THE Tory government is offering all households in the UK £350 a month to take in people fleeing the war in the Ukraine. Housing Secretary, Michael Gove told the BBC tens of thousands of people could come to the UK under the scheme and the great man himself may offer a room to a refugee.
Gove told the BBC’s Sunday Morning programme the government was looking at the possibility of using the homes and properties of Russian oligarchs sanctioned by the UK for ‘humanitarian purposes’. But what about Buckingham Palace, Hampton Court and Johnson’s spare rooms at Downing Street – they must all be used to really level up!
Local authorities will also receive £10,000 in extra funding per refugee for support services – with more for children of school age, Gove told Sky’s Sophy Ridge on Sunday.
More than 2.5 million people have so far fled Ukraine because of Russia’s military op, producing what the UN has called the fastest-growing refugee crisis since World War Two.
Gove told the BBC the number of Ukrainians fleeing the war who had been granted visas had now risen to 3,000. Under the ‘Homes for Ukraine’ scheme, individuals will be able to nominate a named Ukrainian individual or family to stay with them rent-free in their home, or in a separate property, for at least six months. It is thought this will be subject to renewal, and that a refugee will be able to come to the UK if he or she obtains a sponsor.
Sponsors won’t be required to know them in advance and there will be no limit on the number of refugees who can come to the UK through this route. They will be given three years leave to remain, with the right to work and access public services.
Gove said that he anticipated ‘tens of thousands’ of Ukrainians might be taken in by UK families and he hoped people fleeing the war would be able to benefit from the scheme ‘within a week’.
When we have seen pictures of migrants from foreign wars having to be rescued in the UK Channel and the disgraceful way that Afghan refugees were sent into bog standard accommodation as soon as they arrived, plus Patel’s plans to make asylum seekers register in Asia before coming to the UK to try to gain entry, we can see the difference that a developing war with Russia makes to the situation.
It will literally open millions of doors, to keep the refugees coming, while the West steps up its military intervention and sanctions.
Now that the Red Army is closing in on Kiev, many more people will consider that their best option is to find a sponsor in the UK, especially since the UK, the EU and the US are now sending billions of euros, pounds and dollars of modern arms and ammunition of all types to the Ukraine to step up the war!
Labour leader, Sir Keir Starmer now virtually Boris Johnson’s number two, told Sky News the government’s visa schemes have been ‘too slow, too narrow, too mean’, adding that the government had not consulted local councils about the support that needs to be put in place.
Meanwhile, the UK working class at home is being told that very hard times are ahead, that massive rises in the cost of living are taking place, with food and petrol prices leading the field.
In fact, once the UK ruling class decided to mount a sanctions war against Russia, vast pauperising rises in oil and food were inevitable. That the working class is going to have to accept massive pauperising price increases, and make the best of it, is the ruling class line.
In fact, the US and UK ruling classes have decided that unless they bring down Russia and then China, capitalism is finished and will be dumped into the dustbin of history by the US, UK and EU workers.
We say to workers, of course welcome all refugees. However, now is the time to organise everybody in the trade unions, including refugees, for a general strike to bring down the Tories and its Starmer-supporting Labour Party, so that the working class takes the power, smashes the capitalist state, expropriates the bosses and nationalises the banks and the major industries, to bring in socialism and a workers state.
This is the only way forward. Workers and refugees join the WRP and the YS now, and build them to lead the British socialist revolution, as part of the world socialist revolution!
