YESTERDAY THE BBC repeated throughout the day film of a police and immigration officials raid on a chicken factory in Derbyshire, to which the BBC was invited along to film, for government propaganda purposes.
The BBC describes the raid as follows: ‘About 60 officers, backed up by the police, walked into a chicken processing factory in Derbyshire. Police intelligence had suggested that illegal immigrants were working there.
‘In a large processing room 56 workers, all of them from overseas, were preparing chicken pieces for the retail trade.
‘UK BIA officers burst into the room, shouting loudly and telling the workers to put their knives down.
‘The shocked workers were lined up against a wall and told they would be questioned to see if they were in the country legally.
‘After several hours of questioning it was determined that 22 of the workers were illegal immigrants. Fingerprints were taken and paperwork examined.
‘The illegal immigrants, from a variety of countries including Afghanistan, Pakistan and India, were led out of the building in handcuffs and taken to police stations.
‘The rest of the workers were sent home.’
The employer was not put up against the wall or put in handcuffs and taken off to a police station.
It was the workforce who were shocked and terrified, presumed to be guilty until it was otherwise proven, while those sent home by the policemen no doubt lost their pay.
And this is an example of the operation of legislation that is supposedly directed against the employer!
As well, the BBC did not reveal whether any of the boarding party of arresting officers were armed – presumably they were.
As far as the employer is concerned, the BBC revealed that ‘Investigations into the owners of the company are ongoing and so far no fines have been levied.’ It adds: ‘If no satisfactory excuse is forthcoming sizeable fines can follow,’ The figure quoted is between £5,000 and £10,000!
It is obvious that this is legislation that is being used by the state to terrify migrant workers.
Meanwhile two workers have been deported, 20 may well be being held in custody pending inquiries and the remainder, having been kept against their will for a number of hours, now know to fear the state.
One would think that the Labour government would be ashamed of images of such racist, police state raids going into every home, via the BBC.
The BBC report, however, does not say when the police state raid on the chicken factory took place.
In fact the raid took place on April 15th and there was no rush to make it public.
Why now then? There will be more than a suspicion that the sudden appearance of this material is something to do with the fact that the Brown government is extremely unpopular, and that someone in the government thinks that making public such material now will help to increase the popularity of the government, by winning the racist vote.
In a situation where hundreds of thousands of white eastern Europeans have been entering the UK legally as part of the EU citizenry, the people that the Brown government is raiding and lining up against the wall, before taking the presumed guilty away in handcuffs to be deported, are all black or brown, and many of them are Muslims. These are racist attacks!
The News Line condemns the government’s police raids on migrants, looking for illegals.
The arch supporters of globalisation and the free movement of capital and capitalists are completely opposed to the free movement of black and brown workers.
We call for the repeal of all racist immigration acts and for working people to be able to move and settle and work where they wish.
Racism and racist immigration acts are part of the divide and rule strategy of capitalism.
Workers of the world must unite to smash capitalism and imperialism, and their offshoot racialism, through the victory of the socialist revolution.
