Immigration, asylum and anti-deportation

The inequalities are glaring

Katrina Faccenda is a Labour Party activist in Edinburgh and Labour candidate for the Scottish parliamentary seat of Edinburgh Northern and Leith. She talked with Sacha Ismail. This crisis has starkly highlighted all sorts of inequalities and made them glaring. Vulnerable people are now much more vulnerable – people in poverty, women, BAME communities. It’s an indicator not so much of how awful the pandemic is, as how dysfunctional our society was even before. At the same time, we’ve seen the power trade unions can have when they actually put their mind to it, winning victories and concessions...

Clap for migrant carers too

The Labour Campaign for Free Movement is asking everyone, on the Thursday 8pm “Clap for Carers”, to remember that many of them are migrants who face NHS charges and have no access to social security. Put up a banner in your window and join us demanding universal healthcare for all and an end to “No Recourse to Public Funds”!

Empty the jails and detention centres!

The government is planning to temporarily release something like 4,000 prisoners in order to control the spread of Covid-19 in jails. 4,000 is about 5% of the prison population of 83,000. Of those 83,000, at least 60% are in prison for crimes that do not involve “violence against the person” or a sexual offence. The figure of 83,000 is not one necessary for public safety. Other countries get equal or better public safety with lower rates. The Netherlands and Sweden have only 61 prisoners per 100,000 population, while Britain has 139, and the USA 655. Turkey is releasing almost a third of its...

La France Insoumise and Covid-19

After agreeing with the government to "leave the controversies for later", Jean-Luc Mélenchon and the MPs of La France Insoumise have spoken. On a live LCI broadcast on Monday 30 March, the head of LFI opined that "the time has come to ban posted worker contracts, to repatriate posted workers by putting in the papers, or to keep them here and treat them properly", because "in France lorries are still coming in from a series of countries where there is no containment and which can therefore these lorries and be vectors for disseminating the virus". LFI's answer to the virus: foreign workers go...

Covid-19: fight for workers' control

1. Requisition (in other words, take into emergency public ownership) • private hospitals, as Ireland and Spain have done • the pharmaceutical and medical-supplies industries, so that production can be ramped up in a coordinated way to meet the crisis • high finance, so that the epidemic is not compounded by a snowballing economic slump resulting from an implosion of credit • and other sectors where coordinated mobilisation is necessary. 2. Fight for workers’ control The workers ourselves, taking expert advice, should have a decisive voice in identifying and running what is essential, and how...

Defend migrants, defend us all

Migrant communities are largely being overlooked during this pandemic, even though migrant NHS workers, migrant supply-chain workers, and migrant carers are doing the most essential work. Immigration rules like No Recourse to Public Funds leave migrants especially vulnerable to economic hardship and incentivise them to disregard public health advice and continue working. Migrants seeking to self-isolate to protect their own health, or the health of others, face destitution and potential homelessness without access to the social security net currently being ramped up to support British...

Emergency powers: who checks?

Yes, any government would need emergency powers in an epidemic like this, to shut down activities which endanger not just those taking part, but others near them, and endanger the NHS too. That does not mean that we should trust the Tories. The government agreed under pressure to have the emergency powers reconsidered after six months, not to run for two years as they first proposed. In this fast-moving emergency, that should be monthly. Parliament should go online rather than either shutting or being depleted due to self-isolation. Make the government accountable! The legislation gives...

Pause Brexit now!

From Labour for a Socialist Europe Whatever our differing views on Brexit, the whole Labour Party and labour movement should call and campaign for the Brexit transition period due to end on 31 December to be extended significantly – at least an extra year, maybe the full two years permitted under existing rules. Even before the Covid-19 crisis, the possibility of the UK striking a deal with the EU in time looked tenuous. The Tory government has been threatening to walk away and prepare for a No Deal Brexit if the essentials of a deal are not in place by June! Now the next round of UK-EU talks...

Covid-19: public health, and workers' rights too!

1. Requisition (in other words, take into emergency public ownership): • private hospitals, so that all their resources are directly available to the NHS • the pharmaceutical and medical-supplies industries, so that production can be ramped up in a coordinated way to meet the crisis • manufacturing facilities which can be adapted to produce ventilators and other medical equipment • hotels and empty houses, to use them for the NHS, for the homeless, and for domestic violence victims • transport and logistics, so that essential deliveries and travel can be coordinated and planned • the big...

Don't let Tories push through anti-migrant law

The Conservative government’s new Immigration Bill would grant sweeping “Henry VIII” powers to the Home Secretary to make up immigration rules with limited oversight or accountability to Parliament. The Johnson government’s new post-Brexit border policy ends free movement with the EU. It extends to EU migrants the brutal anti-migrant regime that is already imposed on non-EU migrants, while also changing that regime in new ways. It classes migrants earning less than a certain salary threshold as “unskilled” and offers no general route for them to enter the country. They will be allowed in only...

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