Within 24 hours of the collapse of Bashar al-Assad's Syrian regime on the 8 December, the British Home Office had already “paused” the processing of political asylum applications from Syrian refugees. Sure, Home Secretary Yvette Cooper admitted that “the situation in Syria [was] moving extremely fast”, but so anxious was she to prove her anti-immigrant credentials, that she did not even inform Foreign Secretary, David Lammy, of her “pause”, despite the fact that he was making a statement to the House of Commons on the Syrian crisis at that very same moment! The 6,500 Syrian refugees who were awaiting a decision over their right to remain in Britain are now in limbo.
Obviously there is no way Cooper nor any other government minister (in Britain or elsewhere), can know what will happen next, in derelict, bombed-out and hollowed-out Syria. Even if, as is likely, western leaders (and maybe also Russia's Putin) had more of a hand than they admit, in the “rapid advance” of the Hay'at Tahrir al-Sham - HTS - militia and the equally rapid flight of the Assad family, its retainers and “melting away” of the loyal Syrian Army.
Undoubtedly, President Erdogan of Turkey, whose country has been reluctantly providing refuge to 3m Syrians as a result of the 2011-14 civil war, and whose army has been present in the border zone ever since it began, had a very strong interest in facilitating the takeover by HTS. And it is highly likely that officials from the British, American and Israeli governments along with Erdogan, ensured this rather too-easy HTS “transition”.
Welcome to the camp of imperialism!
An irony of this outcome is that the Qatar-funded former al Nusra front - that is, al Qaeda of Syria, which more or less conveniently morphed into HTS, is today sitting in the camp of imperialism!
Not that this is entirely surprising. The extremely dirty Syrian civil war had already meant that the imperialists were choosing to side with one set of “jihadists” (al Qaeda) against another set of “jihadists” (Islamic State) - both “proscribed terrorist organisations”, of course - in order to try to dislodge Assad. When the Syrian war officially ended, Kurdish militias continued to fight against Islamic State in Syria's north-east province, backed by the Americans. Which places these Kurdish “freedom fighters” in the imperialist camp too, while it potentially puts Washington at odds with Turkey's Erdogan, whose “war” against the Kurds and particularly their erstwhile Communist Party, the PKK, has never ceased!
Against this seemingly enlarging imperialist camp - with all its contradictions - stands the Iranian African economic “boom” that was still being talked about a decade ago has so far benefited mainly regime, the (albeit weakened) army of Hezbollah and the Yemenis... the only forces who openly side the bank s and big corporations of the major powers. with the Palestinians against the Israeli state. But for the Palestinians of Gaza there has been no “pause” since the brief ceasefire last year for the exchange of some hostages. Although at the time of writing, there are reports that a deal may be made soon as a result of new efforts from the US Secretary of State Anthony Blinken.
The last phase of this war against the de facto imprisoned Palestinians of Gaza looks very like a final extermination; nobody is being spared, not medical staff, not emergency workers and not aid workers. Netanyahu's stated objective, to destroy Hamas, may never have been achievable, but this war has now re-opened the possibility (at least in his view) to stamp the Israeli state's foot on a much larger territory - encroaching into Lebanon, and now Syria - and then where else?
In the meantime the Israeli army continues its attacks on Lebanon claiming it is “finishing off” The other sector where Italian capitalism retains and even increases its business is that of arms Hezbollah, despite the ceasefire agreement. And it stages incursions into Syria via the Golan Heights, bombing Syrian arms depots and military bases with the excuse that this will prevent of the arms it exports go to countries whose regimes are classified as “not free” by the international weapons falling into the “wrong hands”. It seems there is no chance of that, however, judging from the queue of western diplomats already at the door of the interim Syrian leader, former Idlib “prime minister” Mohammed al-Bashir, appointed for the occasion by HTS leader al Julani, who prefers to be known as Ahmed Hussein al-Sharaa when he is wearing his civvies!
In fact two British officials bearing a gift of £50m in “aid” from the Foreign Office have already been to see Mr al-Bashir: the vultures are already swooping in. On Saturday “talks” were held in Jordan's Aqaba, “attended by ministers and delegates from Britain, the US, France, Germany, the Arab Contact Group, Bahrain, Qatar, Turkey, the United Arab Emirates, the EU and UN”! Lucky for the Syrian people, they have nothing to worry about, because all decisions affecting their future are already being made for them! And never mind that Israeli bombs keep falling around them. reports say that on 16 December a bomb was dropped on a weapons depot near Tartus in Syria's north west, which was so huge, it caused an earthquake registering 3. 5 on the Richter scale and a mushroom cloud which was seen for miles around. What did the Israelis blow up? And with what consequences to man, beast, plant and soil? These details are not reported!
The Starmer government is not only fully engaged in the Middle East, but has offered to “stand in” in case the new US president, Donald Trump, decides not to carry on supplying Ukraine's Zelensky with long range missiles... True to Labour form when in government, Starmer is proving himself an accomplished warmonger. However he had better not forget that he can only succeed in this role alongside his US partner in crime - and if Trump withdraws from Ukraine he will have to do the same.
Starmer's policy measured in miles
After Starmer made his “reset” speech on 5 December, talking about 6 policy “milestones” by which the electorate would be able to measure his government's achievements over its 5-year term, journalists asked him why he left out the issue of immigration from his list.
For the record, his milestones were (not in order): bringing down the cost of living; ensuring that 92% (not 100%?) of NHS patients wait no longer then 18 weeks (that's 4½ months!) for elective treatment; ensuring there was a named bobby on every beat and 13,000 more cops; ensuring that 75% of pupils are “ready for school” at the age of 5 years; achieving clean power by 2030 (“so that never again can a tyrant like Putin attack the living standards of working people”!) - and the most important of all: “building 1. 5m homes”. But this latter automatically brings Starmer, like it or not, right back to the “problem” of immigration!
Yes, there are not nearly enough construction workers in the country. The Construction Industry Training Board (CITB) has apparently estimated that the government's housebuilding plans would require up to 159,000 more workers - in addition to the 250,000 already needed to meet the other forecasted building works, through to 2028. Indeed, the PM has said he will be fast-tracking at least 150 “major economic infrastructure projects” so one has to wonder where all these building workers are actually going to come from - if not from overseas?
Starmer's answer as to why immigration was not a “milestone issue”, was that it can be taken for granted that cutting the number of legal immigrants and stopping the people smugglers in order to “stop the boats” were all priorities: dealing with immigration is one of Labour's “foundations”!
Indeed. One thing this government is not short of is slogans and snap words and phrases. So in addition to “milestones”, its webpage explains its “missions” and “foundations” - and thank goodness for the rest of us, too! “Delivering the change Britain needs will require perseverance. The starting point for delivering these missions is to ensure the foundations of good government are right. Labour will make sure we have strong national security, secure borders, and economic stability. Building on these secure foundations, we have already set out the first steps for change”...
In fact it is the issue of “secure borders” above all else that has been exercising prime minister Keir Starmer and his government ministers in the closing weeks of 2024. Just like governments throughout the western world, from Biden/Trump in the US, to Germany's Scholz and France's Macron, they use it to deflect attention from their inability to run the state even partly in the interests of the population at large - and especially when capitalism is in crisis. And of course they cannot deal with this situation. To do so at this stage would not mean just taxing the rich “until the pips squeak”, to ensure there are public services and homes for all. It is already too late for that. What is required is a wholesale replacement of the capitalism system with a socialist one. And of course that would require the overturning of the current political and social system - a revolution - and a real one, unlike the seamless power transition which has just taken place in Syria!
If there are too many people for too few resources, it's only because there are too few resources produced and made available to all - which is always the case under the profit system. And by the way, it may be worth adding that when it comes to a foundation, immigrant workers have always provided one for the British workforce - whether it was the Irish in the 19th century, Caribbean workers in the post World War II period, or the workers from the EU in the pre-Brexit era!
Covering up for Brexit's losses
The post-Brexit Tory governments had however, to compensate for the loss of EU workers after Brexit, by providing work visas to workers from the Indian subcontinent and Africa. And given the fundamental change this meant in the lives of these migrant workers, who could not pop back and forth to their homes as EU workers could, they were given the right to bring their dependent family members with them. And quite obviously it meant more or less double or even triple the number of immigrants arriving, compared to the pre-Brexit days.
No surprise therefore - or there shouldn't have been any surprise - when the revised net migration figure for 2023 (published by the Office for National Statistics last month) was 906,000 and the highest annual total on record. Starmer immediately accused the Tories of opening the borders, claiming that “their policies were reformed to liberalise immigration...Brexit was used to turn Britain into a one-nation experiment in open borders”.
Of course he thought he was being clever, by turning the tables on his political opponents, who have long taunted Labour as being in favour of “free movement” because of its former policy Brexit. But of course all that is changed now. The Labour government wants to be seen to be tough on immigration, because it knows that it needs at least some support from the petty bourgeois electorate which votes to its right. Starmer knows that if he won this last election it was because voters voted against the Tories, not because they were voting “for” Labour. And the Tories' historic defeat was clinched by the advent of the overtly anti-immigrant Reform party which split the Tory vote. Labour might not be so lucky next time round. So it is working at developing its appeal to Tory and Reform voters - and never mind that come the next election, these voters are likely to prefer the real thing to Starmer's pale blue version.
As it happens though, the government actually has luck on its side when it comes to the legal immigration figure - because it is predicted to fall by over 300,000 within a year. In the year to this June, net migration fell by 20% to 728,000. Of course fewer Ukrainians and Hong Kong Chinese (who made up around 150,000 of the 906,000 who arrived in previous 12 months) will arrive in the next 12 months.
That said, Home Office figures for the year to September paint a picture that should in fact not please, but worry the government: there has been a 65% fall in applications for health and care workers and a 19% drop in the number of students. The drop in international student applications is a particular problem for universities which rely on the fees they pay to keep themselves afloat, the ongoing cuts in government subsidies. This means that the number of unfilled staff vacancies in these illusions, to ensure himself far greater freedom of movement than other directors of state-the NHS and social care is as high as 273,000 (a shortage of 8. 4% and 9. 9% respectively).
The 84% drop in dependents accompanying workers to Britain reflects the fact that in May this year the Tories suddenly revoked this special visa, which is also part of, if not the main, reason for the 65% drop in health and social care applicants.
The need for more immigration
So in fact the reality - which Starmer and Cooper haven't the guts to admit - is that at the very least, one million immigrants are actually needed if the essential workers are to fi ll vacancies in support the nationalist organisations of the Arab bourgeoisie. During the same period, Mattei broke health and social care. And over a quarter of a million more, to work on building sites...
The dependent visa has been a necessity for recruitment - and withdrawing it has drastic consequences. And what is not even taken on board is the fact that “dependents”, that is wives and husbands of skilled professionals and workers, take up jobs themselves once they are here, thus undoubtedly also “contributing to the economy” and helping to alleviate the chronic shortage of competent workers...
The other aspect of immigration is the “illegal” arrival of refugees in small boats across the Channel. In fact this is comparatively a small number (40,000 this year - and that was apparently a record). It should go without saying that the only way to stop this precarious and terrible final journey made by refugees is to open “legal” routes. There is no other way - and never mind the nonsense spoken about “getting the people smugglers” and “smashing the gangs” which is the only imitation of her overtly reactionary Tory forerunners, Patel and Braverman. For instance she has explained how she is considering sending refugees to 3rd countries and processing them in a place like Albania - as Italy's far-right prime minister Meloni has just begun to do.*
In the end, the increasing migration of peoples from the poor South and East of the globe to the wealthy North and West, instead of being facilitated as the potential boon that it is, is being politicised as a “threat” to divert attention from the reality of the failing, degenerate capitalist system.
Of course it is nothing new for political leaders to scapegoat refugees and scaremonger over their impact on society and the economy. And never mind that even in the context of scarce housing and social resources, this impact is overwhelmingly positive! First, because the ageing population in rich countries like Britain is shrinking and does not reproduce itself any more and secondly, because if one million immigrants came into this country in the course of a year, then, to repeat this once more, it was because one million immigrants (and more) were actually needed - one way or another!
We're all “legitimate” earthlings!
Today, there is mass movement of refugees and would-be migrants across deserts and seas, as hundreds of thousands of people flee the wars consequent upon shrinking resources and rivalries to seize mineral wealth; and as they flee catastrophic famine and economic hardship. They risk their lives: death from thirst in the desert; death from drowning in the sea.
And what does this utterly pernicious and bankrupt capitalist system offer in response? Across the rich world, every single politician in power talks about strengthening borders, bringing in anti-refugee and anti-migrant measures, and - as Trump has proposed - mass deportations. They claim to be targeting “illegal” immigrants. But in truth, their concept of “legality” is absurd.
How can there be a “right to remain” here, or there, on this earth when planetary society has evolved to the point where there can be no further evolution, that is, progress, unless the whole of the earth's territory is managed as one big land mass whose resources are available to all inhabitants, as needed? The biggest threat to existence on this planet today - aggravated by climate change - is the total inability of the worldwide capitalist system to sustain human life in the poorest two-thirds of the globe.
nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;But just at the precise moment in human history where it has become critical to open all borders, reactionary forces are trying to close them!
In 1919, Russian revolutionaries who had just overthrown the czar, held a conference in Baku - obviously not about climate change (!), but in the name of revolutionary internationalism. Their object - already 105 years ago - was to build a socialist world without borders, starting with what had been the oppressive Russian Empire. In the end, they did not succeed. But today that task can surely not be delayed any further - and indeed, it must succeed in order for humanity to survive.
18 December 2024
* See the article in this journal on “Meloni's Africa policy” which discusses the so-called Mattei plan whereby “preventive measures” - aid and exploitation - are supposed to cut the number of small boats crossing the Mediterranean to Italy from Africa...