Immigration is why your wages are low, or why you can’t get a decent job. It’s why you feel anxious about where you live, and why so many feel the pace of change has been too quick. People arriving on small boats are unlikely to subscribe to “British values” and Muslims need to integrate better – “they” aren’t like you.
These statements make up the longstanding political orthodoxy on immigration. It is a doctrine that refuses to budge but must be tackled head-on – especially if politicians are as outraged by the recent violence as they say they are. The situation demands it. In the past two weeks, hotels housing people seeking asylum were set ablaze in Rotherham and Tamworth, a racial checkpoint was set up in Middlesbrough, and immigration advice centres were placed on a far-right target list.
Most mainstream politicians agree that these are the actions of an extreme group of racists. But what they miss is the wider political atmosphere that bred such a violent, racist politics – which didn’t just come about because of videos from Stephen Yaxley-Lennon (Tommy Robinson). Westminster must take a long, hard look at itself: what many politicians now condemn, they also had a hand in manufacturing.
The political “centre” usually reacts to the far right by denouncing its methods and distancing themselves from its coarse, racist rhetoric – but ultimately conceding to its underlying argument. In the days after the general election, Tony Blair advised Keir Starmer that to ward off the far right, he should celebrate what is good about immigration but be sure to “control” it. No matter how respectable and sensible such advice may seem to some within our political classes, the sentiment that “controlling” immigration is a way to appease socially conservative voters is one cause of the corrosiveness.
Why? Because it implies that a fear of immigration is a legitimate concern, and that reducing immigration is the appropriate method to assuage that fear. It is this sentiment that could shape what comes next. One Conservative commentator has already suggested that reducing immigration is at least part of the picture in responding to the violence. In an acutely uncomfortable TV interview about the riots with the independent MP Zarah Sultana (recently suspended from Labour for voting to scrap the two-child benefit cap), Ed Balls maintained that “if you fail to control and manage immigration properly then things go wrong”.
Are concerns about immigration “legitimate”? Demonstrably, no. People who arrive in the UK aren’t to blame for an economy designed to benefit the richest while exploiting and abandoning the poorest – immigration is not a significant causal factor of low wages and it’s not why people have insecure jobs. Anti-immigrant feeling isn’t a natural, inevitable reaction to change either. One study found areas with low levels of immigration had some of the highest proportion of leave voters in them – a vote that was at least partly motivated by anti-immigrant concerns. No: it is mainstream politicians and certain sections of the media that summon these feelings. They characterise certain groups of people, usually those who aren’t white (or not-quite-white), as a cultural threat – often targeting Muslims, no matter where they were born.
The “legitimate concerns” in this case are illegitimate. Admitting this doesn’t mean dismissing what people are saying. Equally, engaging people with these views need not lead to legitimisation. The choice is not ignore or accept. Politics is about persuading people of another way; to think this can’t be done is patronising as well as dangerous.
The government could change the narrative by making the history of empire and migration a statutory party of the curriculum, and by actively countering racism in the press, among opposition parties and within its own ranks. But it could also use this moment to change people’s material circumstances by getting rid of “hostile environment” policies and providing safe routes of travel (one of the only viable solutions to stop people from having to cross the Channel). It could also make visas cheaper, provide better housing, simplify labyrinthine Home Office processes and end temporary, exploitative visas, giving people the ability to come here on decent terms and stay if they want to.
This boldness should be extended beyond immigration. The government should tax the richest, invest in public services and do what’s needed for a just transition from fossil fuels. This all matters in and of itself to improve people’s lives, but it is also a necessary response to what has happened. It would be a mistake to characterise the far-right riots as a cry of desperation from the poor: that ignores the racism at play and the many working-class people who are actively opposed to this kind of politics, including minorities. But making the country a fairer place, that is easier and better to live in, would help create a future for people to invest in – an alternative to the xenophobic, inward-looking allure of the right.
This would, though, require a quite remarkable change of tack. The Labour government is gearing up for cuts, and one of the party’s attack lines in the election was that the ultra-hostile Tories were too liberal on immigration. But they should take notes from the vibrant anti-racist demonstrations, which project a more positive vision of the kind of country we can be.
The reasons behind the recent violence are many and complex – it cannot be neatly chalked up to the immigration debate alone. But the anti-immigrant sloganeering needs to stop: whether it’s the appeasing of “legitimate concerns”, a commitment to “stop the boats” or the more-acceptable-in-polite-society promises to put “controls on immigration”. They have all played their part in leading us here. If politicians want to understand the far-right violence, this is one of the places they must start.
Maya Goodfellow is a writer and academic, and the author of Hostile Environment: How Immigrants Became Scapegoats
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