The hate-mongers are at it again. Monday's papers carried huge headlines on a House of Lords' report calling for non-EU immigration to be capped.
Predictably the commission which concocted this report was led by Tory grandees with a sprinkling of Labour peers. Predictably too, the government was quick to bend over backwards, by stating that its new "point system" for non-EU immigrants is precisely aimed at meeting the lords' "concern" - or to put it more crudely, at going along with their anti-immigrant demagogy.
Worn-out lies all over again
This report purports to "prove" that, far from being beneficial to the economy, as Labour says, immigrants produce "no benefit for the average British citizen". Its main argument comes down to the worn out claim that NHS, education and housing problems must be blamed on immigrants "over-stretching" the system.
But repeating the same lies over and over again does not turn them into truths. As so many scandals have shown time and again, if there are cuts in the NHS and if the education budget is too tight, it is due to the myriad of capitalists who have been invited to sponge off public funds. If there are no decent, affordable homes to rent, it is because private developers get state subsidies for building houses which are far beyond the means of most working class households.
The immigrants who come here work like the rest of us - at least they try to, because they get a far worse deal than the majority of us. Even this demagogic report is forced to admit that the main beneficiaries of immigration are the bosses, by imposing worse wages and conditions on immigrants. But whose fault is it, if not that of the politicians who treat immigrants like potential criminals and point to them as being responsible for all of society's failures?
The capitalist mafiosi are the problem
Whereas, like the rest of us, immigrant workers pay taxes and produce useful value through their work, the same cannot be said of the 3 main authors of this venomous report - lord Wakeham, Lamont and Lawson, all former Tory ministers.
Wakeham was Thatcher's Energy minister. As such, he worked on the privatisation of electricity and gave the go ahead to the world's first non-regulated gas power-station, run by the US giant Enron.
Surprise, surprise, 2 years after leaving office, Wakeham joined Enron's board - until it collapsed, in 2002, revealing a massive fraud to conceal its enormous debt, for which Wakeham must have had some sort of responsibility since, after all, he sat on Enron's audit commission! Wakeham was targeted in the investigation - which is still on-going. But this did not deprive him of his other directorships, including at the prestigious Rothschild bank, to which he had awarded the profitable contract of advising Tory ministers on the privatisation of British Coal.
As to Lamont and Lawson, they may seem less shady than Wakeham, but besides being both former Tory chancellors, they also sat together with Wakeham on Rothschild's board, among the many directorships they have - which, in and of itself, probably says it all.
British and immigrants, but only one working class
And these are the people who are warning us against the alleged "threat" of immigration for ordinary British citizens? As if these fat cats, who would never lift a finger for anything less than a six-digit figure, knew anything about how the rest of us, working people, may live or think!
Whether they like it or not - and they certainly do not like the idea - this country was built by immigrant as well as British workers. Without the skilled immigrants from Holland, Germany and France, first, and then, later, the unskilled immigrants from Ireland, the industrialisation of Britain would never have taken off the ground in the 19th century - nor the trade-unions and working class movements, for that matter. Just as the industrial expansion which followed World War II would never have happened without the millions who came to work in Britain's factories from the former British colonies.
The truth is that all the nonsense about Britain being "over-populated" or "over-stretched" is merely designed to divert attention from the real attacks of British capital against the standard of living of the working class, as a whole, by scape-goating immigrant workers, that is a section within our ranks.
Because for us, there is one, and only one, working class, formed by all those who are at the receiving end of the bosses' exploitation. Our strength lies precisely in our ability to unite on this basis, regardless of trade, country of birth, colour of skin or whatever else. It is this potential strength that the Wakehams and the Browns of this world fear most, particularly on the eve of what threatens to be a major economic recession. And yes, they have every reason to be afraid, because sooner or later, we will use this strength!