AT A press conference yesterday Nigel Farage, leader of Reform UK, set out the programme of mass deportation and detention of migrants if Reform comes to power in the UK.
The plans are for detention centres on military sites to hold 24,000 men, women and children, which Reform would build within 18 months if they came to power with about 600,000 asylum seekers deported in the first parliament of a Reform government.
Farage told journalists: ‘Women and children, everybody on arrival will be detained’ although he graciously accepted that detaining children was ‘much more complicated’.
He committed to leaving the European Convention on Human Rights along with repealing the 1998 Human Rights Acts calling them ‘barriers that can be used by lawyers in this country to prevent deportations.’
The only exception Farage is prepared to make is for former Afghans who had aided US and British forces in the 20 years of imperialist war that shattered Afghanistan.
So, if you are an ex-Afghan soldier who fought on the side of the US and UK occupiers of their country you are a ‘brave’ person, but if you are a family with young children fleeing the devastation of imperialist wars across the world then you are a disgusting enemy of the British state and the capitalist economy.
Refugees, asylum seekers and so-called ‘illegal immigrants’ are to be locked up in detention centres before being deported to anywhere in the world, without any recourse to the courts or justice.
When asked by a journalist if he minded sending asylum seekers back to countries where they could face torture or death, Farage said it didn’t ‘bother’ him, adding that ‘it’s all about whose side are you on.’
To enforce this round up of migrant workers and their children will undoubtedly require arming the police with extra powers of detention similar to those enjoyed by the US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) that Donald Trump has unleashed on the working class in America.
The working class will be clear whose side it is on in this massive push to whip up hatred against refugees and immigrant workers in order to create the conditions for the destruction of any semblance of the rule of law, replacing it with a naked police/military dictatorship.
In language strikingly reminiscent to that used in Germany and Italy in the 1930s, the capitalist ruling class are desperate to try to split the working class, using racist attacks on migrant workers claiming that they are responsible for low wages, unemployment and the NHS crisis – not the bankers and speculators who are demanding super-charged austerity to rescue British capitalism from going bankrupt.
This frenzied attack is being driven by the massive recessionary collapse of British capitalism, drowning in unrepayable debt to the bankers and international speculators, and whose only solution is to make the working class pay the price.
The massive problem for the ruling class is that it has to confront a powerful, undefeated working class that has demonstrated it is not prepared to sacrifice its lives or the gains of the welfare state to keep a bankrupt capitalist system from collapse.
What the ruling class requires is a police /military state to impose a dictatorship over the working class.
After all, if refugees threaten to destroy capitalist society then how much more of a threat are striking public sector workers, nurses and doctors making pay demands that are ‘unaffordable’ for the bosses and bankers. Strikes are to be met with the same force of the capitalist state as that being proposed for refugees.
Throughout the mass wave of attacks on refugees, the leadership of the TUC have remained completely silent.
At the TUC conference on September 7th this silence and passivity in the face of this blatant attempt to split the working class and prepare for a class war to the finish must be ended.
Unions must force the leadership of the TUC to call an immediate and indefinite general strike to bring down the Labour government and replace it with a Workers Government and Socialism.
A Workers Government will expropriate the bosses and bankers and welcome every worker from any country to join in the building of a worldwide socialist society whose motto will be ‘from each according to their ability, to each according to their need.’
Forward to the victory of the British and World Socialist Revolution. There is not a moment to lose!