Jeremy Corbyn

Seeking Britishness

JEREMY CORBYN on government pandering to the right-wing media.

LAST week, Home Secretary Jacqui Smith gave the House of Commons a stern lecture in the virtues of British citizenship.
At the same time, she pledged to increase the cost of making an application and to cut the numbers.
The reaction of MPs was telling.
Conservatives declared that any immigration was a problem, issuing dire warnings over numbers, control and so forth. It all sounded like Norman Tebbitt on a very bad day or Margaret Thatcher talking about being "swamped" in 1978, a year before she became prime minister.
On the opposite side of the house, the new Labour brigade welcomed "the debate" about immigration - a euphemism for saying that it is too high - while other Labour MPs expressed reservations about the new charges and the whole British citizenship system.
The green paper The Path to Citizenship: Next Steps in Reforming the Immigration System certainly contains some far-reaching and extremely disturbing proposals.
It puts forward a "points-based" system of immigration where the skilled and wealthy would get priority, a severe ID system involving cards and fingerprinting for all applicants and an avowed aim to restrict immigration in the future to skilled workers, family reunion and asylum.
After some warmish words about the contribution of migrants to Britain, the paper moves on to the problems of public services and the demands of the newly arrived.
The most controversial area regards the path to gaining citizenship, which is encapsulated by a strange rhetorical statement.
"If reform of immigration is to contribute to the government's wider agenda of reinforcing shared values, then change has to extend beyond the policy of who can come and who cannot and beyond the administration of policing that policy in practice."
The paper then goes on to describe the "earning" of British citizenship through a period of residence, followed by probation, an application and the granting of citizenship.
The paper proposes limited access to benefits and very draconian treatment for any wrongdoers until the final stage.
The debate about immigration in the media is often exaggerated and too often seems to rely on self-appointed bodies like Migration Watch which gain extraordinary coverage for their very narrow and right-wing views.
While there has been net migration into Britain over the past decade, the total number of British citizens living abroad far outweighs the number of foreign nationals who have come to Britain.
For all the claims about immigration, including strange statements from chief constables about immigrant crime waves, the reality is that it has been very good for Britain.
Without immigration, it is hard to see how health, education, transport or science would function at all.
The green paper does not address the fact that it is responding to a media barrage about migration which is nearly all from within Europe. It would be completely illegal to restrict this kind of movement and equally illegal to apply language tests to people coming from EU member states. Actually, the whole paper is aimed at the non-Europeans who come to Britain, the vast majority through family reunion.
The points system for new immigrants will have the perverse affect of stripping poor countries of well-qualified doctors and teachers.
While the government congratulates itself about "the proud tradition of asylum," it is unclear what it will actually do in the future. While prime minister, Tony Blair tried to set "targets" for asylum. The tourniquet on claimants was tightened, with poverty and suffering created deliberately in an attempt to make Britain less attractive to people fleeing their home countries.
Many people who seek asylum, if they are able to get to Britain at all, face an appalling ordeal.
It is normal to endure lengthy delays for a reply from the Home Office.
People who wish to appeal against a rejected application often face periods with no income, housing or right to work. Desperate to survive, these people become easy prey for criminals or illegal working. In the 21st century, we can do better than starve people who have fled from terror.
I wonder whether the Home Office ministers who introduce these policies ever follow the endless campaigns across the country that are faithfully reported by the National Anti Deportation Campaign. Often, local communities have banded together to back families threatened with removal.
Large numbers of undocumented people in Britain are falling victim to exploitative employers. They cannot demand the national minimum wage or access the justice system or health services, yet they often work very hard and make an enormous contribution to the economy.
Trade union support for the Migrants into Citizens campaign is wholly welcome and demonstrates the enduring values of working-class solidarity, irrespective of legal status.
But the media reaction to the green paper ranged from critical to the hysterical ravings of the Daily Express, which blames migration for all the country's ills.
What most commentators have missed is a subtle change in the terms of public debate on our society.
From the 1960s onwards, through race relations legislation and local government funding of communities, Britain has become a multicultural society where diversity is accepted and understood.
In my own area, there are strong and very identifiable communities from parts of the world such as the Caribbean, Bangladesh, Algeria or Somalia. Young people growing up in Britain are part of this rich and positive heritage.
But the language and symbols that are being used by the Home Office suggest that it wants to take us down a wholly nationalist path of "Britishness" based on the French model. This suspicion is backed up by Gordon Brown's decision to utter the words "British jobs for British workers" in his Labour Party conference speech last autumn.
The multicultural model has served Britain well. It has reduced, although not eliminated, racism and made the main cities, particularly London, a microcosm of the world.
Crucially, France's obsession with "Frenchness" has not created the harmony that it is claimed. Instead, it has led to massive discrimination and rioting last year in all the major cities.
The government's green paper simply looks like a very ham-fisted way of trying to appease an anti-immigrant mood created by right-wing and populist newspapers.
The government should be robustly defending our multicultural society instead of pandering to such uninformed rants.