TONY BENN once observed that the way governments treat refugees is the way they would treat the rest of us if they could get away with it.
The Tories cynically exploit every tragedy caused by their own elimination of safe routes into the country — the six people who drowned on Saturday being the latest such example — to push for further attacks on refugee protections, withdrawal from the European Convention on Human Rights being the fixation of the hour.
The warped logic that abolishing all legal barriers to refugees’ mistreatment will somehow save their lives needs confronting.
But building an effective mass solidarity movement with those seeking safety on these shores also means tying the relentless attacks on them to the wider war on democratic rights.
It is not simply that Rishi Sunak and Suella Braverman would treat British citizens like this if they thought they could get away with it.
The retreat from international conventions and formerly accepted legal obligations regarding refugees runs parallel to the dismantling of our own rights to strike, protest and organise.
A state which arrests its citizens for holding up blank pieces of paper at royal proclamations and proposes 10-year jail sentences for people causing a “serious nuisance” is not more concerned with our rights than those of refugees. Every time a further degradation in their treatment is normalised it emboldens the state and police to treat other “problem” people in the same way.
Nor is a government that has driven public services to the point of collapse through underfunding, outsourcing and privatisation plausibly worried that refugees will put pressure on services and worsen British living standards.
All the pious expressions of regret for the six who died on Saturday amount to nothing while ministers defend repulsive comments like those of Conservative Party deputy chairman Lee Anderson, who said refugees who don’t want to be imprisoned on the giant floating Bibby Stockholm barge should “f*** off back to France.”
Those are not the words of someone who sees refugees as the innocent victims of exploitative people-smuggling gangs, as the Tories claim to. And, while most Tories are less outspoken than Anderson, a government that ignores concerns from experts like the Fire Brigades Union, over the safety of a vessel converted to hold more than twice as many people as it was originally designed for, cannot pretend to be worried about asylum-seekers’ safety.
Immigration Minister Robert Jenrick argues that Anderson is just voicing what everyone feels: he is expressing the “deep frustration” of the British people at rising numbers of refugees.
Countering that means explaining the causes of these rising numbers (still small, by comparison with continental neighbours like France or Germany) in the devastating wars inflicted on countries like Afghanistan, Syria and now Sudan, and the ecological catastrophe climate change is already driving in parts of the world.
The steady crackdown on asylum routes has not reduced numbers, because the factors causing people to flee continue to worsen. If Africa’s Ecowas bloc triggers a major regional war over the crisis in Niger, as it appears ready to do with Western encouragement, we can expect yet more waves of displaced people running for their lives.
But alongside that, pointing to our real enemy is key to building a solidarity of the oppressed and exploited that unites refugees and working-class people in this country.
“F*** off” is not just the Tory attitude to refugees, but to any British citizen who wants properly funded healthcare, smaller class sizes in schools, a functioning public transport system or action to address global warming.
Defence of refugee rights is in all of our interests. Given Anderson’s well publicised hankering for bringing back the death penalty, it’s worth reviving the old adage: unless we all hang together, we will all hang separately.
