The Blanket

The Blanket - A Journal of Protest & Dissent

No Human Being is Illegal!

Sean Matthews • 9 August 2004

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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All censorships exist to prevent any one from challenging current conceptions and existing institutions. All progress is initiated by challenging current conceptions, and executed by supplanting existing institutions. Consequently the first condition of progress is the removal of censorships.
- George Bernard Shaw



Index: Current Articles



14 August 2004

Other Articles From This Issue:

At One with the West Belfast MP
Kathleen O Halloran

Disbanding the Provos
Tommy McKearney

Lessons from the Ceasefire
Mick Hall

Jobs for the Boys
George Young

Working Withing British 'Law' With A Vow NOT to Use Force Against the British
Sharon O'Sullibhan

Conditions for Irish POWs Today
Deirdre Fennessy

The Faithful...
Liam O Comain

Globalised Indifference
Anthony McIntyre

No Human Being is Illegal!
Sean Matthews


8 August 2004

An Ireland of Equals!
Kathleen O Halloran

A Socialist in West Belfast
Anthony McIntyre

A Living Tapestry of Tongues
Sean Fleming

Paranoia is Healthy: Michael O'Connell's Right Wing Ireland?
Seaghán Ó Murchú

'The Labor of Reading'
Liam O Ruairc

Seamus Costello, Joe McCann and myself. . .
Liam O Comain

Anti-Semitism at the World Social Forum?
Cecilie Surasky

 

 

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