Economic migration is not a 'single issue'

A strange phenomenon has occurred in a section of the British right-wing press. Prominent articles have been published which talk about unemployment and low wages; and furthermore, the articles do not appear to blame the working class victims themselves for these problems.

The pro-Conservative Daily Express newspaper even had the rise in UK unemployment to over one and two-thirds million as a front page story. The piece also quoted two sources, a think tank and a pressure group, stating that many workers in Britain are having their wages cut. The implication was that this is a bad thing.

Of course, the Daily Express article and others like it did not mention privatisation, the hands-off approach of the government to the collapse of manufacturing industry, the emasculation of the trade unions and the other measures which have made capitalism redder in tooth-and-claw, as factors in this increase in misery. The campaigning right-wing media has a more convenient target: the hundreds of thousands of additional workers who are coming to the UK, particularly from Poland and the other formerly socialist states. The Daily Express headline on 17^th August 2006 was ‘Jobless up 92,000 as Poles flood in’.

Convenient target

Immigration is a convenient target in two ways. Firstly, it distracts attention away from the capitalist system and neo-liberal ‘reforms’ as the underlying causes of impoverishment. Secondly, it encourages the indigenous working class people in Britain (millions of whom are themselves the children and grandchildren of previous generations of immigrants from Ireland, the Caribbean and South Asia) to see new arrivals from Eastern Europe and elsewhere as their enemies, thus hindering unity among the working class.

Capitalism, nationally and globally, is an exploitative and competitive system which pits individuals and groups of people against each other. Finance, machinery and consumer goods flow around the world, not according to any conception of what is best for overall social, industrial and environmental development but in response to the unquenchable thirst for profits. Human beings also flow in increasing numbers, pushed by poverty and unemployment, pulled by the demand for cheap labour.

Easypoland recruitment agency logo: 'Get your Polish workers fast and easy.'

The seeds of xenophobia find fertile ground. It is inconceivable that, without careful planning and substantial investment in, for instance, public housing and social improvement projects from which indigenous people as well as new arrivals feel a benefit, large-scale immigration can occur without the formation of mutually suspicious and even hostile ethnic identities. Without such planning and investment, the government rhetoric which lectures indigenous working class people to celebrate ‘diversity’, and ethnic minorities to ‘integrate’ into the mainstream, may even produce the opposite of the claimed intention.

Double game

But the right-wing are playing a double game, and very successfully. While obtaining the political benefit from hostility to migrants, the capitalists gain huge financial benefits from the fact of economic migration. Thus the editorial in The Times on 23^rd August 2006, sending a message not to the masses but to the policymakers, insisted: “Immigration from Eastern Europe is a success and should not be curtailed”. The article notes with satisfaction:

“Many of these workers have entered unfashionable sectors of employment — agricultural labour and social care — that have experienced serious recruitment difficulties for decades. Their wages may be modest, but they are emphatically not a drain on the benefits system…

“A resounding 97 per cent of those registered are in full-time employment. More than 80 per cent are aged between 18 and 34. Only 7 per cent have brought dependants to Britain… A negligible 193 people have been awarded income support, 564 have been granted jobseeker’s allowance, 453 are now on homelessness assistance and 110 (or 0.04 per cent of all allocations in this time) were assigned council housing.”

For ‘unfashionable’ work at ‘modest’ wages, read highly intense labour in uncomfortable conditions at (for 80% of those legally employed) between £4.50 and £6 per hour. Very cheap for British employers, thus boosting profits. Extremely cheap for the British state which need not provide them or their dependants (who have remained in Eastern Europe) with the benefits of the social safety-net. Even better, the costs of their education and, for the minority who fill the high-skill gaps in the health and other sectors, the costs of their very expensive professional training, have been borne by another - much poorer - country.

Easypoland: 'The UK's army of Polish workers has built up a reputation for reliability and fair prices'

And, as the Daily Express is happy to suggest, the ‘flood’ from poorer countries increases competition for jobs, exerting a downward pressure on the wages of indigenous unskilled and semi-skilled workers. Also good for business.

Career boost

Immigration is an issue that can provide a boost for the careers of ambitious politicians. The chief of Britain’s interior ministry, Home Secretary John Reid, has the uncanny ability to improve his reputation by making ‘tough’ declarations which capitalise on the consequences of decisions by his own New Labour government. Given the much lower wages and high rates of unemployment in Eastern Europe, mass movement of workers to Britain was an inevitable result of the government’s Worker Registration Scheme. Reid is now ‘talking tough’ on immigration and aims to take credit for a more restrictive policy on future migration from Bulgaria and Romania when these states join the EU.

The strongman John Reid

The Times, in its editorial of 23^rd August, helpfully offered Reid or his successor a way to do this without harming prospects of higher profits:

“…follow the basic Workers Registration Scheme model but further tighten the limits on benefits to ensure this programme is not abused… It would… be sensible to insist that applicants should engage in uninterrupted employment for two full years before having access to work-related benefits. These are not rules that will act as a deterrent for the vast majority who want to work.”

This will reinforce the two-tier character of the labour force, with those on the lower tier vulnerable to even more ruthless exploitation. And it is in the nature of these things that when we have got sufficiently used to the denial of access to state benefits to substantial numbers of working people in Britain, it can be proposed, at an appropriate moment and with appropriate excuses, to extend that ineligibility to other groups of the population.

Concealing reality

Tony Blair also, on his return from holiday, has declared that he wants us to be talking about immigration, together with terrorism and ‘community cohesion’. Mr Blair will not be facing the next general election as leader of his party, and it may not worry him too much if the political fall-out from this prioritisation and combination of themes helps the Conservative Party and other openly right-wing forces and damages the Labour Party.

Consider the automatic effect, even before any arguments are put forward, of grouping immigration, terrorism and ‘community cohesion’ together and pushing other issues into the background.

To have a ‘debate’ on immigration, without considering it in the context of British and global capitalism, without recognising economic migration in particular as a feature of capitalism, is inevitably to conceal reality and also to damage ‘community cohesion’.

There are some matters which can be treated as ‘single issues’, on which a specific policy change, even without a wider transformation of society, would lead directly to an improvement in human welfare. One instance of this would be the adoption of a pro-Palestinian policy in the Middle East; another would be the reversal of market ‘reforms’ in the National Health Service.

Economic migration does not fall into this category. There can be no ‘single issue’ solution, either by amending or abolishing the Worker Registration Scheme, which would be fair and humane for people in Britain, Poland, and elsewhere, within the national and international rules of the capitalist system. Outside these rules, more is possible.

Belarus and Poland

The example of Belarus is instructive. Since the mid-1990s it has taken a different course from the other East European countries. The country rejected the instructions of the IMF to privatise its extractive and manufacturing industries. The authors of the CIA World Factbook are clearly unhappy with the direction the country has taken:

“[President] Lukashenko reimposed administrative controls over prices and currency exchange rates and expanded the state's right to intervene in the management of private enterprises. During 2005, the government re-nationalized a number of private companies. In addition, businesses have been subject to pressure by central and local governments, e.g., arbitrary changes in regulations, numerous rigorous inspections, retroactive application of new business regulations, and arrests of "disruptive" businessmen and factory owners. A wide range of redistributive policies has helped those at the bottom of the ladder; the Gini coefficient [a measure of inequality in income] is among the lowest in the world. Because of these restrictive economic policies, Belarus has had trouble attracting foreign investment, which remains low. Growth has been strong in recent years…”

All members of society have gained from this strong industrial growth (an increase of 10% in GDP in 2005-2006) – real incomes have been rising at an average of 15% annually and the unemployment rate is only 1.6%. Belarus has also vastly increased its spending on education and health.

IT students in Belarus

Poland, the Western neighbour of Belarus, has privatised and liberalised its economy, exactly as the IMF, the European Union and the British Government have told it to do. It has had the benefit of very substantial foreign investment, to the extent that the ‘commanding heights’ of its economy are now mainly Western-owned.

Unemployment in Poland is at an average of 17%; for people under 25 it is 34%. Due to high emigration and a declining birth rate, Poland’s population is falling rapidly.

Poland is regarded in the West as the most successful of all the post-socialist economies.

21st Century Socialism

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