Migrants are our fellow workers
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Should the World Socialist Movement get off the fence and join the call to allow our fellow workers across capitalist imposed borders?
Our blogs have been doing just that, Vin, for quite a long while and repeatedly, in fact. We have also been trying to combat the differentiation of the more deserving migrant – the asylum-seeker fleeing persecution – and the so-called less deserving – the person fleeing poverty.It would be useful, as i always seem to suggest these days, of an EC statement and press release. Personally, i have conducted in the past an exchange of letters on WW with some on the Left who seek to reject economic migrants and just this moment fired off another to them which touch wood will appear next week edition.
alanjjohnstone wrote:It would be useful, as i always seem to suggest these days, of an EC statement and press release.Pointless in these days of fast digital communication. Have we a committee authorised to issue statement on behalf of the party?
I know it is not our task to come up with partial solutions to the problems of capitalism but have you ever wondered why they are refugee “boat-people” placing their lives of themselves and their families into the hands of people-smugglers and paying thousands of euros for a place on a leaky rusty boat, while an air-ticket costs only a few hundred?The EU subject the airlines to laws that fine them if they fly people without the appropriate papers. Airlines could very easily accept asylum-seeker passengers and fly them safely to European cities. No need for people smuggling extorting thousands of euros nor the hazard of drowning. Why is this option not being discussed or even raised by the media?Those who sympathise with the refugees should demand the relaxation of those regulations and that the commercial airlines begin an humanitarian airlift. Or perhaps the refugees could begin to occupy the airports and the aircraft similar to what they did in Budapest at the train station until they are transported to sanctuaries.
Vin, we have a media committee whose remit is exactly that..to circulate press releases as they see fit and there are no conditions upon the committee that imposes any restrictions upon them. But with all committees in the party, we should not expect hard-pressed volunteers to bear all the weighty burden and responsibility upon their shoulders.The blog offers some help but members could be also assisting by linking to the relevant blog-posts as a poor substitute as a Party "statement" and adding their own comments wherever they can on the web.
News reports today claim that social media has changed internation perspective on the migrants.It seems twitter is not old hat after all, as a comrade once claimed.This could not have been achieved with public meetings and summer scools.Resources are going in the wrong dirctionA social media campaign can have effects. Indeed the migrant issue is proof. Our fellow workers have achieved something without resorting to reformism.Perhaps pressure through social media has replaced pressure through Unions
Perhaps instead of a campaign against the likes of Corbyn, whoever came up with the anti-Corbyn visuals could do something similar to press home the reasons for the current migration crisis.Perhaps some hard hitting images with facts linking the causes to the effects. Care would need to be taken not to exploit the recent tragedy of the drowned children, or the lorry load of dead men, women and children found in Austria. Weapons are being sold to all sides in these conflicts, so some people are getting rich while desperate people flee their homes in search of safety, only to die cruely in foreign lands.
SocialistPunk wrote:Perhaps instead of a campaign against the likes of Corbyn, whoever came up with the anti-Corbyn visuals could do something similar to press home the reasons for the current migration crisis.Perhaps some hard hitting images with facts linking the causes to the effects. Care would need to be taken not to exploit the recent tragedy of the drowned children, or the lorry load of dead men, women and children found in Austria. Weapons are being sold to all sides in these conflicts, so some people are getting rich while desperate people flee their homes in search of safety, only to die cruely in foreign lands.Echo your comments
The only problem with my suggestion Vin, is that it isn't easy. It's way harder to squeeze complex meaning into an image, though not impossible. Much easier to lampoon a politician.
In four years, 250,000 Syrians have been killed, 1.5 million wounded & 10 million made refugees. The Assad regime has killed 75% of civilians murdered so far in 2015 and in total 100 times more civilians than murdered in the 9/11 attacks.
Many socialists will be asked, as i have, how can we expect Britain/Europe cope with millions of refugees and the assumption is that it cannot so Fortress Europe and British fences at Calais are justified. I recall long ago reading about post-war German forced migrations so i looked up wiki. By 1950, a total of approximately 12 million Germans had fled or been expelled from east-central Europe. Some sources put the total at 14 million. The largest numbers came from territories ultimately ceded to Poland and the Soviet Union (about 7 million), and from Czechoslovakia (about 3 million). The death toll attributable to the flight and expulsions is disputed, with estimates ranging from at least 473,000 confirmed deaths up to a demographic estimate from the 1950s of 2.2 million. More recent estimates by some German historians put the total at 500-600,000 attested deaths. The German Historical Museum puts the figure at 600,000 victims: they maintain that the figure of 2 million deaths in the previous government studies cannot be supported. Nonetheless, the official positions of the German government and the German Red Cross are that the death toll resulting from expulsions ranged from 2 to 2.5 million civilians. The German Federal Agency for Civic Education puts the figure at 2 million. There was horrible retribution and revenge taken against many Germans post-war plus one of the coldest winters in history taking its toll https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flight_and_expulsion_of_Germans_(1944%E2%80%9350)“I am free to confess to you that my heart is saddened by the tales of the masses of German women and children flying along the roads everywhere in 40-mile long columns to the West before the advancing armies. I am clearly convinced that they deserve it; but that does not remove it from one’s gaze. The misery of the whole world appals me and I fear increasingly that new struggles may arise out of those we are successfully ending.” – ChurchillIn 1938 about 309,000 Japanese lived in Taiwan. By the end of World War II, there were over 850,000 Japanese in Korea and more than 2 million in China. After World War II, most of these overseas Japanese repatriated to Japan. The Allied powers repatriated over 6 million Japanese nationals from colonies and battlefields throughout Asia.https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanese_diasporaMy point is that when there is political will there is a way. Accommodating even millions of newcomers is possible if you are willing to accept them and accept the cost.Fact is many in the UK aren't and present these inaccurate arguments that we cannot take large numbers when it simply isn't true.We recall 27,000 Ugandan Asians were relocated in the UK…not in 5 years as Cameron plans for 20,000 Syrians but within days as Idi Amin gave 90 days for their deportation. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Expulsion_of_Asians_from_UgandaCameron made political choices not humanitarian ones.
A more measured analysis of the Syrian refugee question and where and what people are fleeing from by Patrick Coburn in The Independent on Sunday:
Quote:The four million Syrians who are already refugees mostly came from opposition or contested areas that have been systematically bombarded by government aircraft and artillery, making them uninhabitable. But the majority of the 17 million Syrians still in the country live in government-controlled areas now threatened by Isis. These people are terrified of Isis occupying their cities, towns and villages because of its reputation for mass executions, ritual mutilation and rape against those not obedient to its extreme variant of Sunni Islam.Half the Syrian population has already been displaced inside or outside the country, so accurate figures are hard to estimate, but among those particularly at risk are the Alawites (2.6 million), the Shia heterodox sect that has provided the ruling elite of Syria since the 1960s, the Christians (two million), the Syrian Kurds (2.2 million), and Druze (650,000) in addition to millions of Sunni Arabs associated with the Syrian government and its army. The forced flight of these communities could swiftly double the total number of refugees to eight million.Which makes nonsense of George Osborne's claim that the refugee crisis would not have happened had parliament voted two years ago to bomb the "Assad regime" to bring about "regime change" there as in Iraq and Libya (which would have opened the way for an Islamist takeover of Syria):
Quote:A move by the coalition government to bomb President Assad’s regime in Syria in 2013 was defeated by MPs after Labour opposed the move, a decision that Mr Osborne described as “one of the worst decisions the House of Commons has ever made”.On the contrary,as a decision not to go to war, it was one of the best decisions the Commons has ever made.
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