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

Border Controls 41
But Labour’s internationalist principles did not survive in government. In
the few months of the Labour-Liberal government of 1924, under attack
from the Tories, they operated the legislation against aliens more harshly
than their predecessors. In spite of these efforts Labour lost the 1924
elections. The Tories argued that this was because Labour put the interests
of aliens before those of ‘our own people’. In opposition, while stating that
they recognised the need for controls, Labour proposed a compromise; the
Labour MP John Scurr, proposing the compromise amendment, let slip the
comment: ‘We are not afraid to say we are internationalists – all of us. ... The
boundaries between nations are artificial.’ This outburst caused great embarrassment
to the Labour leadership, intent on regaining power. Back in
government in 1929, according to Paul Foot, ‘almost the first act’ of John
Clynes, Labour Home Secretary, was to refuse asylum ‘to the most hunted of
all political refugees in this century – Leon Trotsky’. In 1931, in response to
Tory criticism, Clynes claimed that:
The restrictions relating to aliens and the general conditions under which they have
been permitted to enter this country have not been in any way loosened.
Defending the decision to impose a £10 naturalisation fee, he said that
‘British nationality is a possession which ought to be highly prized by anyone
receiving it ...’, and he announced ‘triumphantly’ that a Labour Home
Secretary had naturalised fewer Russians than his Tory predecessor. Foot
comments that Clynes:
was the first in the line of that curious political phenomenon: the Labour Home
Secretary. He laid down two basic principles for his successors, who, for the most part,
have followed them scrupulously. First, behave in office in direct contrast to your
promises and principles when in opposition; second, strive mightily to be less humane
than the Tories.
This shameful line continued through Sir Frank Soskice and James
Callaghan, among others, and now finds its embodiment in Jack Straw,
Labour home secretary in the Blair government. Between the wars the
numbers of immigrants declined drastically, largely as a result of the slump
and high levels of unemployment in Britain. In spite of this, the ruling classes
imported a good many ‘highly qualified’ domestic servants from other
countries in Europe. A large proportion of those who did enter Britain were
British citizens who had been refused entry to the white colonies, or forced
to leave them, because of depression there, much to the indignation of the
British ruling class. Anti-alien propaganda, and complaints for example
about French onion-sellers taking trade from the natives, nevertheless
continued. The most vicious prejudice was as before against Jewish people,
who were cited in demands for even stricter controls to ensure the
maintenance of British ‘stock’ against possible weakening by the ‘riff-raff of
eastern Europe, the stiffs of the Mediterranean and the dead beats of the
world’. From 1933 onwards, pressures mounted to stop any arrival of Jewish