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WSWS : News & Analysis : Europe : Britain

Hypocrisy over racism in run up to British general election

By Mike Ingram
23 April 2001

Use this version to print | Send this link by email

A large degree of hypocrisy in official politics is to be expected, and particularly in the run up to a general election, probably being held in June. In the current row over racism, however, the ruling Labour Party has outdone itself.

Seeking to capitalise on public hostility to the overt displays of racism within the Conservative Party, Foreign Secretary Robin Cook delivered a speech last week welcoming immigration as a prerequisite for economic success and cultural growth.

Speaking in London to the publicly funded research body the Social Market Foundation, Cook attacked Tory leader William Hague for making race an issue in the election with his recent speech claiming Britain was becoming a “foreign land.” Cook said, “If William Hague really wants to stamp out racism in his party he should lead by example. He should tell his activists that standing up for Britain means standing up for traditional British values of tolerance and openness.”

The speech followed an article in the Independent newspaper reporting a leaked memo from Tory party chairman Michael Ancram addressed to party election candidates, telling them to “avoid using language which is likely to generate racial or religious hatred.”

The memo, dated March 26, was sent out only days before Tory backbencher John Townend suggested immigrants were undermining Britain's “Anglo-Saxon Society,” and reports emerged that Tory leaflets in a number of constituencies sought to whip up racism over the issue of asylum and immigration.

Townend was the first of a growing list of Tories who have refused to sign up to an accord issued by the Commission for Racial Equality (CRE) calling on all political parties to ensure their election candidates avoid using language that could “stir up racial or religious hatred or lead to prejudice on grounds of race, nationality or religion.” Labour, Tory and Liberal party leaders have signed the statement, and the CRE has disclosed that 60 percent of Labour MPs, 85 percent of Liberal Democrats and 30 percent of Tories have signed. The most senior figure to refuse to sign is Conservative shadow chancellor Michael Portillo, who said Friday, “No, I haven't signed it because I speak for myself and I have said that I offer equality of esteem to everyone in this country,” adding that party leader William Hague had already signed it on behalf of all the party's election candidates.

The pledge poses real problems for the Tory party with its long history of racist politics. This stretches from Conservative shadow cabinet member Enoch Powell's infamous “rivers of blood speech” in 1968 calling for a halt to immigration, to Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher's 1979 claim that Britain was being “swamped” by immigrants. More recent episodes include:

* In 1998, Conservative MP Teresa Gorman suggested unemployed Bangladeshis in Britain should look harder for jobs in Indian restaurants.

* In August 2000, Tory health spokesman Dr Liam Fox complained patient's lives were being put at risk by the poor language skills of foreign doctors.

* At the party's spring conference in March this year, Hague spoke of Britain being turned into a foreign country by Labour, and declared, “Elect a Conservative government and we will give you back your country.”

According to the Independent, the memo from Ancram says: “The Conservative Party is utterly opposed to racial discrimination.

“We believe in a Britain where what matters is your talent and effort, not the colour of your skin or who your parents were.”

Cook said that he welcomed the letter but added, “I can only regret they found it was necessary. No other major British political party would have found it necessary to instruct their candidates to refrain from racism.”

In response to Cook's speech, the Tories have said that Labour is in breach of the CRE accord in utilising the race question in its attack on the Tories. Hague has accused Cook of “trying to misrepresent the views of the Conservative Party”. He said the Tories “quarrel is simply with the workings of the asylum system, and I think our concerns are shared by the great majority of people in this country. It is not racist to say that. It is nothing to do with any racist attitude. It is simply saying that when you have rules, they should be properly enforced.”

The media have been largely critical of the Tories. Rupert Murdoch's Times newspaper, for example, carried an op-ed comment on Friday April 20 headlined, “Hague is racing about, going nowhere.” Stating that the Tories have tied “themselves in knots over race and immigration,” the article says, “the views of three retiring MPs, John Townend, supported by Christopher Gill and now Sir Richard Body, have been allowed to assume disproportionate prominence. Michael Ancram's letter to candidates reminding them of the undertakings made by Mr Hague to the Commission for Racial Equality has come across as if he were having to restrain the lot of them from donning the uniform of the Ku Klux Klan before canvassing suburbia.”

Later the article acknowledges, “On asylum, however, the Conservatives court the impression that they think that few applicants are ‘genuine' and the rest should be sent back from whence they came regardless of what energy and skills they might bring to the country. The contorted conclusion is ‘old immigrants, good, new immigrants, bad.' Asian Britons could be forgiven if they deduced that the Tory pitch is ‘we do love you, but not too many of you'.”

The Sun, Murdoch's tabloid daily and Britain's highest selling newspaper, is the most unlikely champion of racial tolerance and pro-immigrant sentiment, given its own routine depictions of asylum “scroungers” and little Englander opposition to Europe. But it felt obliged to warn, “Tories making racist speeches will be ripped apart by The Sun”. With its own record in mind, the paper also cynically adds, “If you think you are pandering to us, then you are mistaken.”

The liberal Guardian is more forthright still. “Why should party chairman Michael Ancram need to write letters to all his candidates telling them not to [talk about race]? Why does it still keep bursting out all over?” the paper asks. “There are deep reasons. Race is a subterranean river running through many fundamental Conservative thoughts, feelings and ideals,” the paper answers. “Decent Tories will deny it, tolerance is their hallmark, they will say. Yet those who instinctively yearn for a better yesterday believe in a golden age when people knew their place under one culture and, by implication, one colour too.”

Having identified the racist core of the Tory party, however, the Guardian, along with the Murdoch press, covers over Labour's own abysmal record on race. The Guardian not only goes on to praise Cook's “blistering speech”, but also asserts, “Britain has the best race relations in Europe”. Even when referring to Home Secretary Jack Straw's “unpleasant references to ‘bogus' asylum seekers'” the Guardian sees no hypocrisy in Cook's speech.

Yet just weeks ago, a report was issued by the European Commission against Racism and Intolerance (ECRI) that described Britain as the most hostile European nation towards political refugees. The report speaks of, “Problems of xenophobia, racism and discrimination”, saying these “are particularly acute vis-à-vis asylum seekers and refugees.”

The ECRI speak of a “xenophobic and intolerant coverage of these groups of persons in the media” and condemns the “tone of the discourse resorted to by politicians in support of the adoption and enforcement of increasingly restrictive asylum and immigration laws.”

It is Labour's own shift to the right on race, along with the routine xenophobia of the tabloids, that has in fact emboldened the most extreme elements in the Tory Party to come out of the closet. With Labour having stolen their clothes, a debate is raging as to how to win back a base of support for the Conservative party. The gut reaction of the old Tory right is to become ever more open in their racism, though others fear that this will alienate them further.

Cook's newfound recognition of Britain's need for immigrants is far from universally applied. He is referring solely to highly educated workers in the fields of computer science and telecommunications, where Britain suffers from an acute skills shortage. As far as other asylum seekers and immigrants are concerned, Labour will continue to show them the door.

An Amnesty International report on the first three years of the Labour government comments, “The UK rightly criticises the appalling human rights abuses in countries such as Iraq, Afghanistan, Somalia and the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, but then fails to respect the human rights of refugees from those countries that seek protection here.”

The Labour government's latest Asylum Act came into force on April 1, 2000. Its measures include:

* Replacement of welfare benefits with a food voucher system, worth only £35 a week for an adult.

* The forcible dispersion of asylum seekers around the UK.

* £2,000 fines for those found bringing asylum seekers into the UK, including car and lorry drivers.

* A fast track for dealing with asylum decisions, reducing the time taken to six months, so speeding up the deportation process.

Based on this record, the supposed respect for immigrants and ethnic minorities being called for by Labour and their supporters in the media should be treated with contempt. They are not the opponents of the Tories racism, but their partners in crime.

See Also:
European report condemns British racism and xenophobia
[10 April 2001]
Britain's Conservative Party exposes its racist underbelly
[3 April 2001]
Britain calls for revision of Geneva Convention on asylum
[15 February 2001]