Viewpoints Comments on Outrage at "Immigration On the Back of a Lorry" | Comments on Outrage at "Immigration On the Back of a Lorry" |
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Anna Chen First off, I'm an Englishwoman. I was born here, as was my mother. My father came here in the 1930s. I happen to be half Chinese and I look totally Chinese. But I'm still an Englishwoman. Describing oneself as "an Englishman" tells me little about you except your geographical location. Secondly, Soho around Gerrard Street was occupied chiefly by Indians, not Jews, in the 1940s. My father ran an early Hsinhua office from either Gerrard Street or Macclesfield Street, I'm not sure which. After that, the Chinese started moving in. My mother took part in the anti-Mosley demonstrations in the 1950s and my best friend's Jewish aunt managed to spit right in the Blackshirt leader's face. I haven't read Jackson Tan's piece, but I was active in the Campaign to Defend Asylum Seekers (CDAS) in response to the anti asylum seeker hysteria at the end of 1999. I would like to say that I place the responsibility for the death of the 58 dead Chinese absolutely at the feet of British xenophobia, but a xenophobia whipped up by Tory (or Tory-minded New Labour politicians, eg Barbara Roche and Jack Straw) politicians, effectively distracting us from whose interests are being protected, and "Fortress Europe", manifested in this country's racist legislation. Migration is a major aspect of human history, otherwise we'd all still be in Africa and it would be getting pretty crowded by now. How dare our masters tell us we can't move around the globe? It's OK for capital to chase cheap labour, or to import it when it suits them, but when we wish to explore our planet we are vilified, humiliated, legislated against and, at worst, killed for our racial differences. This is about a mass notion of limited resources. The enemy isn't others according to their race, it's to do with who owns these resources. And it sure isn't the poor whites, poor, blacks, poor asians and poor Chinese, and certainly not 58 dead Chinese trying for a better life. The British economy is the fourth largest in the world and yet poverty is rapidly on the increase here. Net emigration exceeds immigration. The population is falling. Both public and private sectors are crying out for skilled labour that isn't here, partly due to bad education policies by the Tories. There is enough to go around. But who has it? |
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