The past few weeks have seen some very dangerous moves on the issue of immigration.
Harry Urwin from the TUC Hotel and Catering Committee urged the Government to stop foreign workers entering the country to work in the hotel and catering industry. The Government responded by lowering the quota for immigrant workers in this industry Then came the Hackney scandal. Michael Foot's Department of Employment instructed the Hackney Hospital Management Committee to regard those jobs covered by work permits as vacancies when the emit exoue0 ie vor would then provide suitable British applicants and the immigrant workers would not be allowed to appeal against unfair dismissal. DIVISIVE The TUC and the Labour Government are trying to export unemmiovment. Rather than waging a fight to defend all workers, the burcaucrats are dividing the workforce along racialist and chauvinist lines. This is the same logic that is the basis of the import controls campaign. Instead of making the bosses pay for the crisis, the TUC and the Labour Government are trying to establish an alliance between British workers and British bosses against foreign workers.
Unfortunately the TUC can legitImately claim that taey are domg no more than the unions in Switzerland, Germany and France, who nave peen so success uu mn gerund foreign workers sent back home. But there is a difference between Britain and the continental countries that makes the situation even more appalling here.
Only a small proportion of the *immigrant workers in Britain are involved in the contract system. Most came before the 1971 Immigration Act was in operation. nave conc to stay.
NATIONALISM Let us suppose that the TUC gets the relatively small number of immigrant workers who are here on a work permit sent back home. There will still be unemployment. Does the TUC, in line with Powell, appeal to the majority of black workers, who are not on a contract, to go back 'home"? And if voluntary repatriation fails, what next?
It is easy to see who gains from this nationalist policy of the TUC. The bosses can divide the workers on the basis of colour and nationality while the fascists draw out the logical conclusions from the TUC policy send them back.
The Labour and trade union leaders' concessions to nationalism allow the fascists a chance to gain a foothoid amongst the workers. They are past masters at exploiting the opportunities that the labour bureaucracy give them on issues such as immigration laws, import controls and now on the issue of withdrawing work permits.
The ability of the fascists to take advantage of this nationalist mood is lessened by their present state of disorder, but the impact of the split in the National Front should not be overestimated. The National Party only succeeded in getting any influence at all in 22 out of the 123 NF branches, and these were geographically limited to the Home Counties and LancaShire. of the NF remains loyal to the Tyndall/Webster leadership.
The split has caused a certain amount of embarrassment as a lot of mutual recrimination has taken placę in public. NP leader Kingsley Read has announced that Tyndall and Webster took part in a neonazi celebration of Hitler's birthday in 1972, while Webster has quoted Kingsley Read and his fellow NP leader Painter as proclaiming their allegance to the principles of National Socialism.
make the NF a little more hard line The overwhelming majority The effect of the split will be to The Coventry North-West by-election features two fascist candidates. The National Front are standing on a plat form of 'British Jobs for British Workers', while the supposedly more liberal National Party have the slogan of "Hang the Murderers - Flog Muggers and Rapists.* As part of their campaign the National Front organised a march and rally in A counter-demonstration was quickly called on the basis of *The Right to Work for All - Black and White', sponsored by Coventry Trades Council, the Indian Workers Association, and Warwick University Students Union. Fifteen hundred workers and students assembled, and more willing to work with overtly neo-nazi organisations such as the British Movement, and will also make both the NF and NP engage in a competition of violence against the left - particularly on issues where the fascists see the left as politically isolated, such as ireland. But the central focus of both groups will be racism and chauvinism, which is clear from their intervention in the Coventry Both groups have shown an ability to discuss unemployment, bad housing, and the collapse of the welfare state in a pseudo-radical manner ible. and then to link all the issues together by blaming the blacks. Richard Lawson of the NP is a past master of this technique: "The survival of the British people faces a greater threat today than it has ever done in our nation's history. The threat is international capitalism - a system that has imported foreigners to undercut the wages of British workers and forced us into the The policy of the NF over import controls shows the same approach. Their programme for textile workers includes: a ban on all textile imports; the sacking of all black workers and their repatriation so that British (white) workers could be given their jobs; the breaking up of the multi-nationals and gathered by the NF.
Groups of anti-fascists followed the National Front alona the route of their demonstration, exposing the thoroughly racist and fascist nature or their poncies Later on, the NF headquarters were surr ounded and some indignant anti-fascists stoned the building. NF leaders, including candidate Fontaine, sustained slight injuries.
The success of the counter demon stration will ensure that further open attempts by the fascists to stir up race hatred in Coventry will meet a hot reception.
their placing under British control with worker narticipation. Fin ally there should be a drive to kick out the existing trade union leadership, who only support token import controls and thus once again scab on British workers because of their internationalism Michael Foot and the TUC are playing with fire. Labour leaders who make concessions to nationalism and racialism are presenting a blank cheque to the bosses and the extreme right, who will cash it and extract a far heavier price than the bureaucrats imagine possREACTIONARY The 1907 Stuttgart Congress of the Second International realised that 'all attempts to stop immigration by restrictive laws will be useless and reactionary. Such legislation 'lowers the class consciousness of the workers, alienates them from class struggle, sows discord between workers, and creates a favourable soil for the development of racial and national conflict.
We must fight to ensure that it is the bosses who pay for this crisis and not a section of the workers. And part of that fight is the struggle to remove all restrictive immigration legislation.
Andrew Jenkins