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Racist
attacks, and recent organising by British fascist
groups in working class loyalist areas, are set against
a campaign by ‘respectable’ politicians
and media to demonise and criminalise immigrants.
The term “illegal immigrant” has joined
other racial slurs, becoming a general term of abuse
for foreigners and people from ethnic communities
in the Northern Ireland, Britain and the Irish Republic.
Tony Blair spoke of the growing numbers of women immigrants
coming to the UK as “maternity tourists”
to exploit “our” strained and under-funded
NHS (so who’s responsible for the under-funding,
eh Tony?).
Anarchists
believe in equality between all people regardless
of where their ancestors may be from, what colour
there skin is, or where they are born. We are struggling
for a world with no borders were people are free to
travel the world and settle where they wish- this
is not a freedom that should be extended only to wealthy
elite’s who, supported by nation states, continue
to subject our class to exploitation, domination and
coercive authority.
Today
Fortress Europe, with border controls, armed guards
and concentration camps is alive and kicking. This
has brutal consequences for those seeking escape from
persecution- often fleeing western sponsored oppressive
regimes. Institutionalised racism is occurring in
our own backyard. All forms of public transport from
Belfast to Dublin are regularly searched by immigration
control and garda carrying out racist government policy
and questioning, harassing and barring entry to the
south from the north on the basis of skin colour.
Refugees are shamefully interned in our own concentration
camp at Maghaberry.
Governments
utilise racism deliberately to divert working class
people’s anger away from the real causes of their
problems. Problems such as poverty, housing shortages,
and unemployment have all been blamed on immigrants,
who are definitely not responsible. Racism is used
by capitalism as a tool in dividing our class and
weakening class unity, collective action and class
struggle, because this threatens their privilege and
authority.
The
real ‘spongers’ and ‘parasites’
are not immigrants but the tiny boss elite who live
off our labour, sweat and toil. Immigrants bring a
wealth of experience, culture and make a contribution
to society and the economy, often suffering harsher
conditions and exploitation than ‘native’
working class people. We must also remember that millions
of working class people have immigrated from Ireland-
north and south- in search of a better life, fleeing
inequality, injustice and poverty, over the past couple
of hundred years.
In
confronting racism we must build class unity while
rejecting sectarianism. We reject class alliances
simply because there can be no common interests between
workers and bosses. We need to expose and attack the
institutions which are legitimising racism in our
society, we need to stand up against racist prejudices
and fascists that are carrying out attacks on people
from ethnic minorities. Lobbying for race hate legislation
is not part of strategy as it will eventually be extended
to include anti-fascist/anti-capitalist activists.
Central to this is the need to mobilise our class
and physically and ideologically confront fascism,
and the building of opposition to the system of wage
slavery and exploitation which promotes racist scape-goating
and the criminalisation of immigrants.
Our
goal is social equality and freedom for all people.
Racism is motivated and perpetrated by greed, promoted
by those in power and is festering in ignorance and
misplaced fear. We demand a world free for travel
for humanity, not the exploitation of global capitalism,
a world free from borders and controls on our movement.
Wee seek to abolish governments, which create and
maintain division on behalf of a few wealthy and powerful
people, in favour of autonomous, self-governing communities
which co-ordinate their efforts through de-centralised
federations. Doing away with capitalism, bosses and
politicians and returning the control of work to those
whom produce the wealth of society, the working class.
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