The report traces how employers and governments in Western Europe found a cheap and convenient method of meeting labour shortages by developing a system of short-stay employment for migrant workers.
The result has been super-exploitation in the workplace. Much of this is done through agencies. In France, workers at the Esso plant were paid 750 francs (£68) a month for a nine hour day. The authors calculated the agency rate at 1,800 francs. Rates for migrant workers at the Ford factory in Cologne were found to be 25 percent lower than those for. West German workers. INGRATIATE What do the unions do about this situation? Not much, according to the report. Even the French CGT *is now so institutionalised, so wedded to its own traditional working class supporters, so concerned to aid the Communist Party in its attempt to ingratiate itself with the French middleground, that it almost completely ignores the foreign workers' proDiems This failure to relate to the problems of migrant workers has had exIn July 1973 a lorry broke down near Aix-les-Bains, in France. It was sealed. According to the customs declaration it was carrying sewing machines. In fact the police found that it was crowded with 59 Africans from Mali. There was little food or air, and the only sanitation was piles of straw.
The 'new found slave trade is only one aspect of the plight of migrant workers in Europe highlighted in a new Minority Rights Group report*.
plosive consequences. The report states that everywhere the focus of hostility to immigrants was housing, not the workplace RACIST Discontent with the crisis of social provision has found an easy target with the migrants. A survey of opinion polls in the report shows 92 per cent of French people believing that France has too many foreigners'; two-thirds in Germany wanting to 'get rid of those employees'; and 42 per cent in Britain in before white ones.
restricted to opinion polls. In 1972, Dutch workers burned down several there have been repeated attacks against North African workers. In April 1973, an insane Algerian murdered a French bus driver. In the weeks that followed no less than eleven Algerians were killed in racist attacks.
reading for all militants fighting against racism in this country. But was taken.
wrong. conclusions:
UNWISE favour of laying off coloured workers But racist sentiment has not been immigrant boarding houses. In France The mass of information provided by the report makes it essential reading of agriculture.
RACIALISM Appalling living conditions are not the only hardship suffered by migrant workers in Marseilles-this 'bidonville" was machine-gunned by racists shortly before this photo the authors come to dangerous and *It will call for political leadership in Europe to explain to the electorate what the true price of the massive immigration in the last 20 years has been. To tell them that it is neccessary and possible to cut it down. (Of course we do not mean to suggest sending home those who have already made Europe their home a minority.) But we will have to pay to finance the transition a historic transition which will leave both sides better off.
The transition suggested by the authors flows from their analysis of what causes immigration. For them the cause is the massive internal migration in the underdeveloped countries of the world, and in those impoverished European countries like Italy and Greece. The move from countryside to city, they claim, has been provoked by the unwise industrialisation of these countries, the archaic land tenure systems and unproductive methods From this they deduce that what is necessary is immigration controls WINGTON C and 'untied aid' from the developed capitalist countries to the underdeveloped, devoted to the expansion of the agricultural sector. They note a 'welcome departure by Robert McNamara of the World Bank in this direction The cause of immigration into Western Europe, however, is the systematic underdevelopment of these countries by imperialism. The level and direction of industrialisation are not determined on the basis of the objective needs of that country, but by the needs of the international ruling class - of which spokesman The regimes in those countries have developed under the dominance of the capitalist class. "Untied aid will have the same result as direct aid: the systematic deepening of the contradiction between town and country, mass unemployment, poverty and emigranon Equally, the advocation of immigration controls - no matter how touched up with aid for the third world and the poorer European countries only provides a basis for the further growth of the racist sentiments which the report documents so well, and bolsters the vicious system of contract labour which they attack It is typical of the method of the report, which sees the 'problem as being internal to the countries from which migrant labour comes •that its conclusions do not include the necessity of fighting for the basic. rights of employment, housing education and social provision, as well as the fight for the liberation of the countries presently dominated by imperialism.
That is the only reply possible to the just retort of the immigrant worker who says: We are here, because you were there.' * Western Europe's Migrant Workers Réport no 28, Minority Rights Group Price 45p (plus 15p p&p) from Red Books c/o 97 Caledonian Road, London N.1.
MEDIA ACTION PLANNED A major responsibility for the deaths of three Asians in the last fortnight lies with the press, whose hysterical coverage has done much to spark off the present racist upsurge But this has not gone unchallenged. Central London branch of the National Union of Journalists is ask ing for action to be taken against those responsible, and now the union's Book Branch is supporting a meeting on Tuesday 15 June at 6.30 p.m. in the St Bride Institute, Bride Lane, London E.C.4, to orga nise a Fleet Street demonstration and rally. All members of black and trade union organisations welcome