RE-COLONISING AFRICA
On 11 May British Foreign Secretary Robin Cook 'reluctantly bowed' to pressure from the United Nations to contribute British troops to Sierra Leone. In fact the elite Special Air Service have been reconnoitring rebel positions throughout the West African country for months.
Since winning elections in 1996 president Ahmed Tejan Kabbah has failed to consolidate support in the countryside, where the rebel Revolutionary United Front of Foday Sankoh is strongest. Kabbah's government was weakened by its dependence upon foreign support: from the South African mercenaries ominously called Executive Outcomes, from the ECOMOG (external monitoring group) troops assembled by the West African states, and by the British mercenary troop Sandline, who reinstated Kabbah to power after Sankoh deposed him in 1997.
The RUF has used brutal measures to enforce its rule beyond Freetown, and in the diamond fields - amputations and summary killings are common. But President Kabbah's Executive Action trained Kamajor militia is also guilty of committing atrocities. UN troops looked away when the Kamajor killed opponents in the streets.
Britain is determined to moralise the conflict, filling the vacuum left by the departing ECOMOG troops, to shore up Kabbah's embattled regime. Relief Aid for Mozambique was pitiful after monies were redirected to train police officers for Freetown. Britain's Foreign Secretary is digging-in for a long-term presence in Sierra Leone.
(Thanks to Barrie Collins)
THE REAL MEANING OF 'ASYLUM'
On May 10 British Immigration Minister Barbara Roche announced the construction of two new detention centres for asylum-seekers refused leave to stay in Britain. In Newcastle eighty residents of one hostel protested in the street after conflict with staff - police later arrested six on charges of criminal damage. The government has led the attack on immigrants, with Home Secretary Jack Straw taking part in a search of lorries disembarking at Dover - so that he could be filmed as they were dragged away. The conflict over the status of immigrants shows how repressive the asylum policy really is.
Britain's asylum laws are trumpeted as proof of the superiority of the country's liberal and tolerant welcome to victims of persecution. In the Kosovo war, Prime Minister Blair offered ethnic Albanians refuge from violence. But increasingly, the asylum policy has been revealed to be vicious and discriminatory.
The Blair government has withdrawn benefits from all asylum seekers, giving them food vouchers for seventy per cent of the value of benefit levels. Now new laws for detaining and monitoring asylum-seekers are in place.
Repression and discrimination are not a reversal of government policy on asylum. On the contrary, they are the real meaning of asylum. Asylum policy looks egalitarian in its motivation, but in fact it is the opposite. The asylum policy arises out of an elitist disdain for foreign states and foreign peoples. The need for asylum, according to the government, comes because East European and other societies are inferior to our own. Offering sanctuary to the persecuted is not a disinterested policy, but a propagandistic measure to de-legitimise small nations.
Far from indicating a love of freedom, the asylum policy has come to the fore because all other routes of entry to the country have been slammed shut. With primary immigration from the commonwealth stopped, no other route exists for people from poor countries to come to Britain other than as asylum seekers.
In particular the government has targeted 'economic migrants' as 'bogus asylum seekers'. Some have argued the economic case for immigration, against the government. But they are missing the point. (see below) The impact of migrants on Britain's increasing numbers of employed is negligible. The argument over asylum has nothing to do with economics.
The rules governing the borders of a country will always reflect the way that the elite of that country defines itself against the rest of the world. In former times, Britain's immigration policy was racial. That indicated that the self-identity of the elite was one of white superiority. Today colour matters less to the elite's own self-image. But that does not mean that they have embraced the rest of the world as their equals, only that their sense of superiority is not expressed in terms of colour. (see Suke Wolton, 'History of Immigration Controls', on the Close Campsfield website http://users.ox.ac.uk/~asylum)
Instead, the contemporary version of white supremacy is one of moral superiority. Proudly wearing the cloak of 'humanitarianism', and an ethical foreign policy, the New Labour elite means to vindicate their moral superiority over the rest of the world. The policy of granting asylum to foreign supplicants is a manifestation of that superiority complex. Asylum is supposed to distinguish generous Britain from 'foreign despotism'.
But because asylum policy arises out of an elitist and exclusionary motivation, it is bound to lead in turn to oppressive treatment. In practice that means that the policy makers, with an exaggerated sense of their own generosity, constantly fear 'bogus' asylum seekers 'taking advantage'. The process of distinguishing between the 'genuine' and the 'bogus' is viciously moralistic and discriminatory. Only those who fulfil the middle class stereotype of the persecuted intellectual are granted asylum. Islamic militants or gypsies who beg on the streets are subject to the same intolerance they were fleeing from.
In practice about a third of those refused asylum, or 7000 are expelled from the country each year. 5000 are granted asylum and 4000 exceptional leave to remain. The consequence is a growing subsection of the population that is, as in France sans papiers, without papers or legal status. Rights of equal citizenship and universal welfare are suspended.
The argument that all of this arises from the public is contradicted by polls: ICM reported that few people could make any sense of the different parties' asylum policies (Guardian, 18 April). In recent elections, tub-thumping from both William Hague and Jack Straw failed to have an impact on the decline in voter participation. The trend to demonise immigrants arises out of the elite's own fragile sense of its superiority. It is top down, not bottom up.
The solution to the problem is to scrap the asylum laws altogether. They are inherently discriminatory and cannot be made to work. Instead all immigration should be free. People's lives must not be subordinated to the needs of the elite. The British public can only gain by attacking this central plank of New Labour's authoritarian rule.
Migrant Demographics
Some like Tory Boris Johnson, radical Nigel Harris, and even the Economist have argued that immigration would be good for the British economy. They point to the low European birth-rate, the increasing burden of an ageing population, and the growing demand for labour. It is true that the US economy has seen growth with numerically greater immigration than its peak at the turn of the century. In New York and on the West Coast, the Caribbean and Indian migrants that Britain refuses are contributing to an economic upturn.
It is very cute of right-winger Boris Johnson surprise everyone by endorsing economic migration - albeit as a foil to attack East European asylum seekers (Telegraph, 20 April). Radical Nigel Harris also has his tongue in his cheek when he says that he wants the best policy for capitalism ('Racists are so blind', Guardian, 2 May). But both are promoting the underlying myth that an ageing population will hold back the British economy. As economist Phil Mullan explains, the perception of a collapse of welfare says more about the anxieties of the elite than it does about economic realities (The Imaginary Time Bomb: Why An Ageing Population is Not a Social Problem, IB Tauris, 2000). The proposition that migrants should be recruited to man the old people's homes of 2030 is no real basis for solidarity.
Read the Week at http://www.heartfield.demon.co.uk -- Jim heartfield