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

Resistance 141
In the 1950s and 1960s the TUC gave qualified support to the right of
Commonwealth immigrants to come and work in Britain, while arguing that
colonial exploitation was to blame for them coming, and should be
eliminated to make migration unnecessary. The TUC opposed the Commonwealth
Immigrants Bill in 1961, but after 1965 it tended to follow the
Labour Party’s about-turn on controls. It was also opposed to discrimination
against Commonwealth workers, but its opposition was verbal rather
than real. In the 1950s and 1960s it did little or nothing to stop discrimination,
pursuing what Castles and Kosack in Immigrant Workers and Class
Structure in Western Europe call a laissez-faire policy, and considering that
any special services for immigrants were unnecessary and undesirable.
When the possibility of extending the provisions of the 1965 Race Relations
Act into employment discrimination was under discussion, the TUC formed
an unholy alliance with the Confederation of British Industry (CBI) to oppose
any such interference in industrial relations, and worked out joint voluntary
schemes in a bid to stop legislation. Some local unions did, however, embark
on special drives to recruit black workers, and for example printed leaflets in
immigrants’ languages. Nottingham Trades Council founded a local
committee for liaison with immigrants as early as 1954 and published a
booklet welcoming them to the town and urging them to join trade unions,
which they did. Viraj Mendes, a NALGO member, and Abdul Onibiyo, a
UNISON member, are among the best known of many trade union members
whose campaigns against deportation in later years have been backed,
sometimes strongly and effectively, by their trade union.
Left trade unionists have long held the position that racism and discrimination
against black workers are a weapon used by employers to divide and
weaken the labour movement, and should be resisted on those grounds. They
have, moreover, argued against immigration controls, both on principle and
because they may create an ‘illegal’ workforce which is vulnerable to
exploitation and which employers hope to use not only as cheap labour but
as a means of undermining organised labour, through strike-breaking for
example. In practice there have been few examples of foreign workers
allowing themselves to be used in this way, and in Britain they have been
among the most militant sections of the workforce. A higher proportion of
black people than of white are now members of trade unions. This has
contributed to a sometimes grudging respect for them among white workers
in general, and at times to active solidarity, such as the support by the labour
movement for the Asian women who carried on a long and militant strike at
Grunwicks and, by Liverpool dockers in particular, for the Asian women who
struck with determination against contracting out and wage cuts in cleaning
services at Hillingdon Hospital.
In Britain green activists have been overwhelmingly supportive of
campaigns for the rights of refugees and migrants. There is no equivalent of
the fascist infiltration of green movements including the Sierra Club in the
United States, which use the argument that if people migrate to the United