Vol. 79/No. 18 May 18, 2015
The candidates had been asked what should be done about the growing number of immigrants trying to get to Europe from North Africa and the Middle East and the April 19 drowning of more than 700 in the Mediterranean Sea.
Conservative candidate Amy Gray blamed “people traffickers” for the deaths. “The Conservative government is still putting 0.7 percent of GDP into aid to improve conditions there,” she said. “It’s used Britain’s military power to stabilize the region and is sending a well-equipped battleship.”
“For every £1 of aid, £10 are taken out of the Third World,” said Liberal Democrat Simon de Deney. “We have a moral responsibility as a richer country to do something to help.”
“We should help genuine refugees but not economic migrants,” said Keith Fraser of U.K. Independence Party. Green Party candidate Heather Finlay said her party favored renewed search-and-rescue operations in the Mediterranean and “controlled immigration.”
“To say that ‘something must be done’ is not an answer, and who is this ‘we’ in the U.K.?” Silberman asked. “The British rulers have historical responsibility for conditions in Africa and the Middle East — through colonialism and slavery, imperialist oppression and capitalist exploitation. The government’s military interventions in the region, including the murderous 2011 bombing of Libya supported by the opposition Labour Party, also contributed.
“Workers have to see the immigrants as part of ‘us,’” he said. “And the ‘they’ are the propertied rulers and their governments who have created this crisis.”
Labour Party candidate Diane Abbott said she had spoken in the House of Commons against the government’s refusal last October to support Mare Nostrum, a European search-and-rescue operation in the Mediterranean. She said the effect was to “let them drown.”
The bombing of Libya “was an ill-thought-out intervention in another country,” she said. Abbott, a member of the left-wing Socialist Campaign Group of Labour MPs, didn’t mention she had voted in favor of the bombing.
Nationally the Labour Party has introduced a 10-point program, vying with the Conservatives to further reduce immigration and restrict the rights of immigrant workers. Their plan calls for increasing the border patrol and barring immigrant workers from social benefits for at least two years.
Four candidate debates in the district have drawn some 500 people. The other three were hosted by the Keep Our NHS Public (National Health Service) campaign, St. Mary’s Church and the Petchey Academy high school.
The Hackney Gazette, a local weekly paper, organized an online debate and reported, “Mr. Silberman, 63, promises to ‘champion the struggles of workers and farmers resisting the bosses’ attacks on wages and conditions, or battling racism, police brutality, national oppression or assaults on women’s rights and other indignities.’”
People attending the debates raised a range of questions — asking what could be done about the erosion of living standards and job security, the social crisis working people face today and political instability and war in many parts of the world, as well as the decline of education, housing, the National Health Service and the environment.
Silberman soapboxed on High Street, attracting interest and one instance of anti-Jewish harassment. Some workers said they were interested in the demand to open the borders.
“I mentioned that my family, who were Jewish, were only able to get into England from Germany in 1933 because by chance my grandfather had a British passport,” Silberman said, referring to the way the rulers in both the U.S. and the U.K. resisted opening their borders.
Related articles:
1938 fight: Open US doors to Jewish refugees
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