MANCHESTER, England — “The unions should fight for amnesty for all workers who the government says don’t have ‘proper’ papers,” Peter Clifford, Communist League candidate for Manchester City Council, told retired sewing machine operator Pam Grocock when he knocked on her door here March 11. “And workers born abroad should have the same rights as those born here.”
“I don’t know about all these immigrants coming here,” Grocock replied. A new bill to immediately deport the growing number arriving in small boats on England’s south coast is being debated in Parliament.
Clifford explained the key question was fighting for the rights of immigrants already in the U.K. He is a rail worker and described the conditions faced by workers. Many work for a contracting agency and many are immigrants. Some are inspired by the National Union of Rail, Maritime and Transport’s fight for pay and are now fighting for union rights and better conditions themselves. But bosses have threatened them, saying they need to be “careful” because they don’t have papers.
“You’re right there,” Grocock said. “The bosses look for any way to scare people. It’s divide and rule.”
“The battle to win the labor movement to defend the rights of workers, whatever their status, is inseparable from the fight to build, extend and strengthen our unions,” Clifford said.
Under the government’s Illegal Migration Bill all immigrants making an unauthorized entry into the U.K. will be detained for 28 days and automatically deported. They will lose the right to claim asylum and be banned from ever re-entering the U.K.
Despite making a perilous journey and facing possible jail sentences when they arrive, the numbers coming here on small boats rose from 28,000 in 2021 to 45,000 last year. Most come from Albania, Afghanistan, Iran, Iraq and Syria.
The opposition Labour Party says it shares the government’s aims, but will vote against the bill.
Far from preventing immigration, the government’s goal is to impose greater control over the flow of cheap labor to satisfy bosses’ shifting needs for workers. Over a million arrived in the U.K. last year, many under a visa scheme introduced in 2021. Nurses and care workers, butchers and chefs entering under the scheme come largely from Nigeria and Zimbabwe and not from European Union member states following Brexit. Agricultural workers recruited under a parallel arrangement are now arriving from Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Indonesia and Nepal rather than EU countries or Russia and Ukraine.
Clifford also met school catering worker Ufouma Olorunfunmi. She described her experience of the second-class status confronting immigrants in Ireland. “I was living in Dublin, working at the Dunnes department store,” she said. When the company cut the workforce, Olorunfunmi not only lost her job but also had to leave the country because she’s not an Irish national. Now she’s living in Manchester with two children while her husband is still in Dublin with their other child.
“The majority of my workmates are immigrants,” building worker Paul Jones told Communist League member Debra Jacobs when she knocked on his door in South Ockenden. “If I lived where they come from, I’d probably do the same as them. But then they discover attacks on living standards and job conditions here. I used to pay 50 pounds ($61) for a box of mastic [grout] that I use in my work. It’s now 180 pounds!”
“They see coming here as the only way out given the conditions they face,” Jacobs said. “But it’s the same here. We need to build militant unions and a party that defends working-class interests wherever we are.”
Defend freedom of speech
Gary Lineker, a former captain of the national England soccer team and now a presenter of a popular BBC sports show, said the Illegal Migration Bill was “directed at the most vulnerable people in language not dissimilar to Germany in the 1930s.” Lineker was greeted by a sympathetic chorus from the middle-class left, including former Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn. Following pressure from ministers angered by Lineker’s comments, he was suspended.
Communist League members found broad support for Lineker’s right to free speech among working people when they campaigned door to door. “Lineker was wrong to compare the government’s measures to 1930s Germany. Nothing compares to the Holocaust. But he has the right to his view,” Jacobs told warehouse worker, Ali Djafic.
“Freedom of speech is very important,” Djafic replied. He arrived in the U.K. as a child in 1993 from a refugee camp during the Bosnia war.
“I’m a Muslim,” he said. “Many people speak about Muslims as terrorists. They’re wrong but they have the right to say what they think without fear of losing their job. If not, I could lose my job when I speak up.” After a storm of protests, Lineker was reinstated.
“The unions should defend freedom of speech,” CL candidate Peter Clifford told the Militant, “and oppose ‘canceling’ those you disagree with. This is key to building working-class solidarity and advancing a program that defends workers’ interests.”