Once again we see in Britain the age-old tactics of the ruling class: to divert the anger of the masses away from the exploiters and against the most vulnerable. The anger against asylum hotels, the furious agitation against the presence of migrants and refugees, is not a spontaneous outburst of the people, but the carefully cultivated product of capitalist propaganda. The working masses suffering under intolerable rents, wage destroying inflation, and crumbling social services, have every right to be angry. Yet this anger, misdirected towards those who seek shelter from war and hunger, is transformed into a weapon wielded by capital against the workers themselves.
What is the reality of these “asylum hotels”? A few thousand refugees, many of them fleeing wars in Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, and other lands ravaged by imperialist intervention, are housed in conditions scarcely fit for human dignity. They’re penned in, surveilled, deprived of the right to work, of adequate nutrition, and made the subject of daily vilification in the capitalist press. The capitalist state, having bombed their homelands, having armed unpopular regimes, having plundered entire continents for centuries, now claims that it cannot possibly find a place for the victims of these very policies except by cramming them into substandard accommodation.
At the same time, British workers face a dire housing crisis. Rents and mortgages rise beyond affordability, social housing has been systematically destroyed by decades of privatisation, and speculation in land and property fills the pockets of the capitalist class. The government, working with the landlords and property developers, has created this manufactured scarcity. Yet instead of acknowledging the capitalist origins of the crisis, the ruling class raises a smokescreen: it is not the landlord, not the profiteer, but the refugee who is to blame!
The capitalist couldn’t devise a more cunning ruse. Two sections of the oppressed — the local proletariat and the migrant poor — are set against one another, while the capitalist state tightens its hold upon both. For the British worker, the immigrant becomes the scapegoat; for the immigrant, Britain becomes an open-air prison. Meanwhile, the profits from our labour continue to flow into the pockets of big businesses and the system of exploitation continues unchallenged.
The revolutionary duty of the proletariat is to tear away this veil of lies. We must remind the masses that it was not the Afghan refugee who closed the factories, not the Syrian child who raised the rents, not the Sudanese mother who cut the NHS to pieces. These crimes were committed by British finance capital, by the landlords and bankers, and by the politicians in Westminster who serve them faithfully.
We must also remind the workers of Britain that the refugees are not strangers to their struggle. They are victims of the same system of capitalist imperialism which exploits the British worker at home. They too are driven into the arms of business, forced to accept poverty wages, and denied rights. In this sense, they are our comrades. To turn against them is to weaken the entire working class. To unite with them is to strengthen the workers’ fight to take control of society.
The agitation against asylum hotels reveals the immense danger of chauvinism. The task of the proletariat is to combat not only the capitalist class of its “own” nation, but also the national arrogance and prejudices that the capitalists instill in the masses. Without this struggle against chauvinism, without the recognition that “workers of the world have no country,” the proletariat cannot rise to the level of a truly revolutionary class.
Therefore, the answer to the so-called “problem” of asylum hotels is not to expel the migrants. The answer is to expropriate the landlords, to construct housing for all, to place the wealth of society at the service of those who labour. Only by abolishing the rule of capital can the needs of both British and migrant workers be met. Only by uniting in international solidarity can we strike at the true source of our misery: imperialism and the capitalist system.
The capitalist class says: “Blame the refugee.” The proletariat must reply: “We will not be deceived. We know our enemy. It is you, the ruling capitalist class.”
