'Imported? Control it!' is rapidly becoming the war cry of the Labour and trade union lefts and their friends in the Communist Party. It's but a short step from demanding import controls on foreign goods to demanding import controls on the number of foreign workers entering the country.
Just this happened at the massive Assembly on Unemployment on 27 March, when one delegate from the Seamen's Union, welcoming the demand for import controls from the conference organisers, went on to demand an end to immigration. He was rightly shouted down. But if the so-called lefts are opening the door for racism, what can we expect from the right?
We needn't look far to find out. It was the last Labour Government that introduced the 1968 Commonwealth Immigration Act to keep the Kenyan Asians out following hysterical racist speeches by Enoch Powell and Duncan Sandys. 'NINE DAYS and Saltiev Gate'-olav nertormed bv Poco Novo about the 1926 General Strike and the mass picket of Saltlev in 1972. Sat 10 Aoril. 7.30om. in AUEW Building, 4 Smallbrook Ringway, Birmingham. EAST LONDON Action Committee against the Cuts no unempioyment is nording a und raising sociai or u Apn, o-com, city or London roly student union Alogate cast tuber. Disco and bal BENEFIT SHOW for Campaign to Repeal the Imm Half Moon Theat THE LEFT and the Labour Party'-open forum with Main Miliband (author ot Parliamentary Socialism') and tony banks tormer Labour candidate) Thurs 15 April, 1.30pm at Socialist Centre. 233 Jesmond Road (nr Cradlewell pub), Newcastle. Social afterwards. PORTUGAL: Meeting with Newsreel Collective's new film, On the side of the people. Speaker from iverpool Big Flame. Mon 12 April, 7.30pm, Charitor Hau Train to Cha Ro, SE7. Admission free. Buses 53, HEVOLUTIONARY orcanisation in the present class struggle-Big Flame meeting with speaker from Liver pool. Tues 13 April, 7.30pm, Stockwell Hall, Stockwell rark walk, Brixton, sW9. Into: 659 3895 On Sunday 11 April the Campaign for the Repeal of the Immigration Act is organising a demonstration and march to call for the repeal of the 1971 Immigration Act and all immigration laws. The demonstration starts at 2.30pm from Speakers Corner. Below SHEILA MALONE explains the effect of the legislation and why socialists must oppose all immigration The Act was piloted through Parliament by James Callaghan, then Home Secretary, who wrote racism into the law by distinguishing between ordinary immigrants (who were black) and immigrants whose fathers or grandfathers came from Britain (who were white).
White immigrants from Kenya or anywhere else were not subject to any controls. workers and the whole of the working class at a time of mass unonstrated in recent months. A circular from the City and East London Health Authority, City and Hackney District, informed heads of department of a Department of Employment instruction that *posts held by employees subject to work permits will be treated as the work permit relates expires...lf suitable British nationals are available for work, we will be expected to employ them in the place of the foreign nationals concerned.
That is the situation of those "lucky enough to get work permits. Those who don't but are forced to enter the country illegally - often by vicious repression in their own countries or the destitution wreckation their boss. This was vividly revealed last year when the collapse of the London Eating House Group threw 800 mainly Turkish workers onto tne dole, of whom only half had work permits. Harrasment tries, at the mercy of their boss here, and then made the prey of racist thugs and police harassment - that's the lot of increasing numbers of immigrant workers.
vicious resistance. To cap everywhile the Labour Government is proposing an astronomical increase m overseas students lees winch will exclude all but the very rich.
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The threat this poses to black employment has been sharply demthe new rule. vacancies when the period to which