Tag: refugees

National Flags used as Weapons to Intimidate

Tony StauntonLeave a comment

My weekly comment column in the daily Plymouth Herald (9.12.25), almost incandescent with anger at the amount of apolitical claptrap being spouted about “finding common ground” with the flag-waving, hate-spouting racists. I’m being told I should “listen to the other side” and “respect the opinions of others”. I refuse! After 50+ years of political activity I know very well what a fascist is, thank you. I know humanity is capable of such a vast spectrum of beliefs and actions that you cannot have common cause with them all. There is a left and a right of the political spectrum, and always has been. And it’s not me but the fascists who will be the first and last to shut you up and shut you down. They must not only be opposed, ardently and collectively, but they must be defeated.

Unedited:

Another racist march through Plymouth last Saturday, and more threatened. A small and bedraggled and of fewer than 60 paraded huge union jacks and flags of St George around the Barbican and Frankfort Gate with clear intent. To use Britain’s national flags as weapons to intimidate all people of colour.
They wish for Britain to be a white-supremacist Apartheid State, those of colour to be subjugated as second or third-class citizens or forcibly deported in their millions. They spout absurd assertions that Britain has been taken-over by Muslims or Black power.
They scream “save our kids” to present the lie that migrants en-masse are sex-abusers, without any evidence and when the vast majority of child sexual abuse occurs in white families, because Britain is an 85% white-skinned population. They demand “stop the boats” when the total costs of offering asylum to those suffering is a fraction of one-percent of the country’s gross domestic product, and Britain is fuelling the wars and climate chaos from which they’re escaping.
Those who called the demonstration publicised their rallying cry across the entire South West from Bristol to Truro for extremists to converge upon Plymouth. A few of the most mouthy on the day have been seen demonstrating outside a hotel where traumatised people who are totally innocent and have every right to be here. They brandish emblems of “Britain First”, a fascist organisation formed out of the failed British National Party in 2011 and allied with fascists across Europe such as Germany’s AfD, supported by Donald Trump.
Members of Patriotic Alternative, a white-supremacist hate-group have also been involved. Flag Force Plymouth, the ones hanging flags from lampposts to intimidate and claim communities as ruled by them, are directly allied to these far-right and neo-nazi groups. The question has to be asked, by what right do they have freedom to march in Plymouth or anywhere else, spouting racial hatred and misogyny?
Police data, publicly available, shows that over 40% of the far-Right protesters arrested in the last year had previous offences of violence against women or had been reported for domestic abuse. Perhaps their calls for justice for women and girls are another example of the actual perpetrators hiding in plain sight.
Thankfully, the people wanting to expose the lies of the far-Right turned-out on Saturday, as we always do, to swamp the fascist-led flag-usurpers, trade unionists and human-rights protesters outnumbering them three-to-one. But the vast majority of decent Plymothians should be up-in-arms against the far-Right, not just a dedicated few.
The media and government are broadcasting much of the same racist mythology, with one aim in mind. To distract and desert attention from the crisis of low pay and high prices, poor housing and the fragmentation of health and social care services. “Blame the Boat people” just doesn’t work. Asylum seekers are not the landlords hiking unaffordable rents, refugees are not the directors and shareholders of the banks extorting our cash through high interest rates, and do not own the energy companies creating our fuel poverty. Black migrant workers are the ones propping-up our caring services despite the efforts of Starmer’s government to expel them.
Now, trade unions and campaign groups have formed a fresh alliance to challenge the lies and hatred. The Together-Alliance against the far-Right is uniting the country, from civil organisations through to celebrities, Friends of the Earth to Paloma Faith and Lenny Henry, to Stand Up To Racism. Join us and defeat hatred. http://www.togetheralliance.org.uk

Labour feeds far-Right Racism

Tony StauntonLeave a comment

My weekly Comment in the daily Plymouth Herald (18.11.25), seriously outraged by the latest racist policy drive of the UK so-called Labour government. Writing on Sunday for a Monday morning deadline, the article could not consider the later praise heaped-upon Home Secretary Shabana Mahmoud by the Tory Badenoch and Reform UK’s Farage. Most notably the fascist Yaxley-Lennon (aka Tommy Robinson) claimed a victory over the government, won by street protest and flag-hanging he boasted. Of course, the open racists bay for more – the more you give the more they demand – arguing for the withdrawal from the European Convention on Human Rights. And of course, the few Labour backbenchers raising concerns are too few and too whimpy to have any effect on the coming Commons vote. Starmer emptied-out the Labour Party of the entire Left – there’s no-one to call-out Mahmoud’s reactionary anti-human bile.

The unexpurgated original below:

Britain is NOT being torn apart by illegal immigration. We are NOT divided by migrant workers or cultural differences. This country is NOT being overwhelmed by asylum seekers or Islamic Sharia Law. Labour’s Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood is completely wrong.
There IS an attempt to tear Britain apart – not by young Black men but by racist and Islamaphobic hatred. People of colour are being threatened by violent white thugs on our streets, organised and whipped-up by Nazi-Seig-heiling fascist cadre. The Union Jack and Cross of St George flags have been weaponised as public emblems of white supremacy, flying lamppost-high, hoisted on the testosterone of male dominance spewing misogyny as well as racist threats throughout our communities.
It is the far-Right that must be challenged, not those escaping war, climate devastation and famine. The flaggers follow a fascist ideology, an import from the White-nationalists of the USA and the so-called-Saxon Aryan descendants of Nazis from greater-Germany and Scandinavia. Check out the AfD in Germany or the rebranded ultra-nationalists of Denmark and France. Patriotism my arse!
Britain IS at risk of being torn apart by false propaganda of the far-Right, much of it imported and funded by white supremacists in the United States of America and Europe, including the World’s wealthiest man, Elon Musk. Mahmood, Badenoch and Farage are shifting to echo the fascists Yaxley-Lennon and Tenconi in importing Trump’s violent deportation policies. Will we soon see plain clothes thugs deputised as Border Force state agents terrorising the streets and rounding-up non-whites in workplaces and communities, caging and deporting them without appeal?
People seeking refuge and asylum from are human beings with families. Yet Labour is looking to end Article Eight of the human Rights law – the right to family life – and Article three, the right to protection from violent or degrading treatment. Asylum seekers in permanent limbo, refugee families at risk of eviction, their children whisked away from schools, deported to a country they fled with no means to survive.
Labour is looking to withdraw from the European Convention on Human Rights. Just what the fascists have demanded! Idiots! Fewer than two-and-a-half thousand asylum seekers have used human rights legislation in their appeal to stay. It should not be an issue.
Withdrawing from the European Convention on Human Rights will mean the end of the rights to family life and protection from abuse. This will make us all more vulnerable, especially children experiencing abuse from relatives – 83% of which occurs inside white families here. The withdrawal will produce no material benefits, it will only strengthen the far-right.
Mahmoud’s announcement is an official call to white racists: “it’s official – refugees are not welcome here, regard people of colour with suspicion, as cheats and “illegals”, as people who should be hounded-out of their accommodation and communities.” She thinks she’s appealing to the mass of voters to support Labour, but in fact she’s only appeasing the racists.
The history of the twentieth century proves you can’t appease fascism. This month’s Poppy Day commemorated more than half-a-million Brits who died fighting fascism in the Second World War. They would be outraged to see the flags now adopted by the far-Right they died to protect us from!
People who have lived here for up-to twenty years will, under Labour plans, be liable to be sent back to the place they fled. The threat to kick out refugees having first offered them protection is unprincipled and immoral. Mahmoud is viciously perpetuating a living condition of vulnerability, statelessness, discrimination and “otherness”. People who “look like refugees – obviously Black people – will be branded as “do not belong”, creating a caste-system of racist hierarchy.
This Labour government should be held to full account on the basis of fact and human decency. Working class people in Britain are not mean and spiteful. Our culture is inclusive and diverse, and we must keep it that way or we will live under the yolk of far-Right militarised authoritarian control.
Labour’s Mahmoud is not producing a more harmonious and stable nation at all, she is whipping-up the divisions advocated by the far-Right!
In Plymouth the fascist-led “Flag Force” racists are planning a march through the City on 6th December, terrorising people-of-colour and spouting fascist threats against humanists and whoever they consider to be “lefties”. We are all at risk from them. Their racism and misogyny must be exposed, and they must be stopped. Stand Up To Racism!

The Union Jack is a Symbol of Imperialism

Tony StauntonLeave a comment

My weekly comment column in the daily Plymouth Herald (26.8.25) identifying the political polarisation represented by the flags being hoisted everywhere. Hatred or Hope? It’s time to choose sides and take action.

Unedited here:

Painting red crosses onto white mini-roundabouts reflects confusion. Not just for drivers. The Red Cross on White background is the national flag of England. This “Flag of St George”, also known as the White Ensign, is incorporated into the imperialist Union Jack which unified England, Scotland, Wales and the colonies becoming known across the world as the “Butcher’s Apron” because it was flown into every battle across every continent and subjugated a third of the world under the great British Empire of the 19th Century. The Union Jack is a symbol of power, of conquest, of imperialism even today.
All flags symbolise power, and a lot more besides. Flags rally people into a shared identity, a common cause, and a commitment. The flag of St George is now being flown from windows and balconies and lampposts signifying a new-found symbolism. Mixing myth with dogma, the English flag is now being flown as the call to arms against refugees and asylum seekers. Black refugees. And Muslims. Overwhelmingly the poorest and most helpless in society.
It could be explained that St George is a well documented historic figure, his mother a Palestinian and father Turkish. St George is celebrated in Palestine and many other peoples for helping those in need and opposing the persecution of others. True, the flag was used as a herald in at least one early plundering escapade of the Crusades targeting the riches of the Middle East under the cynical guise of Christianity defeating the devil of Islam.
Those utilising this symbol today may evoke the Protestant Christian adoption of the flag of St George in the 16th century, and use it as a statement against Islam as the primary enemy amongst all non-Protestant faiths, but the bigots outside the asylum hotels are not, in all honesty, particularly interested in any of that. Today’s Red Cross on a white background is a statement of hatred of Black people, of the call for supremacy of the White English Race.
The flag of England has been turned into a rallying cry for racism. When, during football tournaments it was flown to support the English Team, now it symbolises hatred of Black people in general and refugees landing here in boats (we are an island, after all). It has been irredeemably politicised, weaponised once again.
Other flags are available and being flown. Somewhat ironically, supreme amongst them right now, across Britain and most of the world, is the flag of Palestine. It represents the people of Palestine – colonised, brutalised and now experiencing not just ethnic cleaning through non-stop heavy artillery bombardment, enforced famine and genocide.
The Palestinian flag has become the symbol of internationalism, social justice and equality. In Britain it now a symbol of human rights, including the right to protest. Whilst pensioners are arrested for flying the flag of Palestine, those marching against refugees and even calling for them to be killed are protected by Police and escorted into battle.
Britain is in a state of polarised hostilities whipped-up by an economic crisis caused by corruption and ruling-class propaganda, scapegoating minorities to keep the spotlight away from their plundering of the Commoners’ wealth. It is difficult to get at the actual people who are pillaging our country and destroying our security – the corporate directors and their political puppets. It’s much easier to blame, target and attack local people who are Black and penniless.
Outside the ramshackle profiteering hotels, ultra-nationalists are flying the Union Jack, the flag of St George and the Zionist flag of Israel together in racist rage. They are politically led and driven by fascist cadre who know what they’re doing. The Israeli state has an apartheid constitution giving Jewish citizens more rights than those of any other heritage – it is a racist state. It’s what the far-Right protesters want here – superior rights for those born into White-skinned Protestant families. The flag of St George conjures-up anti-Muslim military crusades, the Union Jack represents a British Empire long gone and never returning. This is a crusade of despair and hopelessness.
Anyone, of any human decency will not rally to the flag of hatred, bigotry and racism. Instead, we must rally together to defend human rights and build hope through working class allegiance across communities, nations and cultures. Fight all exploitation and oppression! Stand Up To Racism!

Say it Loud – Refugees are Welcome Here!

Tony StauntonLeave a comment

My weekly comment column in the daily Plymouth Herald, challenging the racists in this city. In the wake of the huge anti-racist demonstration against fascist-led racist gatherings in Glasgow and Epping, the call has to be to confront the racist mobs everywhere – Whose streets? Our Streets! Thanks to Julie for timely research on the facts. Keep on protesting – join Stand Up To Racism! https://standuptoracism.org.uk/

My unedited version below:

Say it Loud – Refugees are Welcome Here!

There is something worse than despicable about people who want to assault and abuse refugees. Yet there they are, forming-up to rage in protest outside squalid buildings, some of them trying to burn them down with the people trapped inside.
These buildings, hardly passing as “hotels” – never improved, never refurbished, never invested in – now being used as cheap accommodation and a fast-buck for the tax-cash grabbing owners, cramming-in people who have foot-slogged across continents to risk their lives in flimsy rubber boats to get here.
These people are refugees – between 60 and 80% of people in those small boats are granted asylum -they are refugees as a class. They don’t get given jobs here – they cannot work for ages until their applications are processed and successful. They don’t come here to hang around shopping centres, they come here to contribute to the economy, have a life and pay taxes.
Asylum is a human need and a human right. When you’re being attacked by military or armed gangs, your family raped and killed, your homes and lands destroyed either by war or extreme weather, you should be helped.
And we should be incredibly proud of helping. Thankfully, most people in every city, every town, from student through to pensioners, are ready to help those in need. But now, with violent racist thugs seeking to take-over our streets, anti-racists need to come out and challenge them, to Stand Up To Racism!
The fascist-led thugs attacking the hotels across the country, throwing bricks and attacking Police this Summer are more than ready to be treated in hospital by the migrant workforce on which the NHS and many other public services depend. Immigrant doctors are saving lives, immigrant teachers are teaching our children, immigrant workers are cleaning our buildings and driving our public transport.
But rampaging racists don’t care about facts. Not least, asylum-seekers in the UK get no privileges. Asylum seekers cannot choose where they live. People seeking asylum receive little financial support and are not allowed to work, usually getting £49.18 a week to pay for things like food, clothing and toiletries, but if the accommodation provides meals this is reduced to £9.95 a week. The UK is not overrun with asylum seekers. In a country of 66,000,000 people, 32,345 refugees were living in so-called “hotels” last year.
The UK is home to just 1% of the world’s refugees. As of 2024, the number of refugees in the world stands at 27.1 million. Last year, 108,000 applied for asylum in the UK, which is 1/3 the number in Germany and only 1/10 of the total applications in the EU.
Net migration to the UK last year was about 450,000, with small boat migrants a tiny proportion of that. Here, 1 in 6 (or 16%) of the population were born outside the UK. The idea that Black people are taking over the UK is an impossible racist lie. More than 90% of land across the UK has no buildings on it – hardly overcrowded! Britain is comprised of at least 55million white-skinned humans out of a population of 66 million – hardly “taken-over” – as if that should matter! Do you really think that a human born with darker skin pigmentation is inferior to “white” or lighter skin – are you stupid or just ignorant or lazy-minded or just fooling yourself that you’re more important than other people?
And those who say Black men are sexual abusers need to look at the list of paedophile celebs, politicians and royals who are White, including many of the racists’ own heroes. In fact, the vast majority of child sexual abuse happens inside the family, and the vast majority of families in Britain are White – you don’t see the racists protesting against white gangs organising child sexual exploitation. The racists don’t really care about children, they just use them to exploit racist ideology.
So who is raping and pillaging our country, exactly? The top 50 richest families (that’s just 2,000 people) in the UK now hold more wealth than the poorest half of the population (33 million of us). The greed and avarice of the super-rich, their exploitation and maltreatment of the UK’s working class dwarfs any misbehaviour of any migrant.
It is the super-rich who are funding the fascist-led far-right racist demonstrations and their vile racist propaganda, and given the oxygen of publicity by the politicians and media led by those who are actually responsible for our housing crisis, our crumbling NHS and schools – the big landlords and corporate executives who deserve all our bile.
Stand up and clear our streets of the racists. Say it loud and proud – Refugees are Welcome Here!

Migrant Workers Give More than they Take

Tony StauntonLeave a comment

It becomes tiring and repetitive, but the point has to be continuously repeated – migrants and refugees are not the cause of the Age of Austerity – greedy bosses, their exploitation and oppression of the working class certainly is. And they’re organising to ensure it stays that way. My weekly Comment published in the daily Plymouth Herald (23.7.24) tried to explain at least some of the reasoning why we must say “Refugees are Welcome Here!”.

Keep them out! Last Thursday’s international summit, held at Winston Churchill’s ancestral home of Blenheim Palace, focussed upon the “threat” to Europe of from the East and the Global South. In short, the leaders of 14 countries determined they should collaborate to keep refugees out of Europe.

Of course, unlike the same policies in the USA, Europe cannot simply build a long, high and militarised wall to “keep’em out!”. The geography doesn’t allow for barricades. Instead, those seeking refuge will need to be turfed out, turned around, sent back, or imprisoned in regimes so inhuman as to act as a “deterrent” to peoples whose conditions are already inhuman. 

The leaders stood together to rightfully denounced the human traffickers, but focussed upon those arriving at Europe’s borders and Britain’s shores as “illegals”. Little or nothing was said about the reasons for this mass migration, or consideration of the causes rather than the effects upon their security, wealth and power.

The vast majority of people travelling northwards, in death-defying journeys of pain and fear, are escaping one of two never-ending horrors being experienced by those born in Africa and the Middle East. The first is the wars funded and armed by countries of the North, encouraged and applauded by the leaders dining at Blenheim Palace, producing extremes of wealth for the arms manufacturers and allied trades who pay the lobbying fees for their jamboree.

The second is the climate collapse engulfing entire regions of sub-Saharan Africa – some 46 countries – with tens of millions of humans marching away from their homelands, lands forever starved of water and arable land as a result of the fossil-fuelled emissions from the global North, heating the Planet towards mass extinction.

In these circumstances, humanity should be uniting to protect all. The opposite is the case. As if labelling human beings “illegal” isn’t inhuman enough, plotting to ensure they die “abroad” is despicable, outside of all the legal and moral tenets that are paraded at such grand political events.

Those of the far-Right reading this will be enraged. The white-supremacists and Capitalist entrepreneurs, driven by their quest for individual power and wealth, will be screaming at the page, arguing for a national pride that blames all Britain’s obvious social decline on Black people.

Refusing to consider the record profits and exemptions from paying tax that have seen wealth go from the poor to the rich at an accelerating rate through the past decade, they blame immigration for any and every social problem. 

The fuel bills that have tripled in 4 years have seen the oil and gas companies triple their profits into tens of thousands of millions of pounds paid for by us. The water & sewage bills that used to be covered by taxes as part of public services are now being raised whilst the owners harvest tens of billions of pounds from us, in profits. 

The low pay and long working hours culture that ensures at least 5 million of we, the working class, are reliant on top-ups from Universal Credit. 14 million of us live in subsistence poverty, including 4 million of our children, with 17 million homes requiring refurbishment. 

These numbers alone dwarf any cost to us attached to caring for refugees and asylum seekers. In fact, the tax money we pay towards subsiding the arms manufacturers and fossil fuel companies amounts to tens of billions pounds more than the costs of immigration. 

The skills shortages that are hiking costs in the service and construction industries could be solved by immigrant labour, but that solution is denied by the racist fanatics. Migrants allowed to work pay taxes, unlike the super-rich. It’s simple, working migrants produce taxes and fund commerce to a degree far higher than the initial costs of welcoming them here.

Stopping immigration will do nothing to stop the gross exploitation of working people here, will not reflate the Exchequer nor will it lower the bills. The politicians have let the racists off-the-leash and flagged migration as the key problem in order to create the cover for their continued profiteering and plundering of the public purse.

On Saturday, fascists and their racist allies are holding an anti-immigrant, white-supremacist march in London. Anti-fascists from across Britain will be joining forces to challenge their lies and hatred, supported by the national Trades Union Congress and dozens of trade unions. The rise of racism and fascism must be nipped in the bud before it swamps Britain and destroys the human rights we all require. 

Shame of Enforced Extradition from UK

Tony StauntonLeave a comment

This week’s comment from me in the daily Plymouth Herald (23.4.24), hopefully timely in terms of this being the day when the Rwanda Bill becomes a law-defying law, and at least 6 people are drowned trying to reach Britain from France in small boats confronted by French coastguards. Until there is safe passage, there is no justice.

The law of forced extradition will come into play this week. In the next 12 weeks, a chosen handful, against their will and agency, may be taken to a place of departure by armed guards, and transported by plane to a country they have no links to and no rights within.

Rwanda has a recent record of human rights abuses. 

Five years ago the Rwandan police opened fire on refugees protesting. Rwandan security forces shot dead at least 12 refugees from the Democratic Republic of Congo when they protested against a cut to food rations.

Authorities arrested and prosecuted over 60 of them on charges including “spreading false information with intent to create a hostile international opinion against the Rwandan state”. These same laws could be used against the people Britain now wants to pluck from south coast beaches and dump in Africa.

On 15th January this year, documents sent to MPs by home secretary James Cleverly admitted that “While Rwanda is now a relatively peaceful country, there are nevertheless issues with its human rights record around political opposition to the current regime, dissent and free speech.”

Absurdly, Four Rwandan asylum seekers were granted refugee status in the UK last year over “well-founded” fears of persecution. Rwanda is not a safe refuge.

Indeed, polls posted by Al Jazeera show widespread concern inside Rwanda about the refugees and the Treaty with Britain. The Rwandan economy is in crisis, there is mass unemployment and no jobs, and a housing crisis similar to that of the UK. 

Rwanda has not implemented all the promises it made in the Treaty with the British State, which has so far cost the tax-payer £340million, with estimates of the numbers of refugees likely to be extradited reaching a cost of over £1,500,000 per person.

The new Act breaks many other laws governing law-making! It prevents courts from considering laws which protect human rights and the safety of individuals. It is a law of political imposition, overriding justice, that is the hallmark of a totalitarian state.

The only rational way to understand this despicable law is as a part of a wider intensification of the racist ‘hostile environment’, openly admitted to and quoted by the previous Home Secretary, Suella Braverman, who now criticises the Rwanda Act as too soft!

Given that the Rwanda Law makes no sense, it can only be understood as a racist law forced through by a racist government. It is an ideological pledge to a small core-group of ultra nationalist white supremacists who will salivate over the public execution of punishments for those seeking refuge. It is not the trafficking gangs who will be exposed or deposed. After all, we live in a Free Market economy which values and celebrates entrepreneurs!

Clearly, the racists want us to blame refugees for all the ills of Britain today. Whilst the far-Right criticise social conditions in Britain they do not support State intervention and taxation to eradicate poverty. They may also attack the Establishment’s intelligentsia, but they support unbridled Capitalism. This is why the scapegoating of “outsiders”, “The Other” is their primary target, their violent hatred as seen at various hostels and hotels focussed upon migrants they deem “illegal”.

Their dominant theme seeks to prevent and make invisible the real causes of the destruction of our country’s welfare state and infrastructure, which is causing misery for millions of UK citizens. 

The scale of deprivation and poverty here is far too great to be possibly caused by the numbers of asylum seekers arriving by flimsy boats or lorry chassis. 

The cost to the country of corrupt deals, tax-evasion by and unconscionable tax-handouts to the super-rich outweighs the cost of refuge 10,000,000-1. 

Shell and BP profits at over £40billion, paying less than 10% in tax despite the average worker here returning a total of nearly 40% of earnings in taxation. British Gas increased its surplus 10-fold whilst millions of us ration our heating due to fuel poverty. 

Tesco made £1.5billion profit from charging inflated prices for food whilst 2 million of us are reliant upon charitable food banks, 4 million UK children suffering poverty.

The water industries paid out £70bn to shareholders whilst overseeing degradation to a point of sewage pollution in every one of our rivers.

None of this is caused by refugees and asylum seekers, how could it be? None of these refugees are CEOs or shareholders. They have nothing. Yet the working class are told to blame and indeed hate them rather than the inhuman billionaires whose private wealth has increased by nearly 50% since 2020 by exploiting us. 

No human being can be deemed “illegal” – we are each subject to the lottery of being born somewhere unchosen. Only behaviours can be described as illegal according to law, and seeking to live isn’t a felony. Becoming super-rich off the backs of the poor is certainly a a crime, or should be.

The Rwanda Act must be repealed as part of a complete turn-around of our priorities and policies. Tax the Corporate Rich, put the welfare of all first and foremost, and ensure safe passage. Refugees are Welcome Here!