Fight for jobs, homes and services to cut across racist division
Hugo Pierre, Socialist Party national committee and former Unison NEC Black members rep
Labour Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood is following in the footsteps of Denmark’s right-wing Social Democrats by proposing drastic reductions to the right of asylum. Her proposals introduce refugee status as a temporary protection that must be reapplied for when it ends, and extended waits for residency of up to 20 years, from the current five. They will also decrease the levels of financial support, could force asylum seekers to contribute to costs of accommodation, and reduce the right to appeal.
Perversely, in introducing these measures, Mahmood cited the racism she has faced as a reason. But the language she used – claiming that without these measures “we will draw more people down a path that starts with anger and ends in hatred” – and the proposals themselves, will stoke more division and racism.
Dividing the working class
Labour are using migration as a political weapon to try to divide the working class and to try to cut across a united struggle against its policies. They are failing to tackle all the economic misery heaped on the working class since the banking crisis of 2007-08. They are continuing down the road of austerity ramped up by the Tories but started by Gordon Brown, Labour’s last prime minister before Keir Starmer.
Immigration appears to be the number one topic in the right-wing press and a perpetual discussion on the BBC and other broadcast media. But Labour has no plan to deal with the number one topic facing working-class people, the cost-of-living crisis, with policies that support the working class. Instead, they are continually looking at ways to give state handouts to their big-business pay masters.
Mahmood’s plans will only feed more fuel for Reform UK’s Nigel Farage, who has already said he now favours mass deportation of ‘illegal immigrants’, up to 600,000 over the lifetime of a parliament. Her plans, coupled with the anger in working-class communities already hit by public service cuts and rising prices, might increase the illusion peddled by the right wing that ‘immigration is to blame’.
These proposals by Mahmood must be rejected and condemned.
Trade unions must fight
Trade unions should be calling for an end to the scapegoating of migrant workers and instead unite workers of all backgrounds by leading the struggle against Labour austerity. They should call out the failures of the capitalist class that has enriched itself several times over since the 2008-09 crash yet failed to invest in industries and public services that we need.
The trade unions must now urgently discuss how they will campaign directly amongst their members for the agreed TUC policy of ‘jobs, homes and services not racism’ and the concrete demands they will organise their members around in pursuit of this.
For example: ‘no-cuts to council services’ especially in the run-up to the 2026 elections, a co-ordinated pay campaign for a £15-an-hour minimum wage for all and above-inflation pay rises, the renationalisation of key sectors of the economy, and many other issues.
Further, this year’s TUC Congress called for a mass demonstration against Labour’s austerity plans. This would be an important mobilisation for 6.4 million workers organised in trade unions and the wider working class, to prepare a militant struggle for those concrete demands.
