Rudd: don't make targets of migrant workers

Amber Rudd, the worst Home Secretary since Theresa May, declared at the Tory Party rally that: "Twenty years ago levels of immigration weren’t really an issue in British politics. As net migration has risen, that has changed." Extraordinarily, this nonsense was uttered by a history graduate. She has clearly chosen to forget the long history of racism in this country, such as the thousands of workers who went on strike as long ago as 1968 in support of Enoch Powell's "Rivers of Blood" speech - surely one of British organised labour's low points - or, ten years earlier, the Notting Hill race riots of 1958. Pretending that concerns about immigration are a modern phenomenon provides her xenophobic proposals with an spurious contemporary justification.

Accordingly she announced to the party faithful extensive new powers to reduce the numbers of people coming into the country, and plans to 'name and shame' companies employing workers from abroad by forcing them to publish figures showing how much of their workforce is 'foreign'.

I wouldn't be too surprised if in a couple of years' time she announces that 'foreigners' will have to wear badges sewn onto their coats to identify their alien status. Too fanciful? There is a precedent: G4S, still a recipient of many government contracts, recently had the doors of asylum seekers painted red in Middlesbrough, leading to a number of racist incidents.

With Rudd's speech, we are entering an nastier period of discrimination in the UK, this time subtly led by the government. Rudd has strenuously denied that what she said was racist, saying we ought to be able to have a discussion about immigration. While that is true in itself, it doesn't mean that the boundaries have been abolished. It doesn't excuse incitement to racism, whether deliberately or inadvertently: it seems highly likely that companies that are revealed to have a higher proportion of migrant workers on the payroll would face a racist backlash, a reaction that would rapidly extend from the company to the workers themselves. They might as well put a sign outside saying, "Here be foreigners!"

It is possible that these are not Rudd's intentions, but as a professional politician she ought to assess the possible consequences of her words and actions. If she hasn't, she's failing in her job. If she has, she is a more unpleasant and dangerous person than I have so far judged her to be.

Please sign this 38° petition - here - calling upon Rudd not to force companies to publish how many migrant workers they employ.

Neville Grundy
NW ARMS