Wake Up Bradford!

Simeon Scott and Muhsan Majid

Introduction

Fortunately, despite the rumours, the recent violent rioting committed by the English Defence League (EDL) and others did not directly affect Bradford. However, these riots were instrumental in raising the issue of immigration to the top of the news agenda across the whole country during August 2024. Both of the authors of this paper are the sons of immigrants; SS’s father came from Ukraine and flew Lancaster bombers over Nazi Germany. MM’s parents originate from Kashmir, three of his relatives serving in the British army. During our lifetimes the two of us have noted the changing socio-economic environment for immigrants, from signs on windows of rooms for rent saying: NO DOGS AND NO POLISH, to racist abuse aimed at MM in a newsagent shop in Pontefract. In the 1970s and 80s, Bradford was notable for the activities of the Asian Youth Movement, in which Muslims, Sikhs, Hindus and others came together to oppose the British National Party and other fascist organisations. Unfortunately, more recently religious and ethnic chauvinism has tended to create disharmony between the various immigrant communities in the city. Much of the UK’s broadcast and print media keep the pot boiling on the issue of immigration; with emphasis during 2023-4 given to the then Tory government’s policy of sending immigrants to Rwanda. Although there are claims that Rwanda is now safe, it is a country with a history of tribal genocide and therefore was used as a deterrent to immigrants risking their lives crossing the Channel in small boats. However, the spark which lit the tinder box in Summer 2024 was the fatal stabbing of three girls in Southport on 29^th July; in particular, the inflammatory commentary on social media platforms. So, let us begin this article with an examination of the role of social media platforms.

The role of social media

It would seem that these platforms would be better described as antisocial media, in that, like the rest of the internet, it is not owned and controlled by society as a whole, but rather by some of the world’s largest, mainly American, capitalist enterprises. Often referred to as platform capitalism, the companies running these sites generate billions of dollars in investment funds from Wall Street, along with unprecedented amounts of advertising income. In order to pay interest and dividends to investors, these platforms seek to maximise their profits irrespective of any social, political or economic repercussions. Subject only to, largely toothless, national and international regulators, these companies allow content to be uploaded onto their platforms and those viewing this content are bombarded with revenue generating advertising. The key point to be made with regard to immigration is that, unlike other means of communication such as TV or newspapers, these platforms are not legally responsible as publishers of their content. So, whilst we could refer to a number of pressing issues generated by the wide ranging use of these platforms, especially the techniques used to suck young people into addictive behaviour, in terms of immigration it is this lack of responsibility by their owners for the often inflammatory, even criminal, output of these platforms.

One platform owner, and arguably the world’s richest man, is the Donald Trump supporting Elon Musk, who can and does say and write whatever he likes on the issues of the day. Regarding the UK’s riots in August 2024, Musk made the claim that they were the prelude to “inevitable” civil war. Along with others, Musk’s, now called X, has been carrying fake information on the Southport stabbings. From the safety of a hotel in Cyprus, the founder of the EDL, Tommy Robinson, has been using X and other social media to stir up his racist followers with false claims that the stabbings were carried out by a Muslim immigrant. Like much of the western media, including several British newspapers, Musk argues further that UK police forces do not treat Muslim protesters, such as those arguing for an end to the genocide in Gaza, with the same force as they treat EDL rioters.

‘Simple solutions’ to the problems of the white working class

It is difficult to avoid the conclusion that Musk, Robinson and others are tapping into what is a perfectly justified wave of discontent amongst some of the poorest sections of the white working class. Rising food and fuel prices, high rents for poor accommodation, low pay for insecure jobs, a loss of their cultural bearings and more have all played their part in creating anger amongst the poorest sections of the white working class. Some of these workers are highly vulnerable to apparently simple solutions to these discontents. For instance, Robinson and others have drawn attention to immigrants living in hotels for free, whilst workers are paying rents that account for half or more of their monthly income. Encouraging workers to attack the immigrants in these hotels, these articulate, often well educated, white men act out the role of fascist demagogues as has been the case over the last 100 years or so. In point of fact, the relationship between immigrants in hotels and the housing situation of workers is not a simple one. Whilst classical statisticians would say it is a correlation rather than a cause and effect relationship, it is rather more complex than that. Economic relationships in a capitalist society are marked by contradictions and this is a good example. On the workers’ housing side, the creation of a so called housing market, by selling off council owned properties and encouraging buy to rent schemes was instrumental in creating the present state of affairs. With regard to immigrants in hotels despite the public bleatings by career politicians, the simple fact is that their corporate paymasters use an influx of low skilled workers so as to keep wages down and skilled workers to save on training costs. As we shall see, people trafficking is now a highly lucrative business in all four corners of the world. To the extent that asylum seekers are low skilled and poorly educated, if accepted as most are, they will tend to end up living in the run down inner city, thus adding to the already existing tensions in these areas.

Media images and press reports of the rioters would suggest that most are second generation victims of the post-1980s de-industrialisation of Britain, a policy supported by both Margaret Thatcher and Tony Blair. Worsened by the effects of the Covid lockdown in the early 2020s, this policy led to a dramatic decline in family stability, educational attainment, living standards, trade union membership, employment security, social infrastructure and the general quality of life for millions of workers in Britain, especially in the North of England. Many workers had voted both for Brexit and Boris Johnson’s Tory party in 2019, due to claims that their discontents were entirely caused by rising numbers of immigrants entering the country.

Press reports on the trials of some of the rioters suggest some already had criminal records and often sought solace in alcohol, drugs and the adrenalin rush of fighting with the police, along with engaging in looting and arson. A clear case of history repeating itself, these mainly young men have, for the most part, not given a great deal of thought to how ‘free market’ capitalism has visited such blight on their lives. Rather, they are more persuaded by the seemingly more straightforward explanations, peddled by Musk, Robinson, the Tory press et al, that it is “the flood” of immigrants that are taking their jobs and homes. It is true that the largely white working class communities in which their parents grew up are now home to people from all over the world, who often do not speak English and adopt a range of different cultural norms. In line with the de-industrialisation agenda, these communities typically feature private rented decaying housing, routine criminality including gang culture, along with a lack of parks, gyms, swimming pools, youth clubs and the other facilities that used to be the norm in a wealthy nation like Britain, but are now only available to skilled workers and the middle classes. Yet, despite all of this, splitting the working class into religious, racial and ethnic factions and playing one off against the other, the classic colonial tactic of divide and rule, is most definitely not the way forward.

Immigration and the radical intelligentsia

“…the whole concept of race is a colonial invention with no basis in biology”; Yeo (2022, xii). Yeo would seem to believe that by abolishing race you abolish racism.

Colin Yeo is a barrister specialising in immigration law, a long standing member of the radical intelligentsia, who readily admits to making a good living out of defending immigrants against the Home Office. Given the state of the world in 2024, with international wars, civil wars, mass starvation, climate change, blurred lines between criminal gangs and politicians, it is the case that potentially billions of people would stand to benefit by moving to North America, Western Europe or other relatively wealthy pats of the world. So, it would seem likely that Mr Yeo and other KCs will continue to make hay while the sun shines. He takes the moral high ground when he writes “Migrants are too often regarded as a threat, sometimes to national security, sometimes to wages and working conditions, sometimes to housing and public services, sometimes to racial purity”; Yeo (2022, ix). This is a clever sentence because it implies that any misgivings regarding, or opposition to, open door immigration is, at its core, motivated by racism. More relevant to working class people, of all races and ethnicities, is his next sentence: “Others regard immigrants as a resource to be exploited, a mindset leading to short-term visas tied to specific employers, punishingly high application fees and dehumanising treatment of supposedly ‘low-value’ migrants”. Yet Mr Yeo makes only passing reference to the criminality and brutal exploitation at the core of migration as it fits into the global capitalist system, which in many cases would be more accurately described as people trafficking. Indeed, Yeo springs to the defence of employers and others accused of exploiting immigrant workers.

Making no mention of the workings of global capitalism, Yeo cites examples of some of his lucrative cases involving highly skilled would be immigrants, such as consultant surgeons attracted by the idea of working in the NHS for a couple of days a week and then making the serious money available in private practice to the rich the rest of the week. Indeed, he refers to one such Nigerian case on the first page of his Introduction. Such highly skilled immigrants tend to fit in quite well with their new wealthy locals; the Smyth-Thompsons in Ilkley enjoying a weekly curry cooked by their neighbour, also a consultant, Mrs Kaur. Yet, such skilled immigrants are expensive to train and, in order avoid their high training costs, the UK routinely recruits people with such skills. So if, for example, having been trained by the Pakistani government, a doctor moves to Britain in search of higher wages, this is obviously detrimental to both the Pakistani government and the supply of doctors available to treat the millions of Pakistani patients.

Having obtained his degrees some years ago, when working class kids were educated for free, Yeo turns to the issue of foreign students studying at British universities, bemoaning government policy on the issue. What Mr Yeo fails to mention, wilfully or otherwise, is that encouraged by governments of both parties is that Higher Education (HE) is treated as a cash cow. Encouraged by high earning vice chancellors and CEOs, overseas students often with poor English language skills, particularly those on masters degrees who pay very high fees, are allowed to graduate despite paying corrupt academics to write their assignments. Some of these students cheat in collusion with their employers, others simply because their English is poor and should never have been allowed onto their course in the first place. Seeing their marks increased by managers and presented at exam boards, young lecturers, often with kids and mortgages, do not trust managers’ whistle blowing schemes. They soon realise that, if they want to keep their jobs, they had better turn a blind eye to what seems to be the norm in Britain’s HE sector. Heaven only knows how bad things are now that students have AI available to them. Research at the University of Reading suggests that cheating by means of AI is more or less undetectable, a fact that managers will no doubt use to justify their academic corruption: “how can you prove they cheated?”, as managers typically ask lecturers. One useful observation made by Yeo is the accuracy of the various statistics on migration into and out the country published by a number agencies; making the point that most of the figures are simply samples scaled up to represent the population as a whole. In the end, however, Yeo offers no serious discussion of how to deal with the dire situation faced by billions of workers and landless peasants across the world who are all potential immigrants; but then, with exotic consultant surgeons paying fees to KCs and moving into the expensive properties in their leafy suburb areas, why should they want anything to change?

Another example of the thinking of the radical intelligentsia is an article by Isabel Ringrose (2023). Writing on behalf of the Bolshevik supporting Socialist Workers Party, an organisation that takes the view that the theory and practice of Lenin and Trotsky remain a model of leadership for the British working class. Like Yeo, Lenin and Trotsky were lawyers, who felt that their intellectual ability was not given sufficient recognition in Tsarist Russia. Presumably approved by the intellectuals of the central committee, Ms Ringrose writes: “Migration is positive. The NHS could not survive without migrants and the descendants of migrants. The Tories and Labour want to paint migrants as the biggest threat to ordinary people, as they create panic about the latest migration figures”. Failing to define “ordinary people”, she continues, referring to “a rise in the number of overseas professionals arriving to work in the NHS and care homes. We should be grateful for their arrival. Like all migrants, they are not a burden but people to be welcomed. Would racists prefer an NHS with even fewer staff and longer waiting lists? Would they celebrate care services collapsing because of a lack of workers?”. It is clear from this that, like Yeo, Ringrose has little or no interest in the health and elderly care of the workers and landless peasants in the countries of origin of these “professionals”, whose training was probably financed by their cash-strapped governments, rather than ours. Seemingly unaware that numbers on migration, leaving and entering, are to say the least lacking in accuracy, Ringrose adds: “The reason migration figures are high is because capitalism needs migration. Bosses rely on migrant labour”. Failing to distinguish between immigration and emigration, she also omits to explain why capitalistsand bosses respectively “need” and “rely” on migration. We assume Ms Ringrose is referring to immigration here, as she again fails to explain how the bosses benefit from emigration; many working age Brits who emigrate are skilled and want to earn even more money, often tax free, elsewhere. Ms Ringrose’s problem here is that, given her attempt to take the moral high ground, i.e. anyone expressing doubts regarding immigration is to be declared a “racist”, at the same time she is struggling with the reality that capitalists do indeed increase their profits by underpaying and abusing vulnerable low-skilled workers. Would Ms Ringrose suggest, for example, that the 20 million or so Afghan women and girls should all come to Britain immediately due to the macho policies of the Taliban?

The radical intelligentsia point to an array of websites offering statistics on the economic costs and benefits of immigration. The majority of these websites will be hosted by people from the above mentioned leafy suburbs and, unsurprisingly given their fondness for neo-liberal ‘free market’ economics, will tend to use statistics to conclude that, on balance, immigration in good for “the economy” as measured by Gross Domestic Product” (GDP). For example, the quick firing American video The Economics of Immigration (2018) blasts the viewer with graphs and numerical data. It is easy to throw a mass of figures at an audience and thereby ‘prove’ almost anything. Such data is derived from estimates and samples, typically from think-tanks that are corporately funded. Avoiding few mentions of social class, and absolutely no references to how profits relate to the surplus value extracted from workers, such sources are largely silent on how the alleged GDP boost is likely to be distributed increasingly unequally amongst the population. In particular, not only is there no mention that GDP is a widely acknowledged to be a discredited measure of economic wellbeing for a number of reasons; there are also few references to the socio-economic impact on the poorest sections of the working class living in Britain’s inner city areas and former council estates.

A note on Bradford’s inner city

Inner city conditions apply in the Girlington and Manningham wards of Bradford, where both of the authors of this paper live. Whilst there is a mix of property types, these wards, which have been designated as Areas of Stress by the Labour led Local Authority, are notable for their back to back and terraced housing. With little or no garden or yard space, these densely populated areas tend to be owned by Asians. Some of whom are owner occupiers, the rest being rented out, typically at rents of £800 or more pcm, often to, Roma East Europeans of Asian appearance, due to their origins in India. Most of the Polish and other East European immigrants formerly living in these wards would appear to have returned home. Roma people tend to live a ghettoised existence, with poor English many work in low skilled poorly paid jobs. Most of the men smoke, drink heavily, have a poor diet and below average life expectancy; there is evidence that their sons, and some daughters, have adopted similar habits. Data on educational attainment would suggest that most second generation Roma do not do well at school, although there are exceptions to this, and there would appear to be little in the way of social infrastructure in these wards for these, and other, young people. There are streets in these wards where young men of African descent hang around in the mornings, hoping to be picked for a day’s low skilled casual work. Being vulnerable, these men are often paid below minimum wage and, with rents being what they are, little money is left to be sent to their family members back home. In these areas, those with white faces are in a minority, and those of Caribbean descent are not a common sight. One noticeable feature in recent years is that more of Bradford’s Muslim women are wearing varying degrees of body covering, which used not to be the case. This is due to the growing influence of the socially conservative Salafist sect and a corresponding decline of more liberal Sufi attitudes, which tended to be more common amongst women of Pakistani origin. Yet, there remain a large number of young Muslim women, often university educated and working full time, who dress as they wish and show little interest in the custom of marrying a first cousin. The latter can be compared to some older women of Pakistani origin, whose English is poor leading to both potential exploitation in the workplace and a life of social isolation, often resulting in a lack of exercise, obesity and ill health.

The effects of globalisation

Let us now turn to the function of immigration in the context of not only the British capitalist economy, but also the global neo-liberal, or ‘free’ market, economy. Global neo-liberalism was the brainchild of Milton Friedman and his colleagues at the University of Chicago and, in Britain in the 1980s and beyond, was enthusiastically adopted by both Margaret Thatcher and Tony Blair. In short, globalisation means increasing the flow of people, goods and investment funds across national borders so as to increase the profits of large multinational companies, banks and other financial institutions. This has meant that the powers of nation states to collect corporate taxes and regulate multinational companies has been greatly curtailed. Indeed, much of the working of the global economy is not subject to any democratic control by electorates, decisions being made in secret talks between politicians and multinationals; with disputes settled in secret courts. In the 1980s, neo-liberalism was marked by de-industrialisation, in that manufacturing moved from the global north, where wages were higher and trade unions stronger, to the sweatshops of the global south; leaving behind a trail of unemployment and casual low-paid jobs amongst workers in Britain and elsewhere. Much labour is today performed by de facto slaves; for example, in sectors of the fishing and maritime industries, road building and more. As widely reported, crew members of the ships of TN Trawlers based in Scotland accused their employers of imposing slavery; however, the Scottish courts refused to prosecute the ship owners.

The mass movement of people across the globe has happened for various reasons throughout history; one example being the colonisation of native peoples by Europeans from the 16^th century onwards. In what are now Brazil, the United States and elsewhere, the genocide of native populations was followed by the influx of millions of slaves to produce cotton, sugar and more at minimal cost and maximum profit. This process eventually resulted in the creation of the wealthy global north and the poorer global south, a state of affairs which is at the core of the current migration crisis. The reluctant actor and political activist Marlon Brando repeatedly offered to co-fund a film on the genocide of native Americans but, more interested in profits than the disturbing truth of their nation’s history, the Hollywood moguls refused. Much of the wealth of the Unionist aligned robber barons of the eastern United States, for instance, was the result of the low wages paid to the tens of millions of white immigrants arriving from across the globe in search of a better life during the late 19^th century.

Concluding remarks

So, we can summarise the responses to the issue of immigration by means of reviewing the views of the two camps mentioned above. Firstly, there is the “send ‘em back” Tommy Robinson view which clearly has some support in Britain, judging by the riots and votes for Nigel Farage’s Party. Secondly, with regard to applying the slogan “Immigrants Welcome”, which sums up the view of those supporting what we have called the radical intelligentsia, we doubt that West Bank Palestinians would be so disposed to Zionist settlers arriving from California. Rather than thinking in British nationalistic terms, we must surely begin to change our country’s ‘free market’ economic policies. Taking an internationalist approach, we could begin by ending British arms sales to corrupt dictators and ending the outsourcing of often female cheap labour in, for instance, the Bangladeshi clothing industry. With regard to the nations from which people want to escape and come to Britain, we could do much more with regard to climate change, along with repairing their decaying post-colonial infrastructure and building hospitals, schools and the like. In “welcoming immigrants”, members of the radical intelligentsia typically turn a blind eye to what is allegedly going on with regard to vulnerable workers in car washes, nail bars, barber shops and more. Post-colonial nations are often ruled by corrupt psychopaths who typically buy elite properties in London with money they steal from their state coffers or accept bribes from western companies. All manner of foreign criminals, including pimps, drug dealers, money launderers et al are well looked after in Britain. For example, we could cite the so-called Russian oligarchs, who became billionaires by ripping off Russian workers in the 1990s. Even after the invasion of Crimea, these wealthy criminals, along with their families, were well looked after by an array of estate agents, bankers, public school headteachers, Oxbridge vice chancellors, Tory MPs and more. So, let us end all of this and take a new internationalist approach to immigration, along the lines mentioned above.

Bibliography

Ringrose, I. After new figures released, welcome migrants, drive out the Tories; Socialist Worker 23 November 2023.

Yeo, C. (2022) Welcome to Britain: Fixing Our Broken Immigration System;

Biteback Publishing: London.

Other sources

The Economics of Immigration: Crash Course Economics #33 (2018) see

tps://www.bing.com/videos/riverview/relatedvideo?q=the+economics+of+immigration&mid=A98D25016B604CAFA8B2A98D25016B604CAFA8B2&FORM=VIRE

Comment

Rawanda Genocide: if not already seen, I recommend you the films Hotel Rawanda and Shooting Dogs. Not exactly a case of Black Live’s Matter.. You might ask: Where were the Radical Intelligentsia then..? Social Media: It’s what happens when you have an unregulated medium. See Hyper Normalisation by Adam Curtis. He told the story of today over 10 years ago. Immigration: There is a problem with immigration. However, politicians either do not want to talk about it or speak of it in divisive terms. Consequently, in both cases, the topic never becomes a mainstream discussion. The issue simply goes underground and  pops back up at the extremes of the political spectrum and out onto Social Media. If politicians fail in their duties, people will have their say, one way or the other.

Southport Riots: Organising people through social media is not new. Arab Spring, Yellow Jackets, Occupy Movement. There are no leaders to prosecute only the people who turn-out onto the streets. Some of the prosecutions that have followed raise their own questions about free speech. Journalists and human rights activists such as, Richard Medhurst, Sarah Wilkinson, Ernest Moret, Kit Klarenburg, Craig Murray have all been arrested and questioned on the grounds of the Terrorism Act in the U.K. Gaza, pension reforms and Assange were the topics. Authorities now try to play catch-up with Durov and Musk is cancelled in Brazil. Of course, these guys and their like, need to be held to account but the genie is out of the bottle. We all should be concerned that The State does not introduce draconian laws that affect freedom of speech. It will only make things worse. AfD in Germany, Le Pen in France, Geert Wilders in The Netherlands and Ginger Man in the US, to name but a few. The topic of immigration and the economy is not going away anytime soon.

TN Trawlers: I watched the same C4 documentary. Government work visas are at the heart of the problem. What followed only served to make the point. If you do not legally exist in a country, how can you expect to receive justice. The guys were open to exploitation from the very start. Politicians: They cannot be taken seriously anymore. From the elite privileged Tory playboys to schoolmaster Starmer and Reeves.  I do not need to hear from Kier that it will take 10 years to fix Britain or Reeves to tell me she has to make hard choices. I already worked out the former for myself and as for the latter, I’ve been making difficult choices all through my life.

 Whilst Angie Rayner is totally free and entitled to enjoy herself on holiday, it’s not a good look when in the same week, her boss tells us it’s going to get worse before it gets better. Some will understand it’s going to get worse only for people who are already struggling. For others, especially the political class, the party clearly goes on. 

Multi-Nationalism: What do we mean by this? Think WEF, Bilderberg. Starmer is already on record saying he considers WEF more important than national politics. For some, WEF agenda is One World State. Do we think this will be any better than capitalism and solve the problems raised in your paper?

Mike Scott