Starmer now sees the immigrant as threat to national security
It is not a small measure of the crisis of world capitalism when a country like Britain has to seek ‘economic growth’ in a partnership with China – a country that British capitalism reviles and holds under sanctions. To try and justify its Tory policies, the Starmer leadership endorses the far-right view that immigration must be criminalised, and not capitalism.
The far-right Reform UK Party of Nigel Farage dominates the country’s political discourse which criminalises immigration and disparages the immigrant. In the Red Wall[1] city of Leicester this January, Farage announced in Trumpian tones his plan to Make Britain Great Again. The far right is making gains against the Tories in the country, and against Labour in the Red Wall. The more Starmer shows himself in light of the patriot, the shriller come the far-right cries that he does not do enough to prove it. Farage blames the Starmer government for “the security crisis” caused by unchecked immigration-invasion, not enough measures taken against the “flood of immigrants”, illegal offenders, likely criminals and Jihadists.
Starmer the patriot
Immediately after its election, the Starmer government found £150m to upgrade the new Border Force and repair links with the EU and Frontex. From September 2024 onwards, 500,000 refugees were returned to Syria, with 200,000 after the fall of Assad. Starmer now pledges £84 million for projects in Rwanda, Nigeria, Kenya, Afghanistan, Syria, to try and “stop the migrations at source”. But this pitiful sum is nowhere commensurate with the vastness of the imperialist destruction, past and present, visited on those countries.
Anti-immigration discourse has been dominating the British news for decades. The view that immigration is encouraged “by the generosity of our benefit system” is used to play-down the viciousness of the social security cuts. In 2022-23, 2.3 million people in the UK lived in households that have used foodbanks. The ruling class incites the less educated to racial prejudice and colonial arrogance. Desperate and marginalised people go out to attack Mosques and torch migrant’s hostels, whilst private US health and insurance companies quietly take over sections of the NHS[2].
As early as 30 January 2025, the Starmer government commenced the passage through parliament of the Border Security, Asylum and Immigration Bill. This law creates new criminal offences in relation to unauthorised entry in the country, and the tracing of persons accused of people smuggling. It legalises the setting up of British immigration detention centres in other countries. Through amended counter-terrorism laws, it grants new police powers to the guards of the Border Security Command.
Schedule 7 of the Terrorism Act 2000, now updated and amended, allows the government to make of immigration a national security issue. The aim is to intimidate and silence opposition to Israel’s genocide in Gaza, and most of all, to silence opposition Britain’s connivance in Israel’s genocide. Under the Act, Tony Greenstein was charged last December “on one count of inviting support for a proscribed organisation”[3]. He had published a tweet defending the right of the Palestinians to resist Israel’s genocide.
The Public Order Act 1986, now updated with amendments, allows serious terrorism charges to be brought against defenders of Earth and Climate like those of Extinction Rebellion and Just Stop Oil. This Act was used on 18 January this year against the 23rd National pro-Palestinian March in London (50,000 participants). After having agreed with the march, and allowed a part of it to move forward, police suddenly moved to immobilise it. It arrested the chief Steward Chris Nineham with some violence, and it arrested Ben Jamal, director of the Palestine Solidarity Campaign. Both are charged with ‘inciting people to fail to comply with conditions’ under the Public Order Act. In all, 77 people were arrested, often for just obstruction, in a perfectly peaceful march.
This announces new and concerning restrictions on the right to peaceful assembly. It is a serious attack on the right to take the part of the Palestinians in Britain. This is complicated by Starmer’s complete alignment with the multiple Zionist lobbies in the country and in the Labour Party. And it is assault on the right to protest, up to now untouched by Brexit as inscribed in the Human Rights Act 1998 through Articles 10 and 11 of the European Convention on Human Rights.
Back in Dec 2024, Chief Rabbi Mirvis had accused the British police of failing to ensure that “British Jews feel safe after pro-Palestinian demonstrations had been allowed near London synagogues”. Following the demonstration and the arrests, the Board of Deputies reported on X that they had met with the Chief Police Commissioner and had thanked them for their professionalism[4]. There is a growing identity between the struggle to speak truth to power on Palestine and that to speak truth to Labour on working class democracy.
The desperation and weakness of capitalism and Starmer
In May 2024, the UK High Court of Justice ruled that “the Government acted unlawfully” in relation to the Public Order Act and to the Policing Act. In these Acts, government had inserted amendments that parliament had rejected in 2023[5]. The government did not have the right “to use statutory legal instruments and secondary legislations” to achieve this. The Sunak-Braveman government had tried to give police almost unlimited powers to silence people. Katy Watts, lawyer at Liberty, said in conclusion: “It is not up to the Government to decide what causes people can protest on. Nor is it right for the government to sideline both Parliament and the public in making these decisions”[6]. As a result of this, the charges against 34 Climate and Greenpeace protesters were dropped.
The Starmer government is complicit in the utilisation of the Tory repressive laws. Charges like ‘incitement to violence’ and ‘incitement to hatred’ are slapped on the anti-fascists who stop Nazi rabble trying to torch migrants’ hostels and Mosques. Incitement charges can carry penalties of 14 years in jail. But who is inciting? The chief inciter is the government with its hatred of the immigrant.
The Starmer government uses fraudulently the Labour label to conduct an entirely Tory policy – a policy itself in cahoots with the likes of Farage. It is the Starmer leadership that finances and arms Israel’s genocide in Palestine, and punishes pro-Palestinians for ‘incitement’ against Israel. It is the Starmer government that incites hatred against the immigrant instead of criminal, depraved and moribund capitalism.
The issue of Palestine unites the trade unions and the left
A dangerous failure for British imperialism was driven home when trade union leader Mick Lynch – still leader of the RMT in August 2024 – flew from London to Belfast to support the anti-Nazi demonstrators on the rampage. There, he joined hands with the Irish Republican Socialist Party (ex INLA), the general population and workers, the Public Service Union (PCS) and the Irish Congress of Trade Unions (ICTU). In his speech, he criticised petty nationalism and spoke in favour of international socialism. It was not the police that dispersed the scum paramilitaries and their delinquent loyalist allies, but the mobilisation and resolve of these comrades who chanted “Nazi scum, off our streets”.
‘Palestine’ is the issue that draws the workers together. Their unions’ leaderships are slow and reluctant to get involved, but all the trade unions (but one) have affiliated to the Palestine Solidarity Campaign. In 2023, the TUC supported the BDS campaign and in 2024, it denounced Apartheid and genocide in Gaza. The heroic battle of the Palestinians for survival is an inspiration to the working class and the opportunity to grow a political analysis of capitalism in the British trade unions.
The traditional organs of workers’ power in Britain are the trade unions and their present centralisation around Labour structures. As in a rope, so to say, the Labour orbit is made of many strands. The Starmer leadership represents the strand of imperialism and Zionism most tied to Nato nd war preparations for war on Russia and China. Other strands tie the Unions’ and labour bureaucracies together – some closer to the working class, others closer to careers self-advancement and corporate power. Yet others represent educated petit bourgeois, intellectual and academic sectors who feel that capitalism is driving to war, Nazism and genocide.
The task is to separate the strands consciously, not just letting them unravel as they would. Consciousness is required to build the political united front, from inside and outside Labour, that helps free the working class from its strangulation in Labour. The Palestinian Trade Unions are calling for help, and the present task is to help the British and international Trade Unions answering them; not occasionally or from time to time, but politically, systematically, with projects to unite the Workers for a Free Palestine with Workers in Palestine, the PSC and the left-wing British Trade Unions. The fact that the TUC calls for a Day of Workplaces’ Action for Palestine (on 13 Feb 2025) shows that this is possible. Workers’ internationalism is growing thanks to the Palestinians’ anti-colonial tenacity.
Posadists Today, 26 January 2025
[1] The Red Wall designates the number of Northern constituencies always voting Labour in industrial times.
[2] https://blogs.lse.ac.uk/internationaldevelopment/2024/06/17/migrants-as-threats-to-national-security-who-benefits/
[3] He was charged under Section 12(1) of the Act, which can carry a penalty of 14 years. It used to be 10 years in 2001. Hamas was proscribed by government in 2021. In Nov 2023, Keir Starmer said that “the days of Jeremy Corbyn as Labour MP are over”, after Corbyn had refused to call Hamas a terrorist organisation.
[4] https://x.com/BoardofDeputies/status/1881023784200663351
[5] The High Court ruled that the government acted unlawfully in creating legislation which gave police ‘almost unlimited powers to restrict protests’ – https://gardencourtchambers.co.uk/high-court-finds-government-anti-protest-legislation-unlawful-after-legal-challenge/.
[6] https://gardencourtchambers.co.uk/high-court-finds-government-anti-protest-legislation-unlawful-after-legal-challenge/
