Albanian migrants defy Tory racist scapegoating in London on Saturday (Picture: Guy Smallman)
The Tories have locked in greater hostility towards refugees with their new deal with the French government. The agreement aims at stopping people crossing the Channel.
Rishi Sunak called the £63 million deal, signed on Monday, “a foundation” for more measures set for the coming months.
In France, it will lead to an increase in violent repression that sees refugees moved on with nowhere to go. Already French military police enact a brutal regime of intimidation, and regularly slash tents and destroy camps.
The Tories will want more of this—and either for refugees to simply disappear or be locked away under someone else’s key.
Next Thursday will be a year since the deaths of 27 people resulting from British and French border forces ignoring desperate pleas for help.
This is the Tories’ way of marking the anniversary. The new deal includes a 40 percent increase in patrols to detect small boats leaving France and puts British staff in French control rooms for the first time.
And it will boost investment in French port infrastructure and the use of technology, such as drones, to detect crossings. Sunak justified the move by saying that British people’s priority is to “grip illegal migration”.
This is a calculated claim to deflect from his crumbling government and scapegoat the most vulnerable.
The government is desperate to paint migrants as criminals who pose a threat. Meanwhile the number of refugees waiting more than three years for an answer to their asylum application in Britain has quadrupled in the last 18 months. In December 2020, some 2,284 adults and children had been waiting for a decision for more than three years. By June 2022 the number had risen to 10,276.
Refugees without status are left in limbo, unable to work and forced to live on £7 a week. That’s not because there’s too many applications being made as the Tories claim, but because the asylum system is broken.
Britain has faced much higher numbers. Back in 2002 there were some 84,130 asylum applications made. So far this year just 63,089 have been made.
But immigration minister Robert Jenrick has insisted that worse accommodation would remove the “pull factor” for refugees coming to Britain. He claimed that a shortage of acceptable accommodation means refugees being kept in “unsuitable” hotels. They are deemed “unsuitable” not because of the conditions and inedible food—but, he says, because it costs the state too much.
For the Tories, suitable means squalid and barbaric conditions like that of Napier Barracks in Kent, the now-closed Penally Camp in west Wales or Manston processing centre in Kent. And the government is now considering keeping refugees waiting for their application to be processed in holiday parks and cruise ships.
The Tories’ cruel system is a horror show—and Labour doesn’t challenge it. It means refugees who have travelled for years and risked their lives in flimsy dinghies are left at the mercy of the racist Home Office and French police.
Thousands of Albanian migrants protested in central London last Saturday against the Tories’ racist lies.
They raged at home secretary Suella Braverman for claiming that Albanian migrants make “spurious claims” about modern slavery to “circumvent” border controls.
One protester said, “We come here, respect the law of the country, pay taxes like everybody else, work six to seven days a week for who knows how many hours. And then you call us criminals? How dare you.” Another added, “We are here to say today to tell Suella Braverman that we’re not criminals, we’re normal people like everyone else.”
It suits Tory claims that Britain’s border regime is too soft to paint Albanians as “fake” refugees. The new deal with France also includes a task force to clamp down on Albanian migrants.
It’s more divide and rule for the Tories—painting as many refugees as they can as lousy rather than vulnerable people and workers.
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