I attended the AGM of the LCFM over the weekend, here are my notes. I attended breakouts on organising in the Unions to oppose the illegal aspects of the hostile environment, this was led by a spokesperson from PCS, we in the GMB have things to learn from them and a second session on ending detention centres.
The final session was addressed by Ben Smoke, one of the Stansted 15, Ana O from the LCFM NC, and Nadia Whittome MP. My highlights from this were learning that the S15 were prosecuted for Terrorism and yet the final court disposition .stated there was no case to answer. Free movement is about the rights of people when they get here, in particular in the work place but also of course under the hostile environment in the housing market, banking services and health services. The anti-raids network is an effective anti-racist anti deportation movement, Labour is no longer part of this. And from Nadia’s speech I am reminded that Govt’s need movements to keep them on the straight and narrow, when they’re awful they can oppose, and when they’re friendly they can ensure that countervailing pressures are in place so they are not blown of course.,
So it appears that Sir Keir Starmer is going to return to his comfort zone on immigration. Ruling out that a Labour Government, led by him, will agree a freedom of movement of workers with the EU, except of course, Eire, Malta and Cyprus, although given some of his comments in the Union, he may well be willing to sacrifice the UK/Eire Common Travel Area.
I don’t know how many times I and others need to say this. We need foreigners, particularly young foreigners to come to this country to work and pay taxes. If they don’t come, the work doesn’t get done, which is one reason there’s a labour shortage. The search for a ‘fair immigration’ policy that restricts incoming workers is like looking for a chimera. We now have an earnings limit that means that teachers and nurses cannot enter the country to work. It’s an economic act of self harm and panders to racism.
Starmer isn’t very good at economics and this is trolling his base. He assumes they have nowhere else to go; the last people to think this were wrong and he is too. …
My branch proposed an Emergency Motion on the Rwanda deportations, here is the debate, sorry about the sound,
and here are the words,
EM2. Oppose Refugee deportation to Rwanda
Congress notes that on the 14th April, Priti Patel announced that the UK and Rwanda would sign a deal allowing the UK government to send unprocessed immigrants to Rwanda. On the 10th April, the High Court refused an application to stop the Govt’s planned removal of people seeking asylum by offshoring them to Rwanda despite the UN warning the Home Office off the likely illegality. This decision was unsuccessfully appealed on Monday 13th June 2022.
The move to offshore those seeking asylum is racist , breaches human rights and our international duties to welcome refugees which are embedded in treaty commitments.
We instruct the CEC to raise awareness of the High Court’s decision on 10.6.22 ensuring our members working in detention centres and work ancillary to the detention centres are informed of the justice and rights of those in their care.
Congress agrees to support the actions of any members in the detention centres and other impacted businesses if they choose to refuse to perform work effecting the deportations
Congress calls on GMB sponsored MPs to campaign to reverse this programme, and for the Labour Party to oppose any parliamentary resolutions enabling this programme. They must recognise that many/most of the transportees are unprocessed asylum seekers fleeing threats of death and war.
London Central General
The CEC issued a qualification which is important to understand the position of the Union. …
The Govt renewed its list of universities which act as gateways to the High Potential Individual Visa route; graduates from approved top universities can apply to enter the UK. The list is published on the Govt web site; there’s been much comment this time round that there are no African Universities on the list but then there are no Latin American Universities nor Asian Universities apart from the pacific rim. The Govt claim to have used two other lists to construct their list; I have examined the QS index, partly because it’s easy to find and partly because I have looked at it before albeit nearly 13 years ago.
What’s startling is the number of PacRim countries now in the top 50, in 2007, there were very few, in 2021, there are many more. This should not be a surprise as the purpose of the QS index was to allow the Chinese state to plan its university programmes to support their investment led growth plans. We should also note that the QS index is/was biased towards English speaking universities.
Top 60 Universities by Region according to QS
There are no Latin American Universities in the Top 50, nor any African. The only Asian universities in this list are on the Pacific Rim, so none from the Indian subcontinent. The top Indian university is the Bombay Institute of Technology (177) and the top African university is the University of Capetown (226). The European figures (15) include 8 from the UK, and two from France, Switzerland and the Netherlands and one from Germany; the last figure surprises me, I would have thought they’d have more, but it could be as a result of the index methodology, although Switzerland has two institutes in the top 50. China has more in the top 60, than the UK and the EU. The HMG list includes the Karolinska Institute of Sweden, which I cannot find on the QS Index, but it claims 7th. The HMG List includes two US universities not in the top 60, but they claim to have sourced their list from multiple sources.
I would need to think harder about the impact of this route to entry to the country; the focus on the top 60 is clearly discriminatory as is most of the UK’s immigration law. This has even been confirmed by a leaked Home Office report. I predict someone is going to get into a lot of trouble for letting those words stay in the report!
The big and most important conclusion from examining these lists is that China is catching up, it has nine universities in the top 57, of which four are in Hong Kong. We can also note that the EU’s footprint in the top 50 is far lower than it once was as it was overly reliant on the UK’s universities.
Here’s my spreadsheet which contains my versions of the two tables, and several pivot tables and charts. …
I was invited to speak at the Young European Federalists rally/conference as a representative of AEIP and CTOE. I spoke about CoFoE’s proposals on Migration, and the need for a generous and inclusive citizenship definitions. My notes and lessons learnt from CoFoE and the conference are overleaf. Use the "Read More" button to accerss it ...
Boris Johnson and Priti Patel have finally pressed the button on their plans to ‘offshore’ asylum processing, Labour’s Yvette Cooper, labels this shameful, unworkable, unethical & extortionate. The Independent reports on previous countries attempts to ‘offshore’ refugee reception their failure, cost and disgraceful conditions applied to people who have done nothing wrong. It also seems the Government plan to use the military instead of Border Force. This is truly outrageous.
Desperate & truly shameful announcement from Govt tonight as an attempt to distract from Boris Johnson’s lawbreaking.
This is a commentary on the CoFoE proposals on ‘Migration’. CoFoE is the European Union's hybrid citizen's panel on the future policies and structure of the Union. Migration is often the issue where racism within the state and population expresses itself most strongly. Debate has become very polarised. If you’re interested, in the issue, you’ll remember the stories and pictures of the Greek refugee camps, and deaths in the Med and in the Channel together with the EU’s payments to Turkey, and the prosecution [ also here ] of rescue ship captains by Italy. Let’s hope this is the opportunity to bury “Fortress Europa”. .... for more, "Read More" ...
I wrote a piece two days ago, focusing on what UK citizens and residents of good will should do about the war in Ukraine but feel I need to clarify.
I congratulate the Ukrainian people and their armed forces for the defence they have put up. It proves to me that the UK, because that is what I know , was fooled by the hybrid war conducted by Russia who weakened the UK’s will to resist its imperial adventures and defend its own democracy. Russia funded the Brexit campaign and much of the Tory Party; Brexit is a massive weakening of the European self defence capability as we can see by the EU’s speed in responding to the Russian invasion compared with the UK’s pedestrian pace. Russia’s propaganda presented us with a view as to the invincibility and overwhelming numeric superiority of the Russian Army. This imbued in some British people, including me, a moral cowardice. This cowardice, equivalent to appeasement in the 30’s will have been reinforced by the moral subversion of NATO due to its US led adventurism in the Middle East.
NATO is the only alliance that can act but to call it a great achievement is hubristic and sectarian overstatement. Today’s NATO is not the same organisation as it was thirty years ago. The need for NATO will be proven if Sweden and Finland seek to join but all its fans need to recognise that the US is not the reliable and generous ally it once was. Trump explicitly questioned the US commitment to Article 5 and Biden’s withdrawal from Afghanistan was not agreed by NATO.
The Ukrainian state is not pretty, it has the 3rd worst record in front of the European Court of Human Rights, and is judged by the EIU democracy index as a Hybrid State. In terms of both metrics the Russian record is worse. NATO member Turkey is the second most frequent breacher of the ECHR. But the Russian invasion is a war crime which it seems will now be investigated by the ICC. Good!
Throughout this we must not forget the brave Russians who are expressing their opposition to the war.
At home, a government that speaks for me must
Implement effective sanctions
Set up effective and generous refugee acceptance programmes
Purge itself of Russian funded corruption
Develop a defence policy that defends us against real threats not fake ones.
I would add that we should rejoin the EU but that will not happen until it ceases to be a partisan issue, however this will take much less than 50 years. …
The nationality and borders bill has been rightly criticised for demonising refugees and asylum seekers, the Acts last year have given the police immunity from prosecution for illegal acts, but I have just discovered, by looking at the New Statesman, that it plans to increase the powers of the Home Secretary to remove the citizenship rights, rendering them stateless,of people she believes have a claim on citizenship of a second state. It is one of the UN Declaration of Human Rights, not to be stateless. The ‘Statesman, rather dramatically suggests 6 million people could be in jeopardy.
In the article in the ‘Statesman, the show more button works. …
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