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British Town Riots Reflect Europe-Wide Problem

By David Bacon/PNS

The British midlands are engulfed by race riots, pitting the children of whites who lost jobs in the country’s devastating de-industrialization against the sons and daughters of those who came to fill service jobs in the decades after World War II.

While the circumstances are not the same, the riots recall the attacks on immigrant hostels in Germany, or those on North Africans in France.

With 130 million people worldwide living outside their country of birth, migration has become a permanent phenomenon. It is provoking questions in the industrialized west about who is responsible for economic devastation and the lack of good jobs, and whether all residents — legal and illegal, immigrant and native — have equal rights and status.

A particularly brutal case in point involves Perry Wacker, a Dutch truck driver, convicted in April in a British court for causing the deaths of 58 Chinese immigrants. To prevent their voices from alerting British custom agents to the nature of his cargo, Wacker closed the air vent on his truck trailer as he loaded it onto a ferry crossing the English Channel.

His subterfuge was discovered, but not until all but two of the people crammed inside — with room enough only to stand — had died from heat, thirst and lack of oxygen.

Wacker was the low man on the totem pole. Ying Guo, a resident of South Woodford, Essex, was also convicted as she had lined up jobs for the border-crossers. But who else was responsible? Gangs of smugglers? European political leaders who seek votes by whipping up anti-immigrant sentiment?

Jude Woodward, an organizer for the London-based National Assembly Against Racism, charges that anti-immigrant hysteria “has been politician-led, and quite cynical” in England. He says the recent election, which the Labour Party won by a big majority, left a residue of increased racism.

“People coming to the U.K. or Europe are being shifted by the law into the asylum system,” he says. “As this has happened, politicians on the right have campaigned against immigrants, saying the asylum system was being misused. Unfortunately, the ... Labour Party and the Labour government, have tended to buy into this argument.”

The Assembly claims that almost all legal ways of coming to Europe have been closed off in line with agreements made within the European Union.

Sabi Dalu, another Assembly organizer, speaks of “tremendous concern” among all people of color, including those of Asian, African and Caribbean ancestry. “There have been relentless attacks on asylum seekers and immigrants, the biggest since the 1960s and ’70s, when you had waves of immigrants come in from the former colonies like India and Uganda.”

According to Woodward, racism exists in the relationship between those countries and the rest of the world, where the majority is not white. The problem will only be resolved, by more — not less — immigration, she says.

“In establishment circles,” Woodward explains, “they say the only way to guarantee good race relations is to keep more people of color from coming in, so that you have a sort of acceptable balance.

“This argument turns reality upside down. The most positive thing for race relations is to have more people of color here, because the more integrated society becomes, the less space there is for racism. This argument is not primarily about economics — it’s about race.”

In trying to harmonize the immigration policies of member countries, the European Union has severely tightened immigration policies. But in the last few years, those policies have been questioned by those who think Europe needs a renewal of its labor force, which can only come about through new migration.

“The circumstances which caused the deaths of the 58 Chinese immigrants, and the current midlands race riots, will only be changed when the whole framework for migration into Europe is changed,” Dalu says. “There have to be legal means by which people can come, and then apply for the right to stay here indefinitely.”

Only a new demographic balance, she argues, and a corresponding increase in rights and power among people of color, will end the riots.

PNS Associate Editor David Bacon writes widely on immigrant and labor issues.