billion lower after 15 years, while falling back on World Trade Organisation rules reduces government finances by £45 billion. Public services would be decimated.

This Tory government is scapegoating foreigners to distract from its own complete failures of policy. Living standards are falling because of them, not migrants. The labour movement cannot accept living standards being lowered by Brexit and the attack on freedom of movement, and must stand to defend both. The Tory government doesn’t have an economic policy. Every time Theresa May gets up to speak the pound falls, and ordinary people literally pay higher prices as a result.

The Tories are desperate to shift the blame for this. They have declared open season on foreigners. That is why standing up to racism is so important. The broad forces of the labour movement, committed campaigners and the most oppressed sections of society can come together to combat all forms of xenophobia, anti-semitism and racism.

We can win. The Tory anti-foreigner policy would devastate our public services. It is already lowering living standards. It will lead to job losses. The majority will be worse off, and we have an alternative. Labour under Jeremy Corbyn and John McDonnell is committed to investment-led growth. This is the answer to the crisis, not a Tory campaign inspired by Enoch Powell.

Diane abbott is MP for Hackney North and Stoke Newington and was appointed Shadow Home Secretary in October 2016.

Free Movement and Beyond – Agenda Setting for Brexit Britain

This new book featuring Diane Abbott MP, Yanis Varoufakis, Caroline Lucas MP, Professor Mary Kaldor and more, is available now from Public Reading Rooms. It draws together the current thinking of many of Britain’s most prominent ‘critical Remainers’ – those who argued to remain within the European Union while seeking its democratic and progressive transformation.

Price £9.95 (Post free)

Source: The Guardian

Free movement of people should be defended by the left as a workers’ right while the Conservatives adopt anti-foreigner policies that will harm employees, Diane Abbott, the shadow home secretary, has said.

In a fresh argument in favour of supporting free movement, Abbott said workers – both UK nationals and foreign – were likely to be hurt when governments started placing controls on where they could be employed.

In the foreword to a new book, Free Movement and Beyond: Setting the Agenda for Brexit Britain, Abbott said there was a “general law that the labour movement has understood for a long time: an injury to one is an injury to all”.

“The demagogic campaign against foreigners that was first championed by Ukip and is now mainstream Tory policy obscures a key point. It is important to remember that freedom of movement is a workers’ right,” she wrote.

“In all societies where there are significantly greater freedoms for business and for capital than for workers, then in practice workers’ rights are severely curtailed. Business is at a huge advantage. This reaches an extreme in the most authoritarian countries.”

Her comments take a different approach to a number of senior Labour colleagues, as the party grapples with the issue of immigration after Brexit.

Keir Starmer, Labour’s Brexit spokesman, has called for a “fundamental rethink” of free movement, suggesting there could be a distinction between people migrating for jobs and those who come to look for jobs.

Andy Burnham, Labour’s candidate for Greater Manchester mayor, has gone further by arguing the party is wrong to prioritise staying in the single market over controlling immigration and prominent Labour backbenchers including Stephen Kinnock, Emma Reynolds and Rachel Reeves have said the party must be willing to advocate limits on immigration to meet the concerns of its voters, particularly in post-industrial areas.

Abbott’s argument comes two days before Theresa May prepares to trigger article 50 and publish a letter setting out key negotiating approaches towards issues such as immigration and trade.

The shadow home secretary cited England’s historic poor laws and apartheid South Africa as examples of systems that tried to restrict how people could work and travel. “They had to accept whatever jobs, and at whatever wages and terms that the employers in their locality chose. This is one of the key, overlooked issues in the current widespread assault on freedom of movement,” Abbott said.

She said the government’s plan to make doctors trained in the UK work in the NHS for four years was an example of domestic workers suffering as part of a wider reactionary agenda on immigration.

“Attacks on overseas workers always rebound and include regressive measures against domestic workers, too. So, in a futile effort to restrict overseas workers the Tories are also ordering restrictions on workers trained here too, curbing their freedom of movement,” Abbott said.

In a call for action to protect free movement, Abbott said the labour movement must work to defend it against Tory anti-foreigner policies. “Labour under Jeremy and John is committed to investment-led growth. This is the answer to the crisis, not a Tory campaign inspired by Enoch Powell,” she said.

Free Movement and Beyond – Agenda Setting for Brexit Britain

This new book featuring Diane Abbott MP, Yanis Varoufakis, Mary Kaldor and more, is available now from Public Reading Rooms. It draws together the current thinking of many of Britain’s most prominent ‘critical Remainers’ – those who argued to remain within the European Union while seeking its democratic and progressive transformation.

Price £9.95 (Post free in the UK)

Source: Morning Star

A new book, Human Cargo by Matthew Crampton, gives a sobering historical context with its subtitle Stories and Songs of Emigration, Slavery and Transportation setting out the author’s stall.

In an age when David Cameron can throw around racist jibes about “a bunch of migrants,” the stress here is on the “human” part of the title — telling the stories of displaced people from the Highland clearances to the transatlantic slave trade, the pressganged, transportees and those forced from their native lands by poverty and war.

Crampton, an author and historian, is also an accomplished folk singer and this book is a companion piece to a stage show combining first and second-hand accounts with songs of the times. As he writes in his introduction, the few first-hand accounts from past centuries are all from men who survived the horrors and led successful lives.

Folk songs are a way we can “listen opaquely” to the others, a voice for the voiceless thousands who starved or drowned or died of disease or beatings as human cargo. The voices here range from shanties to broadsheet ballads to a popular Italian song about the dangers awaiting those who took passage to the US.

Among the dozens of song lyrics, Crampton has dug up some little-heard gems that throw light on his subject from all sorts of unusual angles. To name just two, The Flying Cloud is the confessional ballad of a slaver on the gallows, while Dean Cadalan Samhach is a Gaelic lullaby sung by exiles in the Carolinas.

Crampton draws a straight line from the abuses of the 18th and 19th century to those of today. We learn first-hand, from the freed African slave Olaudah Equiano, of the crowded, lethally filthy conditions of the slave ships.

Slave or free, conditions weren’t so different for the poor Scots, Irish and others who paid for passage to the New World. They were lied to by shipping agents such as the notorious William Tapscott, crammed into pens unfit to house pigs, and forced into near-slavery in the Americas.

We move straight from Tapscott to the present-day human smugglers charging refugees thousands of pounds for passage across the Med, stacked like cargo in tiny rustbucket vessels, covered in vomit and excrement and in constant peril of drowning.

If the songs have changed then the motives behind all this human movement remain constant — war, land clearances, sex slavery, exploitation and profit.

The author has a keen eye for the telling insight and one incident speaks volumes. In 1781, the Zong, an incompetently run British slave ship, missed its destination in Jamaica and began running out of water. To save the crew and some of its cargo, its captain decided to throw dozens of the slaves overboard, alive, into shark-infested waters. As soon as the slaughter was done, heavy rain began — filling the water barrels and rendering the massacre pointless. The ship’s owners, instead of facing trial for murder, sued the insurers for compensation.

As you can imagine, this is often a dark and harrowing read. But it’s a vital one to help understand the timeless reasons people have been driven from their homes — and others have been driven to profit from them.

Human Cargo by Matthew Crampton is published by Muddler Books, price £9.99. More details and to buy.

Matthew Crampton talks about his book Human Cargo

Book Launch 27 March with Diane Abbott MP: Free Movement and Beyond:
Register for your place (free)…