Anti-Apartheid activist, grassroots anti-racism and anti-capitalist campaigner and human rights activist Reederwan Craayenstein writes
Mogamat Reederwan Craayenstein is a hero of the South African anti-apartheid struggle, a former political prisoner who now lives in the UK and continues his fight against racism and discrimination everywhere. He writes:
This short article identifies four factors contributing to the rising refugee crisis in the UK and other parts of the global North. The problem is not the people smugglers using boats, but rather politics, including foreign policy, fossil fuel policies, trade policies, and neoliberalism. These interconnected policy frameworks generate the global refugee crisis. Protests outside asylum hotels will not solve the refugee crisis. Shouts by Farage of “Send them home” will not end it. Talking about “an island of strangers” is dog-whistle politics that panders to racists who echo anti-black racism from the 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s.
If we want to end the refugee crisis, then we must end our politics that puts profits before people. Think about these policy issues. Organise to vote for councillors who will integrate these policies at the local level in 2026. Mobilise to vote for MPS who will put an end to these policies in 2029. People in pin-striped suits and smart dresses create the refugee crisis. Vote them out of office to end the refugee crisis.
REFUGEES ARE HERE BECAUSE WE ARE THERE
The UK has 145 military bases in 42 countries, forming the structure through which it interferes in social and political conflicts. It prevents people in foreign countries from finding local solutions to their political issues. The UK and its allies support certain groups financially, politically, and militarily. From the 1960s to the 1980s, the slogan from black anti-racism struggles was “We are here because you are/were there.”
Consider the UK supporting Israel wholeheartedly as it genocidally erases the Palestinians, supports settlers, and invites military, political, and diplomatic personnel responsible for the genocide. In the 1980s, by 1985, 120 Labour-controlled councils boycotted Apartheid South Africa, despite the Thatcher government’s support for the regime.
Today, the Labour Party government and local authorities make Thatcher appear progressive. Currently, the Labour Party’s approach to Apartheid and Israel is worse than that of the Tories. It repeats the Thatcher government’s actions when Apartheid South Africa bombed neighbouring countries. The actions of Israel in the Middle East create refugees. The illegal invasion of Iraq produced refugees. The support for and installation of an ISIS front as the government in Syria generates even more Syrian refugees. This is how UK foreign policy contributes to refugees boarding boats. It is not the people’s smugglers; it is politicians in Westminster who fill the boats with refugees.
https://www.aamarchives.org/who-was-involved/local-authorities.html
FOSSIL FUELS, CLIMATE CHANGE AND REFUGEES
Using fossil fuels releases greenhouse gases that trap heat and warm the planet. This leads to more severe weather events. Droughts, floods, and storms that occur naturally are intensified. This results in unpredictable water supplies and deeper droughts. Agricultural regions are destroyed, and low-lying cities are devastated. People migrate from rural areas to cities and across borders, often destabilising neighbouring countries, and those who will travel to places they consider safe.
Thus, when activists say “Keep that oil in the soil,” they are protecting not only the climate but also acting on behalf of climate refugees. Our politicians serve the interests of Big Oil and fossil fuel companies. They fill the boats with migrants. They know what the science says, but they prefer dual incomes that come from being lobbyists for big oil. Politicians hired by Big Oil fill the migrant boats. Stop fossil fuels to save the climate, protect the environment, and reduce the need for climate refugees. UNHCR states that 60% of refugees and internally displaced people come from countries most vulnerable to climate change.
The Labour government understands the connection between fossil fuels, climate change, and refugees. They do not have a factual problem; theirs is an attitudinal issue. In fact, the Labour Party, Conservatives, and Reform are all part of the same problem.
https://www.unhcr.org/uk/news/stories/climate-change-and-displacement-myths-and-facts
https://www.greenpeace.org.uk/news/green-movement-migration-climate
TRADE POLICIES AND REFUGEES
Trade policies (e.g., NAFTA, EU-Mercosur, TPP) by large blocs in the global North that favour their companies disrupt economies in the global South. Often, countries in the global North create structural conditions that enable their companies to compete internationally. More fragile economies in the global South lack the same institutional capacity and human capital, and therefore cannot provide the same level of support to local companies. These companies often lack the power to resist due to significant pressure from major countries and their trading blocs. The result is that local workers in the global south lose their jobs, life becomes precarious, poverty leads to social conflict, economic collapse, and mass internal displacement and migration of refugees.
https://www.swp-berlin.org/10.18449/2019RP15/#hd-d25979e1487
NEOLIBERALISM AND REFUGEE CRISIS
The Washington Consensus (and post-Washington Consensus) involves the implementation of market-oriented economic policies by Washington-based institutions such as the US Treasury, the IMF, and the World Bank in the 1980s and 1990s.
This refers to the privatisation, liberalisation, and financialisation of government services that would otherwise serve the developmental roles of the state. It is also known as neoliberalism due to the state’s retreat from public services and its focus on the private sector. As a result, the state ends up serving private interests rather than the people, becoming more managerial of capital’s interests.
Housing, education, social welfare, public transport, healthcare, criminal justice (especially prisons), roads, railways, harbours, ports, and infrastructure were all handed over to the private sector as the government was compelled to withdraw. Those governments that refused were either penalised or faced colour revolutions and coups. I say were, but it remains the case today.
We live in a world where refugees are blamed for seeking asylum in the global North. Right-wing bigots march to refugee accommodation centres, shouting “Go home,” and that is the polite version of their slogans. More robust and colourful versions are available.
It is essential for those of us advocating for the dignity and respect of asylum seekers in accordance with international law to argue how politics and finance in the global north create and sustain the movement of 123.2 million internally displaced people, 42 million refugees worldwide, 8.4 million asylum seekers, and 4,2 million stateless individuals. One in 67 people globally has been displaced.
Parliaments in the global North are responsible for many policies that generate and uphold the troubling figures mentioned above. Neoliberalism, neocolonialism, and racism lie at the heart of these policies.
Military bases and intelligence operatives intervene abroad, and people come here as migrants and refugees. Fossil fuel policies that enrich Big Oil cause devastation in the global South, prompting migration here. Trade policies that devastate economies in the global South lead to migration towards Britain. The neoliberal hollowing out of states in the global South creates the precarity that forces migrants and refugees to arrive in Britain. The refugees are here because we are there. That was true in the 1970s and 1980s. It remains true today.
Do not blame the migrants and refugees. Blame our politicians, business and tech elites, and blame the IMF, the World Bank, and the Bank for International Settlements. These are the institutions inhabited by people in sharp suits and stiletto heels who create and sustain the migrant and refugee crisis. We must conscientiously organise and mobilise. For as we believed with the World Social Forum, “Another World is Possible.”
However, with the potential annihilation of the human race through nuclear war, the climate and environmental crises, and fragile, failed states with hollowed-out democracies, as states mainly serve the interests of capital, it becomes clear that “Another World is Necessary”.
We need a new politics centred on people—prioritising solidarity, internationalism, and people over profits. As Malcolm X said, we must think globally and act locally. Our starting point is within our local councils, then our parliaments, and ultimately international institutions. We must build our movement by connecting students, workers, and communities, and fight for that other world as we organise around housing, education, healthcare, the environment, criminal justice, peace, and human rights. The migrant and refugee crisis is the canary in the coal mine.
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And with our support of Israel starving and murdering millions of now homeless people in Gaza, what do the supporters of Starmerite policy think many Palestinians will try to do. What would YOU do in their circumstances?