Open%20borders%20The%20case%20against%20immigration%20controls%20-%20Teresa%20Hayter

Resistance 137
movement against racism and fascism which attracted much publicity. The
Campaign Against Racism and Fascism (CARF), set up in 1977, has a bimonthly
magazine and publishes a mass of information on state abuses of
human rights, on racist attacks by the white population and the police, and
so on. Statewatch magazine monitors the state and civil liberties, including
the treatment of migrants and refugees, in Britain and Europe; it has
unearthed a large amount of information on Fortress Europe and forced the
European institutions to reveal information on their secretive activities in
joint policing of crime and immigration. Inquest provides support to the
families of black people who have died in custody. A local group, Dover
Residents Against Racism, has been set up to campaign for the rights of
asylum seekers in Dover and to defend them against attack. Counter-demonstrations
against the National Front have been held in Dover, and have
generally been successful in preventing the National Front from marching
and rallying, in spite of massive police protection; they have been supported
by the Anti-Nazi League and by anarchist and green groups, as well as the
left in general, and have been welcomed by the local people they encounter
opposed to ‘those people’, the fascists. The National Coalition of Anti-
Deportation Campaigns (NCADC) provides support and helps with publicity
and organisation for campaigns against the deportation of individuals and
families and also against detention and for more general campaigns for the
rights of refugees and migrants. It publishes a newsletter, distributes
information and organises numerous meetings, and has paid campaigning
officers in Birmingham, London and Manchester. Its strong support for very
large numbers of anti-deportation campaigns has helped to create a climate
of resistance against the inhumanities of the immigration and asylum system
and to politicise this struggle. When some in the Asylum Rights Campaign
preferred to lobby behind the scenes against Labour’s Asylum and
Immigration Bill in 1997–98, the NCADC and NAAR set up the Campaign
for Asylum and Immigration Rights (CAIR).
The Campaign to Close Campsfield was set up in response to the opening
of Campsfield immigration detention centre in November 1993, mainly on
the initiative of Bill MacKeith, president of the Oxford and District Trades
Union Council. The campaign was set up with three main objectives: the
closing of Campsfield, the ending of all immigration detention, and the repeal
of ‘racist immigration laws’. The last of these was a compromise. The
campaign is broad-based and some of its supporters argue that some form of
immigration controls are necessary; others believe that to abolish the racist
ones would be to abolish them all. The campaign has held monthly meetings
and has demonstrated at midday on the last Saturday of each month outside
Campsfield ever since it started over six years ago. On a national demonstration
on 4 June 1994, the day before the first major protest inside
Campsfield, there were some 500 people. The campaign has received letters
from detainees expressing their appreciation of the demonstrations. Possibly
their main usefulness has been in showing detainees that there are people