Support for refugees on UN anti-racism day protests (Picture: Guy Smallman)
The Tories want to make life even more unbearable for refugees seeking safety in Britain by housing them in disused army bases and ferries. That’s a concession to the fascists and racists who have protested against the use of hotels.
Sunak is soon expected to declare the “beginning of the end” of using hotels, saying it costs too much. Any refugee who is awaiting a decision on their asylum case will be moved out of hotels. And it also means access for charities and organisations will be harder.
The £6 million a day presently spent on hotel accommodation goes into the pockets of multinationals and subcontractors, who profit from running Britain’s immigration system. And it’ll be the same for the contractors who will run the ferries and bases.
Refugees have lived in squalid conditions in a whole host of camps—from Napier Barracks in Kent and Penally in west Wales to Manston detention centre in Dover. The inhumane overcrowding at Manston led to scabies and diphtheria spreading, pregnant and elderly people sleeping on the floor for weeks, and a man dying. And home secretary Suella Braverman ignored the overcrowding
The Tories claim the new sites will be “decent but rudimentary”. Dirty, run down and overcrowded accommodation surrounded by barbed wire will be the reality. RAF Scampton in Lincolnshire and MDP Wethersfield in Essex are two sites in the running and will each hold up to 1,500 people. But over 50,000 people currently live in hotel accommodation.
Meanwhile the Tories pushed ahead with their Illegal Migration Bill this week in the Commons. Hundreds of protesters organised by Stand Up To Racism, charity Care4Calais, the PCS union and the People’s Assembly protested on Monday against the bill.
Some 60 Tory MPs initially threatened to rebel against the measure—because they wanted to make it nastier. But they then said the government had largely given into them and would back the bill.
Their demands included making it easier to ignore rulings made by the European Court of Human Rights and blocking judges from granting injunctions to stop deportations. The bill will deport any refugee who comes to Britain “illegally” and stop them from applying for asylum.
Whatever they are fleeing from, they wil not be given a hearing. Meanwhile Labour is toughening its stance.
Labour’s shadow home secretary Yvette Cooper and shadow immigration minister Stephen Kinnock have proposed an amendment that means a deal has to be made with European Union states to stop crossings and up removals.
Keir Starmer has also upped his anti-refugees rhetoric claiming the people who are trapped in the Tories’ system will “end up in hotels and other accommodation at the taxpayers’ expense”. Anti-racists have to resist the Tory assault on refugees—and the far right forces that gain confidence from it.
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