Back in the bad old days before the Labour Party government, the Tories were widely criticised for their ‘hostile environment’ policy. The criticism wasn’t just that the Tories were targeting what they called “illegal immigration”; the issue was that they and the media were putting overdue focus on the topic to worsen racial tensions and distract from the problems caused by austerity.
Good job the grown ups are back in charge, eh?
The source in this case is Yvette Cooper herself writing in The Sun. Here is the relevant passage from her article: pic.twitter.com/X9htiQnNtA
— Stats for Lefties 🍉🏳️⚧️ (@LeftieStats) July 20, 2024
Same difference
The hostile environment was spearheaded by Theresa May – first as home secretary and then as prime minister. The woman herself described it as follows:
The aim is to create, here in Britain, a really hostile environment for illegal immigrants
Here’s what the Joint Council for the Welfare of Immigrants says of the policy:
The Hostile Environment deters people from going to the doctor for fear of racking up a huge bill or being reported, detained and deported. It deters undocumented migrants from reporting crime to the police. It deters undocumented migrants from reporting unsafe working conditions or exploitative employers. It reduces the options for renting a home and pushes people into poor quality or even dangerous accommodation, at the mercy of their landlord.
Hostile Environment policies also make doctors, landlords, teachers and other public sector workers responsible for immigration checks. These policies encourage and incentivise us to be suspicious of each other and undermine trust in our public services.
There is no evidence that the Hostile Environment achieves its stated aim of forcing people out of the UK. But there is an extraordinary amount of evidence of the damage being done.
It also notes:
We are all impacted by the Hostile Environment, which increases racial discrimination and asks us to be suspicious of each other. At JCWI, we believe Britain can do better than this.
Those most affected are people without status in the UK. Most of the undocumented population in the UK is made up of people who came here legally, but subsequently lost their status, very often through no fault of their own. Some make the difficult decision to leave an abusive partner or an exploitative employer, even though it means they will lose their immigration status. Others grow up assuming they’re British, only to be told that they aren’t, even though they’ve never known any other country. And some fall out of regular status because they can’t afford the skyrocketing fees to renew their visa or to challenge an incorrect decision made by the Home Office.
No matter our nationality or immigration status, we all deserve to be treated with dignity and humanity.
Another important point is that the hostile environment led to the Windrush scandal:
The Home Office told the Windrush generation they must prove they had lived in the UK since before 1973. The Home Office demanded at least one official document from every year they had lived here. Attempting to find documents from decades ago created a huge, and in many cases, impossible burden on people who had done nothing wrong.
In 2017 it started to emerge that hundreds of members of the Windrush generation had been wrongly detained, deported and denied legal rights. Coverage of these individuals’ stories began to break in several newspapers, and Caribbean leaders took the issue up with then-prime minister, Theresa May.
The Home Office has argued the Windrush scandal was an accident – but an independent report in March 2020, the “Windrush Lessons Learned Review”, makes it clear – this was the inevitable result of policies designed to make life impossible for those without the right papers. The Home Office has promised to learn the lessons of the scandal, but the only way to stop it happening again, is to scrap the Hostile Environment.
New government – same environment
The hostile environment was infamous for its vans. Here’s former footballer and political activist Neville Southall noting that the policy was still alive in spirit in 2023 under Rishi Sunak:
Remember the Go Home vans?
They were driven round diverse parts of London as part of a Government campaign to make life unbearable for migrants who can’t prove their immigration status in the UK.
The vans have stopped, but the Hostile Environment is alive and well. pic.twitter.com/E0m2SGaSiY
— Neville Southall (@NevilleSouthall) November 16, 2021
The vans have indeed stopped, and the Tories are out of power, but read what Yvette Cooper wrote in the Sun, and tell us that the hostile environment isn’t still here:
Britain is a fantastic country – at our best we are respected and admired the world over.
But we cannot pretend everything is OK.
Not when so many young lives are lost to knife crime.
Not when too many neighbourhoods are plagued by anti-social behaviour.
Not when so many high streets are hit by a shoplifting epidemic.
And not when criminal gangs are making millions out of dangerous small boat crossings that undermine our border security and put lives at risk.
That is the legacy of Tory failure we are dealing with.
It can’t go on. That’s why the newly elected Labour Government is moving so fast to get on with the job.
We know this means hard graft not sticking plasters and it will take time to turn things round.
But Keir Starmer has made clear that politics has to be about serious public service again – whoever you voted for in the election, we want to work with you to renew Britain’s future.
As Home Secretary, I am leading the work on two important Government priorities: boosting our border security and taking back our streets.
Labour had two choices:
- Admit certain issues are inevitable in an increasingly unequal country – in an increasingly unequal world – and announce plans to redistribute Britain’s wealth so as to prevent further societal decline.
- Carry on blaming the symptoms and not the disease.
Everyone can now see which path Labour has chosen:
Just days into government, Labour are boasting about their new immigration enforcement and deportation push in a tabloid that thrives on dividing our communities.
Instead, they should be building a migration system based on safe routes, care and dignity.https://t.co/yglNX6m6qK
— Peace & Justice Project (@corbyn_project) July 21, 2024
Yvette Cooper desperately trying to think of a word that's not Gestapo: It's gonna be an immigration… blitz. pic.twitter.com/15NHKQMEl4
— jewdⒶs // ייִדהודה (@jewdas) July 21, 2024
No, seriously, do tell me Labour supporters… What’s the difference? https://t.co/jdZkyQylwA pic.twitter.com/ykSx6IQRBm
— Michael East (@MichaelEWriter) July 21, 2024
Things can only get sensibler
There is one difference between what the Labour Party is saying on immigration today and what the Tories were saying two weeks ago – namely that Labour is blaming the Tories. While the state of the UK is undeniably on them, Cooper isn’t arguing that the Tories made societal breakdown inevitable through austerity; she’s arguing that their authoritarian framework of of structural inhumanity was insufficiently sensible:
The Conservatives’ costly Rwanda Migration Partnership has been running for two years, costing hundreds of millions of pounds to send just four volunteers.
Meanwhile the asylum system is in chaos – the backlog has soared with thousands of people in costly hotels, and the number of enforced removals is down by a staggering 50 per cent in the past decade.
The previous government’s preoccupation with Rwanda and headline chasing meant they didn’t do the hard work needed to sort out the basics and the chaos just got worse.
I was shocked to discover the Conservatives had 1,000 civil servants working on the Rwanda Partnership.
Not any more.
We’ve moved staff instead into a new Returns and Enforcement programme to increase returns of those with no right to be here and to make sure rules are respected and enforced, starting with an increase in illegal working raids.
We’ve directed Immigration Enforcement to intensify their operations over the summer, with a focus on employers who are fuelling the trade of criminal gangs by exploiting and facilitating illegal working here in the UK – including in car washes and in the beauty sector.
And we are drawing up new plans for fast track decisions and returns for safe countries.
Most people in this country want to see a properly controlled and managed asylum system, where Britain does its bit to help those fleeing conflict and persecution, but where those who have no right to be in the country are swiftly removed.
For far too long under the Conservatives, we have had just costly chaos – that has to change now.
Labour: yesterday’s mistakes today
The Tories and right-wing media framed boat crossings as the issue of the day, and yet they completely failed to ‘solve it’ by the standards that they themselves had set. How did that work out for the Tories you might be wondering? Those who are old enough to remember the election of 2024 will know that the Tories’ focus on ‘illegal immigration’ massively backfired – supercharging the electability of Reform who promised to finish what the Tories had begun.
Don’t worry, though, because we’re sure the exact same thing won’t happen to Labour at the next election. We’re sure that war and climate breakdown won’t make an increase in boat crossings inevitable. We’re sure that failing to provide safe routes won’t mean more deaths at sea and more misery for everyone.
Why are we sure of that?
Because the grown ups are back in charge – that’s why.
And we’re also certain that ‘the grown ups are back in charge’ isn’t simply the mantra of people who have no actual answers to the very real problems this country is facing.
Featured image via Keir Starmer – Flickr (image cropped to 1,200 x 900)
