Below are excerpts of a statement issued Aug. 4 by the London branch of the Communist League in the United Kingdom.

The labour movement must fight to open the UK’s borders to immigrants fleeing Africa and the Middle East. This is a life-and-death question for the working class, part of a class-struggle course of organising all workers, native- and foreign-born into trade unions, and using union power to defend our interests.

The anti-immigrant stance of the capitalist parties is aimed at keeping foreign-born workers down, and through competition drive down the wages and conditions of all.

Their divide-and-rule claim that there are insufficient resources is bogus. It’s government policy not to build houses, hospitals, schools. While all the wealth in this country is the creation of working people, irrespective of our nationality.

Workers need to cut through such arguments and forge independent working-class politics. This means rejecting the stand of the government and capitalist parties in defence of Britain’s borders — which they claim are “our” borders — against “them,” the foreigners. Just as they did in the 1930s when they refused entry into the UK of thousands of Jews in Germany fleeing Nazi terror.

Working people don’t have borders. A classless “British people” with common interests does not exist. The UK is class divided. “We” are working people, irrespective of where we’re born. Toilers in the oppressed nations are our allies against our common enemy: the imperialist rulers. “They” are the capitalist rulers and their government. Knowing who “we” are and who “they” are is the ABC of working-class politics.