The plan to export ‘illegal’ asylum seekers to detention centres in the Central African state of Rwanda is a cruel, vindictive and inhumane policy. Home Secretary, Priti Patel, is well aware that the plan is expensive and unworkable, but it is nevertheless a scheme that fits the racist mindset of most of the Conservative Party membership and MPs. The Tories believe that they not only need a “hostile environment” for migrants, but they need it to be clearly visible. That is the real meaning of this disgraceful gimmick.
That the policy is unworkable is apparent by the opposition to it even from some top civil servants in the Home Office. There was no evidence, Patel was told by them, that the plan would have any “deterrent” effect on illegal people-smuggling, and she therefore was obliged to issue a rare “ministerial direction”, taking personal responsibility for it. Even some Tory MPs are opposed to the scheme. Former minister, Andrew Mitchell, pointed out in a BBC interview that “the costs are eye-watering”, pointing out that “it would actually be cheaper to put each asylum seeker in the Ritz hotel in London.”
Former Prime Minister and Home Secretary, Teresa May, also opposed the plan, on the grounds of “legality, practicality and efficacy”, adding that the plan was apparently aimed at single men, and asking, “where is her evidence that this will not simply lead to an increase in the trafficking of women and children?”
A policy that is ‘shameful and beyond cruel’
But it is not enough to point to the “unworkability” and “extortionate” nature of the policy, as Keir Starmer has unfortunately done, even if these things are true. It is a scandal that it took former leader Jeremy Corbyn to say what Keir Starmer had pointedly failed to say – that the policy is, by most peoples’ standards of morality – and certainly by the standards of the labour movement – simply wrong. Corbyn correctly described the policy as “shameful and beyond cruel” and he called on the plans to be resisted as far as possible.
Unlike Starmer, even the Archbishop of Canterbury didn’t confine himself to whether or not the plan was “workable” or “too expensive”, thereby putting himself on the left of the Labour leader. When more than 160 charities and campaign groups wrote an open letter urging Patel to scrap the plan, they described the policy as “shamefully cruel”, not just “unworkable” and “extortionate”.
Priti Patel has given no details about who will be deported to Rwanda and under what circumstances, and that is deliberate – it is the headline message that counts, as she grandstands for the Tory Party. Whether it is men, women or children is yet to be defined. But one thing is certain: there will be no Ukrainian asylum seekers sent to Rwanda, however they travelled to the UK, because they have the wrong coloured skin, and it would generate unacceptable publicity. Those given a one-way ticket to Central Africa will only be refugees of African or Middle Eastern origin.
Within all of the government departments overseen by Tory ministers, it is perhaps Home Office Immigration that conducts the most blatantly racist policies. When the Windrush scandal was in the news, there was one case revealed after another of Caribbean migrants who had settled and worked in the UK for decades, paying taxes, raising children and grandchildren, but who suddenly found themselves no longer ‘eligible’ to settle in the UK.
Too many instances of Windrush injustices to be mere coincidence
Many were deported to a country they had not seen since they were toddlers and there were far too many such cases to be mere coincidence: it is indicative of a core of racist officials and functionaries operating at the top of Home Office Immigration. Even after the scandal was brought into the open and the victims were promised compensation, most of those affected are still waiting for justice. Up to last November, according to the Guardian, only 5% of Windrush victims had been compensated. Thousands of victims still face bureaucratic obstacles put up by the Home Office and encouraged by the likes of Priti Patel.
The Nationality and Borders Bill, which is going through parliament is aimed specifically at the most desperate and poorest asylum-seekers. Under pressure from public opinion, when 27 people drowned in the English Channel last November, Priti Patel told parliament that the Bill included provision for “safe and legal routes” for asylum-seekers. In fact, the Bill does nothing of the sort, and Patel was later forced to apologise for the ‘error’. Lies and bluster are by no means confined to Number Ten Downing Street.
So far this year, over five thousand people have attempted the dangerous journey across the Channel in small boats. They do not have the luxury of ‘safe routes’ because of the bureaucratic obstacles put in their way by the Home Office. They do not have the necessary millions of dollars to buy ‘golden visas’ to settle in London, like Russian or Ukrainian oligarchs.
It is patently obvious, except to the most obtuse Tory MP and minister, that people crossing the Channel in small boats would not risk their lives and often the lives of their children, if they were not utterly desperate to seek a life with some security, peace and economic prospects. That might be a ‘crime’ to readers of the Daily Mail, but it is an aspiration that should be supported without qualification by the labour movement.
It is a sick joke to suggest that the deportation policy is aimed at the ‘criminal gangs’ behind people-trafficking. Since when are criminals deterred by deporting their victims to Central Africa? As for Rwanda, it is clear that it is no safe haven; it has a poor human-rights record. The Rwandan government has only agreed to this scheme because the Tories are prepared to throw a lot of money at them, but that government cannot hide its poor record on democratic freedoms.
Government is outsourcing ill-treatment of asylum-seekers.
According to Human Rights Watch, The Rwandan ruling party “continues to target those perceived as a threat to the government”. Critics of the government have been harassed, threatened, or arrested, and there have been disappearances and deaths of dissidents, for which the authorities “regularly fail to conduct credible investigations”.
“Fair trial standards,” HRW says, “are routinely flouted in many sensitive political cases”. Most ominously for asylum-seekers deported from the UK, the Rwandan government has a record of ill-treatment in detention facilities. “Arbitrary detention, ill-treatment, and torture in official and unofficial detention facilities is commonplace,” HRW says. Like the US government ‘outsourcing’ the torture of prisoners through ‘extraordinary rendition’, the British government is outsourcing its ill-treatment of asylum seekers.
There are other reasons to want to avoid Rwanda, as former Tory minister, David Davis pointed out. It has one of the highest rates of malaria infection in the world, according to the World Bank. “Our own government website”, Davissaid, “warns travellers [to Rwanda] about hepatitis A and B, tetanus, typhoid, cholera, and tuberculosis, not to mention rabies and dengue fever, which can’t be vaccinated against.” (Financial Times, April 19).
Labour should have an open-door policy for asylum-seekers
The labour movement has a completely different set of moral standards to the hard-nosed and corrupt demagogues in the Tory Cabinet. It is always working class people who suffer the most from wars, as the current experience of Ukraine illustrates. Labour should have an open door policy for all of those desperate people trying to escape the physical dangers of war and oppression, whether it is Ukraine, Iraq, Syria, Afghanistan, or anywhere else.
The Labour Party should not allow the Tories to scapegoat asylum-seekers and migrants for the problems of housing, health, and education that there are in this country. The Tories, in the pockets of builders and developers, deliberately engineer housing shortages to keep prices and rents high. Labour could point at the money that the Tories threw at their pals on the failed ‘Test and Trace’ system – that alone could have guaranteed everyone a decent home to live in, if it was invested in social housing.
Similarly, the Tories run down health, education, and community services, unless there are profits to be had. Cuts over the last twelve years have devastated services and that has nothing to do with migration. Labour needs to fight head on against the idea that asylum-seekers are in any way responsible for social ills.
But that also means that Labour has to fight for policies that can offer a decent home and decent living standards for all. That means policies that restore the cuts of the past and provide for a massive house-building programme. It means putting real socialist policies at the core of our policy on migration and asylum.
It is the labour movement, not the grinning hypocrites of the Tory Party, who are the real custodians of a rich tradition of support for working class people seeking refuge from war, hunger and oppression. That is our morality and that has to be the starting point of our policies.
