I often travel on the London Overground. My line runs between Stratford and Richmond, via Hackney, Holloway, Camden Town, Hampstead, Willesden and Acton: it’s a cross section through London, in which spacious suburbs alternate with the crowded inner city. The fellow-Londoners I see on my travels may be on their way to work in schools or shops, building sites, hospitals, universities and Council yards. They are black, white, middle-class, working class, elderly or young, affluent or poor. Their families may have been here for generations, or they may have recently arrived. As well as English, many of them will speak one or more of London’s 200 languages. In them we see our culture and our horizons - not to mention our local economy - extended in many different ways.
I was born in London and have lived here most of my life. I’ve always appreciated it as one of the most cosmopolitan places in the world. It was founded 2000 years ago by immigrants and has been receiving people ever since, to the extent that almost everyone born in London can claim an exotic ancestry; from Roman to Anglo-Saxon, from Norman, German, Huguenot or Jewish, to Irish, Chinese, East African, Caribbean, Indian, Bangladeshi, East European and many, many more.
Embedded in capitalism
Our London however is embedded in a capitalist system. Its economy is inevitably based on competition, which brings financial benefits to many - often to a gross extent - and deprivation to many others. The ideology behind this, of course, is the vague neo-Darwinist view that people are inherently competitive and that only the fittest really deserve to survive.
This is just ‘human nature’, we are told. A class-based social system supports this; those in power are reluctant to make any more social concessions than are necessary to keep things in equilibrium and profits flowing. If things do go wrong, it’s always possible for the decision-makers to blame someone else, often the people themselves. And it’s useful to be able to set one group against another: white against black; residents against immigrants.
But this flies in the face of anyone’s practical experience of living in London. This is a mostly tolerant place to live, a place that would not function if it were not based on co-operation and basic human decency. We have a population whose tolerance - though tested all the time - doesn’t reflect the ethos of the aggressive system we are asked to live in. Under the circumstances, all the decent things we value have to be struggled for.
It’s painful when the politicians, with the willing help of the media, are able to sway public opinion enough to support their agenda of inequality and intolerance. It would be very easy to characterise the present government as exceptional, but all it is doing is being particularly true to its class. It creates a ‘hostile environment’ for asylum-seekers, it bases its Brexit campaign on scares about immigration, and it is evidently Islamophobic. The crisis of capitalism deepens, Covid spreads, the natural environment dies, but people’s resentment at the government can be headed off by blaming others, often described as ‘migrants’.
Defining our terms
It’s as well to define our terms. Descriptions are often used indiscriminately, sometimes with ill intent. ‘Migrants’ are people on the move, for whatever reason, whether to escape danger or simply to better their lives. If they are accepted in a new host country and settle down they become ‘Immigrants’, just as those leaving that host country to settle elsewhere are ‘emigrants’. It is not illegal to do any of this, subject to the visa requirements of the receiving country. There is no such thing as an illegal migrant. ’Asylum-seekers’ are those fleeing a danger, whether from political repression, war or environmental disaster. This is not illegal either, as is recognised by the UNHCR Convention of 1951, of which Britain was a founding signatory. Once they have obtained much-needed refuge in a new country they have become ‘refugees’.
Right-wing politicians and political commentators will often seek to elide these categories, making out, for example, that asylum-seekers are economic migrants, seeking to better themselves at ‘our’ expense. This is far from the truth. Most of the desperate people seeking refuge in Britain are from Iran, Iraq, Syria, Sudan and Afghanistan, fleeing war and oppression at home. Very many of them are unaccompanied children, orphaned or dispossessed.
Ironically, the bad conditions they are trying to leave behind have often been created by the foreign policies of the countries, including Britain, to which they are now looking for help. The British government’s response, however, is not to accept its obvious obligations but to offer outright hostility. Calling asylum-seekers illegal migrants, stopping their boats, discouraging their rescue, incarcerating and deporting them, are crude, indefensible and in themselves illegal responses to genuine human need.
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