For years, New Labour pursued a hard line on immigration with hateful language and exclusionary policies. The result? More people trusted the Conservatives
by Steve Bloomfield / November 27, 2018 / Leave a comment
Former Prime Minister Tony Blair gives a speech in 2002. Photo: LSE Library/Flickr
The only way to defeat the rise of the far-right, claimed Hillary Clinton last week, is to “get a handle on immigration,” The former Democratic presidential candidate said that Europe’s centre-left needed to “send a very clear message—‘we are not going to be able to continue to provide refuge and support’”.
Hillary Clinton clearly hasn’t heard of New Labour.
Under Tony Blair, New Labour passed five migration-related bills between 1997 and 2007. Each one was about making it harder for refugees and immigrants to live here. Each one was accompanied by a wave of dehumanising languagein the media and political sphere.
One of the first pieces of legislation removed benefits from asylum seekers, replacing money with vouchers. These vouchers could only be spent on what the government deemed “essential”—something that didn’t include razors or toothpaste. Shops were banned from giving change, which meant parts of the already meagre allowance often went spent.
During this period, Labour liked to split asylum seekers up into “genuine” and “bogus.” The phrase “bogus asylum seeker” became so prevalent it was even used, without quote marks, in BBC news reports.
After Labour was re-elected in 2001, the new home secretary, David Blunkett, doubled down on both rhetoric and repressive policies. He warned of children of asylum seekers “swamping” local schools and introduced a bill banning them from attending. A year later he scheduled an interview with the Sun in which he vowed “tough measures to crack down on asylum cheats.”
Ahead of the 2005 election, Labour again played the immigration card. In a speech in Dover, Blair accused asylum seekers of “playing the system.” He attacked the Conservatives from the right, claiming they had “voted to restore benefits to asylum seekers in 1999 and argued against our proposals to remove support from families whose claimed were rejected.”
More policies were announced. Blair’s new home secretary, Charles Clarke, talked about the dangers of people “coming here who are a burden on society”.
When Clarke was forced to resign (over foreign nationals not being deported after being released from prison), his successor, John Reid, upped the rhetoric. In 2006, he proposed what news outlets wrote up as “an end to immigration free-for-all.”…
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John K.