Introduction
For all manner of reasons people have moved across the globe since prehistory. However, it is important to consider each wave of immigration in its socio-economic context. Following the end of WWII, for instance, immigrants from Southern Europe, Eastern Europe, the West Indies and the Indian subcontinent were encouraged to come to Britain due to an acute labour shortage hampering economic growth. In the early 21st century, however, the purpose of immigration is different; being one component in a strategy of destroying the working class’s ability to resist job losses and wage cuts, along with job insecurity, work casualisation and more. It is therefore no surprise that working class people of all races and ethnicities in Britain, America, Germany and across the globe are, in increasing numbers voting for political parties offering to reduce or halt immigration. Yet, as elsewhere, on demonstrations in Britain you will often see banners, seemingly taking the moral high ground, featuring such slogans as “immigrants are welcome”. In view of this divergence of attitudes on immigration, this text will investigate this topic, views on which have traditionally split according to such spatial metaphors as left wing and right wing. It will be argued that, beyond a certain point, far from helping us to understand the role of immigration in the early 21st century, these metaphors tend to confuse us. Similarly, these metaphors break down when it seems that presidents Trump and Putin have formed an alliance to challenge the military and economic power of Europe and China; we could ask what the implications for immigration will be if Putin defeats Ukraine, not to mention a Chinese invasion of Taiwan. This text will therefore avoid such journalistic spatial clichés and, taking an anti-capitalist perspective, focus on the issue of immigration in the early 21st century.
Immigration and the radical intelligentsia
There is a typically well educated social class, often practising law or one of the other professions, some members of which believe that their intellectual skills are not being recognised and suitably rewarded by the ruling elites of their respective countries. Historical examples of such members of this educated professional class were the Jacobins in late 18th century France and the Bolsheviks, particularly Lenin and Trotsky, in early 20th century Russia. Contemporary members of this class tend to be accorded a comfortable lifestyle and therefore few of them are calling for the overthrow of capitalism. However, such people are highly influential in the British Labour Party and the American Democrat Party, to cite but two examples. Not challenging the growing inequalities of the capitalist mode of production in any fundamental way, members of this intelligentsia often support international institutions promoting human rights, including the free movement of labour.
One senior lecturer at the University of Sheffield, Edward Hall (2025), takes up the free movement cause, asking whether “states have the unilateral right to exclude would-be migrants from their territory”? Drawing attention to what he claims are the “real-world practices of immigration control”, Hall’s article features a cartoon strip depicting uniformed border control officers telling would-be immigrants “we’re going to make your life hell” and, referring to a 2024 comment by Donald Trump, “we’re going to send you back to the hole you came from, you damn dog eater”. Hall refers to the “rich democracies of the Global North”; but fails to mention the falling living standards, and inability to exercise workplace democracy. of working people in the “Global North”. He rejects both the theory and practice of tightening immigration controls as adopted by many of these “rich democracies” in recent years; arguing they “subject some of the most vulnerable people on the planet to horrendous cruelty and suffering”. “On arrival”, Hall adds, many unauthorised migrants “are detained in state-run facilities….Conditions are often grim; mould and vermin thrive, and disease is rife. Adequate medical treatment is often lacking…migrants can be subject to verbal and physical abuse” Citing other examples of abuse, he is particularly critical of the policies adopted during Trump’s first term in office. With regard to Britain, having no direct knowledge, it is difficult for me to comment on the treatment of immigrants described by Hall, in particular how typical are the cartoon comments by border guards and the grim living accommodation he describes. He could surely have strengthened his argument by referring to the well documented cases of immigrants, including children, drowned during boat crossings in the Channel. Unfortunately, Hall offers nothing by way of policy changes that would prevent such “horrendous cruelty and suffering”. He could, for instance, have called for regular ferries to carry immigrants across the Channel and thereby deal with the issue of the boats in one fell swoop.
Suggesting that those opposing free movement are racist, the barrister Colin Yeo readily admits to making a good living out of defending immigrants against the Home Office. He argues “the whole concept of race is a colonial invention with no basis in biology”; Yeo (2022, xii). Whilst, as Malik (2022) points out, it is the case that race is mediated by socio-economic factors, to begin and end one’s analysis of the subject in this summary fashion does not inspire confidence in Yeo’s thinking. In particular we may note the implication that differences in skin colour, hair texture, facial features and the like are mere optical illusions invented by racists. So, if we one-sidedly accept that race has “no basis in biology”, he seems to be arguing that we thereby abolish the basis of racism and those workers who challenge such policies as the European Union’s free movement of labour policy, for instance, are exposed as irrational bigots. Given the current state of the world, with international wars, civil wars, mass starvation, climate change, the rise of violent criminal gangs, discrimination against women and more, it would appear to be the case that potentially billions of people would stand to benefit by moving to North America, Western Europe or other relatively wealthy parts of the world. Implicitly inviting these billions to move, Yeo 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). Therefore, according to Yeo, any misgivings regarding, or opposition to, open door immigration is simply motivated by illogical racism.
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 (SWP), an organisation that takes the view that the theory and practice of Lenin and Trotsky offer 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 SWP 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 foreign governments, rather than ours. Letting the cat out of the bag, Ringrose admits: “The reason migration figures are high is because capitalism needs migration. Bosses rely on migrant labour”; but, failing to refer to low wages, omits to explain why capitalistsand bosses respectively “need” and “rely” on migration. We assume 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, taking a feminist perspective 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? It is clear that if only a fraction of the world’s most exploited workers and landless peasants came to Britain, there would be a state of socio-economic breakdown due to a lack of food, housing and more.
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; showing how easy it is to throw a mass of figures at an audience and thereby ‘prove’ almost anything. Such data are 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 well-being 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.
The reality of free movement
However, briefly returning to Yeo, he writes: “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. In fact, at times Yeo springs to the defence of employers and others accused of exploiting immigrant workers. He simply will not admit that low skilled immigration is a key part of the anti-working class, anti-trade union agenda introduced by the Thatcher government in the early 1980s, one which remains in place to this day.
Seemingly not interested in the devastating effects of skilled workers, such as doctors, engineers, scientists and the like, leaving the developing nations in which they trained, Yeo cites examples of some of his lucrative immigration cases. Attracted by the prospect 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, Yeo refers to one Nigerian surgeon. 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. Needless to say, skilled immigrants are expensive to train and, in order avoid their 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, 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, or using AI, 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. 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 of agencies; making the point that most of the figures are simply small 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 migrants; but then, with foreign consultant surgeons paying fees to KCs and moving into the expensive properties in their leafy suburb areas, why should they want anything to change?
Social media and the 2024 riots
The author of this paper is the son of a Ukrainian immigrant father, who flew Lancaster bombers over Nazi Germany. The parents of one of my co-researchers 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 in a newsagent shop in Pontefract. In the 1970s and 80s, our city of 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. Echoing the colonial divide rule technique, 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. Claims that Rwanda is now safe are doubtful given events in the Democratic Republic of Congo; the former is a country with a history of tribal genocide and therefore was used by the Tories as a deterrent to those immigrants risking their lives crossing the Channel in small unseaworthy boats. However, the spark which lit the anti-immigration tinder box in 2024 was the fatal stabbing of three girls in Southport in particular, the inflammatory commentary on social media platforms. 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 the world’s largest 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 income from advertising and the sale of users’ data. We could refer to a number of pressing issues generated by the wide ranging use of these platforms, such as the techniques used to suck young people into addictive behaviour; however, in terms of immigration, it is the lack of responsibility by the owners of these platforms for their often inflammatory, even criminal, output.
The owner of the X platform, and allegedly the world’s richest man, is president Donald Trump’s right hand man Elon Musk, who uses the site to write whatever he likes on the issues of the day. Fuelling the UK’s riots in August 2024, Musk made the claim that they were the prelude to “inevitable” civil war and issued fake information on the Southport stabbings. From the safety of a hotel in Cyprus, the founder of the fascist English Defence League (EDL), Tommy Robinson, has been using Musk’s X platform and other social media to stir up his racist followers with false claims on the stabbings. 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; thus keeping the divide and rule pot on the boil.
‘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 working class trapped in low paying jobs and run down housing in the UK’s inner cities. Rising food and fuel prices, high rents for poor private accommodation, insecure jobs, a loss of their cultural bearings and more have all played their part in creating anger amongst the poorest sections of the working class. Some of these workers are highly vulnerable to apparently simple solutions to their 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 white workers to attack both immigrants in hotels and the police, these articulate and often well educated white men act out the traditional role of fascist demagogues, as has been the case over the last 100 years or so. I spent much of my youth fighting racists in West Yorkshire and can see history repeating itself with potentially millions of workers listening to the ‘solutions’ offered to their problems by these men. Across Europe and the United States more and more workers are voting for those people offering to “send them back”.
Immigration and neo-liberalism
With regard to workers’ housing, the creation of a so called housing market, 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 bleating by career politicians, the simple fact is that their corporate paymasters insist on taxpayer funding to maintain an influx of low skilled workers so as to keep wages down, along with 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 male, 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 introduced by Margaret Thatcher and continued by Tony Blair et al. 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 display a range of 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.
A note on Bradford’s inner city
A study of the inner city conditions in the Girlington and Manningham wards of Bradford, 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, houses in these densely populated areas tend to be owned by Asians. Some of the houses are owner occupied, the rest being rented out, often to Roma East Europeans, being 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, 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 Saudi based 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 sometimes 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 short, 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 power 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.
Concluding remarks
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; along with the election of Trump and the rise of fascism in Germany and elsewhere in Europe. Secondly, with regard to applying the slogan “Immigrants Welcome”, which sums up the view of those supporting what I have called the radical intelligentsia; I 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 challenge and change our country’s ‘free market’ economic policies. Taking an internationalist approach, we could begin by ending British arms sales, currently our largest export of goods, to corrupt dictators and anyone else wanting to buy them. We must end the outsourcing of production, often involving 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, America and Northern Europe, we could do much more with regard to climate change, along with repairing the decaying infrastructure in post-colonial nations. In stead of stealing their skilled labour, we could build hospitals, schools and more. In “welcoming immigrants”, members of the radical intelligentsia typically turn a blind eye to what is often going on in Britain 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, it seems, 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 reduce the need for people to leave their country of origin, taking an internationalist approach, we can gradually bring the global wage labour system to an end, replacing it with communities dedicated to looking after the well-being of their neighbours.
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Wake Up Bradford! 
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