Border Force vessel returning to Folkestone. Photo Susan Pilcher/shutterstock.com.
According to the most recent figures from the Office of National Statistics, the population of England and Wales rose by 706,881 in a year, to 61.8 million by June 2024. Astonishingly, only 29,982 of that increase, 4.2 per cent, was by natural change, that is to say births, the rest was the result of net migration. A total of 1,142,303 migrants came in from abroad in that period.
David Miles from the Office for Budget Responsibility, a former member of the Bank of England Monetary Policy Committee, warned that there were “serious problems” with governments relying on immigration for economic growth. He said that the priority should be getting the workers we already have into employment.
It is becoming ever clearer that global capitalism’s policy to promote legal mass immigration has suppressed pay and working conditions. Successive governments have helped employers import trained workers, avoiding developing British workers’ skills or investing in innovation.
This policy has kept productivity low. It has also resulted in huge strains on education, healthcare and housing, particularly in London, as reported in Workers earlier this year. Outside of what it needs for profit and control, the capitalist class has no interest in planning. And it has no interest in accurate knowledge about the size or composition of the working class and what it needs to survive, let alone flourish.
Britain pioneered systematic and scientific counting of the population. The statistician John Rickman in 1798, arguing for a census, noted that “an industrious population is the basic power and resource of any nation, and therefore its size needs to be known.”
A quarter of the way into the 21st century, with sophisticated computers at our disposal, if Rickman were alive today he would despair at our lack of knowledge of our population, legal and illegal. Yet that knowledge is a precondition for planning the economy and public services.
British governments have shown they have no real intention of stemming illegal immigration. Rather, it is a useful diversion from the policy of successive governments to enable employers to import workers from countries where labour is cheaper and more compliant.
By June this year, small boat crossings were up 48 per cent on the same period last year. People smuggling gangs, who appear to operate without meaningful interference, continue to launch migrants in overcrowded, unseaworthy vessels. They rely on rescue services to bring them ashore safely in Britain.
The government, too, relies on rescue. Instead of using HM Coastguard, the Border Force and the Royal Navy to return migrants to France, they put the volunteers of the RNLI, funded by charitable donations, in the front line, knowing they will never refuse a shout.
Around 30,000 asylum seekers are housed in hotels at workers’ expense, making millions for hotel owners and giant capitalist firms like Serco. Residents of areas where these hotels are sited have justified misgivings, especially when asylum seekers are charged with offences such as sexual assault.
Parts of our major cities are de facto ghettos, large concentrations of migrants who would rather cling to the ways of their country of origin than join with British workers as part of a united class. For a detailed description of this, see the recent Workers article on Rotherham, scene of one of the worst child sexual abuse scandals, the consequence of the decay of a town once based on coal and steel.
The government’s ploy of misrepresenting public discussion of these issues as “far-right” is no longer believable or believed. As a part of the working class taking control, as we must be, we cannot permit the suppression of open debate in our workplaces and organisations on these subjects.
Immigration under capitalism, whether it’s legal mass immigration or illegal immigration in small boats, is an attack on workers here, and on workers in immigrants’ countries of origin.
The capitalist has no allegiance to place or country but goes wherever there is greatest profit. Workers on the other hand have homes, families, real places where they work and live. These two interests are incompatible; either capitalism must go, or it will destroy us.