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Some Secretary David Blunkett attempt to play both ends against the middle in his handling of asylum seekers.
While a succession of vicious government policies, including the controversial Clause 55 (see inside, page 5) continue to make Britain an ever-more hostile environment for refugees fleeing persecution, and Labour boasts about its increased rates of deportations compared with the last Tory government, Blunkett has now denounced "wild myths" linking refugees with terrorism.
There are certainly a myriad of such myths in the right wing tabloid press - feeding off the very same scare stories put about by Blunkett and his colleagues to whip up sufficient uncritical hysteria among Labour MPs to push through an even more draconian Terrorism Act in the aftermath of the September Il events in the USA.
They have been further stoked up by the police hype and frenzied comments by Labour ministers and others in the aftermath of the arrests of seven North African men in Wood Green, and subsequent allegations and charges related to the poison
And to compound the already potent cocktail of middle class frustration and fury at the "tide" of potentially "terrorist" asylum seekers apparently sponging off the state, Blunkett's team has handed the Sun and the other reactionary press another ready-made cause celebre by the commandeering of a 3-star country hotel in Sittingbourne as one of the new Home Office induction centres designed to speed
The pictures of en-suite rooms and the • chandeliered ballroom, combined with quotes from bemused and angry local people who were neither asked nor even told in advance about the plan, have been easy meat for those trying to foster the lie that Blair's Britain is a "soft touch" for feckless foreigners.
Everything that has been done on the issue of immigration and asySlum by Blair's government has served in this way to bolster the cause of the far right, while ministers' empty and tokenistic protestations against racism have also managed to antagonise many instinctive Labour supporters the growing evidence of a presence in many areas of the fascist BP: they have already been quick to leaflet Sittingbourne on the
The "wild myths" about refugees gain most strength not from the rabble of racist thugs or the more sophisticated populist and send to us c/o PO Box 1109 London N4 2UU Please make cheques payable to RESISTANCE • Please send me a year's subscription to the new paper. I enclose £10 • £15 • £20 O Name .... Address
Post Code agitators emerging on the far right: they are reinforced above all by Labour's rejection of the basic principle of open borders - in which workers, like capital, could freely
A vital starting point in redressing the damage is to support the campaign for the
I enclose a donation of £.... Age. .. Phone .. email every trade union and other forum, and supporting the fight by refugee and immigration organisations to reverse Labour's