Racism in the UK: British-Rwandan Asylum Deal

Racism in the UK: British-Rwandan Asylum Deal

On Tuesday evening, the 15th of June 2022, mere seconds before the plane took off, the European Court of Human rights intervened in the first deportation of the U.K.’s new partnership with the Rwandan government to offshore its asylum process.

The policy was announced on the 14th of April by Prime Minister Boris Johnson. However, it was clear that the Conservative-led government had been planning such a deal for a year. Last October, the government of Albania furiously denied that it had agreed to take in asylum-seekers which had entered Britain by perilously crossing the English Channel.

The policy faced backlash within Britain, with the Archbishop of Canterbury (the highest clergyman in the Anglican Church) voicing his opposition. Even Charles, the Prince of Wales and heir to Queen Elizabeth II, is rumoured to have expressed his distaste for the measure. The government, however, has affirmed that it will press on with this racist policy as soon as the legal channels are opened for it once again.

At this point, it is simply par for the course.
The eyes of the British workers are slowly being opened to the vile racism of the British bourgeoisie. These developments draw up memories of the Windrush Scandal in which British Caribbeans had emigrated from their homes in the 1950’s at the invitation of the British state, only to face deportation when new documentation was demanded from them after 70 years. Unfortunately, some were deported to places that the Foreign Office deemed their ‘homeland’ of which they have no memory. 

Every month a new scandal erupts in Britain over the treatment of its racial minority. One of these happened a few months ago to a 15 years old black school girl known as Child Q at her school at Hackley. Three officers of the London Metropolitan Police treated her, forcing the child to strip naked to ascertain if she had any (non-existent) drugs.

Racism is an evil that thrives well under capitalism; and is indeed nurtured by it. It is a pernicious social illness used to terrorise workers of minority races or ethnicities, blind the most ignorant stratum of the proletariat and ultimately divide the toiling masses in their struggle against their true enemy: capital.

The issue of overt racism in British policy is growing more acute as the state struggles to deal with the growing crisis and its own moribund authority. The government desperately tries to appeal to the most destitute and reactionary section of the working class of Britain by demonstrating its commitment to national chauvinism. However, these attempts are merely drops of water whilst the revolutionary inferno blazes into heat. After a decade of austerity, the bungling of the response to the COVID pandemic, increasing repression and police brutality, rising inflation and costs and decreasing wages are all having their toll on the workers. The ruling class of the United Kingdom is running out of tricks to deceive the working class. This latest attempt is futile as soaring food prices will lead the workers to the understanding that it is not foreigners or minorities that are the enemy but the propertied classes.

As the revolutionary Irishman James Connolly stated:

“The seat of progress and source of revolution is not in the brain, but the stomach.”