Labour must have the moral courage to fight rightwing narratives that dehumanise refugees and asylum seekers, argues Asif Mohammed of the Labour Campaign for Refugees

Seven years ago I stood in Rawalphindi’s busy Raja Bazaar drenched in sweat and drinking chai. Renowned throughout south Asia for the skilled craft of its mechanics, all around me were testaments to the trust placed in them from pile-up pickups to written-off Ford wagons. Like many of Pakistan’s labour intensive industries, it relied on the country’s million plus refugee population. It was also the beating heart of the city, creating jobs, employment and a proud community.

A community that was ready to take in the vulnerable because they understood that though they had little, what little they did give enriched them. Done without ulterior motive or constricted by electoral convenience, it was a rising tide that lifted all boats. A true humanitarianism by the people of one of the world’s poorest regions.

Compare that to the grandstanding by Theresa May’s Tories over British values. Values that have, for the Tories at least, come up short when it came to upholding the Dubs amendment and protecting thousands of lone child refugees in camps on the continent. May’s government did not choose inaction. It chose to raise the hopes of Europe’s most vulnerable and then abandon them a second time in a game of zero sum realpolitik. When politics is removed from a vision of the real world it becomes a politics of moral cowardice unable to make the arguments that must be made and resist those that would prefer to hold us back.

We have a duty — a moral imperative — to help those who have no one else. Not out of a self-serving sense of ‘this could be us’ but because it is the right thing to do. Every day, these children are targeted by child sexual exploiters who prey on the vulnerable like vultures overhead. And every single day, the unspeakable horrors they have escaped from make their mark on them anew with intense emotional trauma, in environments with incredibly poor mental health infrastructure. At an age where most children worry about homework, they are forced to carry a weight most adults would crumble under.

Our duty is made stronger by our history as a major power. Right through from colonialism to our modern foreign policy failures, we have often been a contributing cause to the instability that wracks the world’s poorest regions. We must help put back together what our past actions have pulled apart. As Labour, we represent the progressive British tradition — supporting decolonisation from Ramsay McDonald’s roundtable discussions to Clement Attlee’s ending of the Raj. That contribution to our nation is not without blight, but the general thrust of it has always been one of justice at home and abroad; of righting past wrongs and building new relationships of equals. Labour must own that tradition and own it proudly. Our role as the voice of this British tradition must be to also to guide others to it — including Her Majesty’s Treasury benches.

Labour must have the moral courage to fight a narrative that dehumanises refugees and asylum seekers. That is a task that we have to face up to the reality of. There is no one else with the resources, history, expertise and willing to fight that political battle for the most vulnerable in our society. It will be hard. But it is who we are. Our history is marked by our determination to fight for those who had no one else to fight for them. It is what motivates us on cold dreary Sundays to talk to strangers and stuff leaflets through their letterboxes.

When rightwing narratives successfully pit community against community they trap us into a bottomless race that helps no-one. A mise-en-scène by the tabloid press that makes working people forget the real source of their misery — a Tory government hellbent on a triple agenda of privatisation, deregulation and cutting back the state — to instead hate their natural allies. We must articulate a different vision: of rising tides that lift all boats.

But that means more than just rallying cries. It means raising awareness in our constituency Labour parties, unions, Young Labour clubs, socialist societies and every other part of the Labour movement. Empowering activists and organising outward-looking campaigns in our communities to challenge the tabloid narrative that has been allowed free reign for too long. If you are in a position to do any of that then get in touch with us.

We must show there is a kinder alternative to the politics of cowardice.

–––––––––––––––

Written by Asif Mohammed on behalf of the Labour Campaign for Refugees, a broadchurch initiative by Labour party activists of all stripes. Donate here.

–––––––––––––––

Photo