CIAR Coalition and BLM Coalition call for action and resistance to protect our rights – and will march on Downing Street later this month
Ahmed Hussain of Citizenship is a Right (CIAR) writes:
Silence is not an option.
Our airwaves are dominated by the opinions of bigots whom we have allowed into power, and who are desperate to hold on to it. Desperate enough to throw the human rights of British citizens under the bus of an electorate that is driven to a cliff-edge of social collapse by a compliant right-wing press.
Take the Nationality And Borders Act, which has put the power of stripping citizenship in the hands of the Home Secretary – including the criteria for judging who ‘deserves’ such punishment. This immediately puts those of us with migrant parents or grandparents in the firing line and makes us second class citizens in all but name by hanging a threat over our heads that does not exist for others.
This is not an abstract concern, there are have been cases where individuals are put on file and stripped of citizenship during a trip abroad – cases like “E3” who was stranded abroad for five years after his citizenship was removed whilst he was in Bangladesh. The Home Office believed E3 was “an Islamist extremist” who posed a threat to national security; and yet his lawyers were never presented with any evidence of this claim. E3 was able to win back his citizenship before the Borders Act became law, but in this new context the judicial process has been hijacked totally in favour of the Home Secretary’s political whims, versus a stranded ex-citizen who is fighting to get back home after losing everything they have.
On top of that, this Act criminalises desperate refugees simply for taking the step of landing on our shores in hope of a better life than that destroyed by wars, famines or economic collapses – extreme situations out of the control of any individual refugee, but which oddly enough benefit profiteering governments like ours.
Then there is the Police, Crimes, Sentencing and Courts Act, borne out of an incompetent government’s desire to shut down dissent instead of responding constructively. In reaction to the successful awareness efforts of Black Lives Matter and climate activists in 2021, this Act gives broad draconian powers to Police to minimise or even criminalise protest. In conjunction with the Nationality And Borders Act, a repeat protestor of migrant background could eventually find themselves receiving a letter that will expel them from this country. Our voices would be cowed into silence.
The passage of the Public Order Bill is further proof, if any were needed, that this government has authoritarian ambitions. Claiming to listen to the needs of Police overstretched by a growing number of protests, ministers ignored the underlying causes for said protests and instead aim to make voicing dissent harder, by stripping protestors of the tools needed to run the most disruptive – and, consequently, effective – kinds of protests.
This government wants to shut your mouth and silence your dissent with one hand, whilst signing off privatisations of utilities that our society depends on with the other. Your quality of life will collapse and you won’t have any way of voicing disagreement.
Want to point out that refugees from British pillaging abroad are left to drown, whilst Ukrainian refugees are welcomed like heroes who fought Putin himself? Won’t be able to do that.
Want to demand an asylum system that doesn’t dehumanise desperate refugees to the point of suicide? Won’t be able to do that.
Want to stop the hateful anti-refugee rhetoric which also inflames racism against global majority citizens of the UK? Won’t be able to do that.
Our collective voice is being silenced, because that is what this government fears: and that is why this coalition of coalitions is coming together on Saturday 29th April outside the Home Office to protest these laws.
Silence is not an option – it never has been.
Delia Mattis of BLM Coalition adds:
Once these rights are lost we may never win them back. We urge everyone who can to join us on 29 April to march and show we’re not accepting it.
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It’s true: You can never vote yourself out of oligarchy. Bottom-up action like this is the only way. Let’s make it massive.
The Trade Union motto ” an injury to one is an injury to all” applies to more than just Trade Union activity. Once we allow anybody’s rights to be trampled on we are not only complicit in their treatment but our failure to defend the rights of others puts our own rights at risk too. That is why we should always show stand shoulder to shoulder with those being marginalised excluded or scapegoated.
Solidarity with our brothers and sisters in CIAR and BLM
“British pillaging abroad”. The history of the ‘British Empire’ is not a history of the British people but a favourable account of events perpetrated by an incredibly small minority of rich and powerful aristocrats and merchants. This programme of elite control still exists in the Judiciary and the Executive; the Military and Education today, as the public schoolboys and girls retain their priviledges without question. Social Mobility ‘just a dream from the 1960s’; a goal that will always be – just a dream’.
Great post steve.The Elite (read ‘scavenging parasites’) will always control centres of power like the judiciary and Executive.
I’d say the current economic status quo (that’s latin for “the mess we are in”) creates ever-increasing economic inequality and this, in turn, ensures approaching Oligarchy and the end of Democracy.
Thomas Piketty’s ‘Capital in the 21st Century’ explains and evidences this very clearly and should be Essential Reading for democratic socialists, not just us ageing 1960s ‘hippy’ types. Oligarchy and overt control of Everything is being created by mainstream neoliberal economics. First it rigs markets, then it kills Democracy.
I think, as CIAR and BLM’s march attests, we are at a tipping point where neoliberal economics is moving-on from Rigging Markets to Killing Democracy via Starmer and Sunak and Biden’s authoritarianism.
The ones that suck on the teat of the ruling class are the obstacles to socialism. We need to be wary of all of our supposed allies who suddenly spring up and even while they are yet to develop fully have loud voices and preposterous ambitions. I once belonged to a small group of activists. We had tremendous access to printing and clerical facilities. It still took us ages to agree on the wording and artwork for small-scale actions. We were always late. Funding was hard to get. Yet we can see multiple ” grassroots and embryonic”, groups appear. Flyers, banners, mouthpieces, and access to the media. It’s wonderful. The speed, the distribution, the wages. I guess that we weren’t the sharpest tools in the box. But you’ve got to admire their abilities to organise from nothing to nationally attended demos. I wish we knew how it’s done cause we have a world to win. Who’s paying these glorious leaders? Err… How much is that doggy in the window? We won’t be attending, they’ve already got our mug shots and details. Don’t you go breaking things, you’ll get hurt or jailed and the organisation will be gone with the wind.
People who can start Wars for Profit are Psychopaths, Greed and Fear is all they understand
We are about to enter the Fear phase
Off with their heads
The psychopaths who have the ability to start wars,Doug, use fear for more than military objectives . 9/11, banking crisis, covid emergency and Ukraine: They all i) result from, and ii) embed Fear.
Fear is the political blood of neoliberal economics – nothing happens without its ability to lessen Fear in the little people. Sometimes the fear is unfounded/unreal – Israel could still be a successful economy and homeland for the Jews if it allowed its indigenous people, Palestinians, property and human rights.