The sensationalist media have been agitating, in the last few days, about a statement from the government's lawyers that the rights of asylum seekers trump the concerns of local residents. The reactionary, petty-bourgeois nationalists, and racists of Reform, and their entourage within the ranks of the Tories, have framed this as putting the rights of asylum seekers, who they falsely refer to as “illegal migrants”, above the rights of UK citizens, and the sensationalist media, of course, never take them up on either of these points.
First of all, asylum seekers are not illegal migrants. Seeking asylum is a perfectly legal and legitimate status. The vast majority of people who claim asylum are people who have escaped torture, risk to their lives, or persecution. Many are the victims of western created conflicts in various parts of the world, following military adventures by US and UK imperialism; many, indeed, are people who are at risk, precisely because they, in some way, assisted those western interventionists, who inevitably dumped them when they had used them!
For the minority who are not initially granted asylum, again, the vast majority win their appeal against that decision. But, even for the even smaller number who do not, that does not make them in any way illegal, as in some kind of criminal. As with anyone else, they have a right to go through a judicial process. Does this right in any way make them privileged over UK citizens? Absolutely, not. UK citizens, also, have a right to due process under the law, and in denying that right to one, those that propose such a course of action are denying it to all.
For, example, the demonstrations at the formerly disused, run down hotel in Epping, have framed their protests around the fact that one of the residents at the hotel has been accused of sexual assault against a 14 year old teenager, and an adult woman. If you only listened to the media headlines, or the claims of the protesters, who tell us that they dare not allow their children out for fear of being sexually assaulted, raped or worse, you would imagine that what the man is accused of is some serious, physical sexual assault. Yet. As the Guardian informs us, what he is actually accused of is touching the leg of the adult woman, who also, says she saw him touch the girl. In other words, the kind of thing that lecherous, MP's, and bosses have been guilty of for years. In the interests of fairness, I should point out that he, also, denies the charges as presented.
The accused, like every individual, has a right to a fair trial, just as his accusers, and all those in the local community that support them, have a right to have someone prosecuted and tried fairly, if an offence has been committed. Both of those rights have been upheld, so where is the cause of claims of inequity? There is none. When the racists and nationalists of Reform and the Tories, backed by the sensationalist media claim that there is inequity, what they are doing is creating that inequity, by indeed equating two things that, from the start are not equal. That is they equate from the start rights with “concerns”, or “interests”, including where those “concerns” are not based on facts or evidence, but on racist inspired bigotry.
Moreover, even if this individual is found guilty what does that have to do with the other residents in the hotel? Absolutely nothing.
We have seen it before when irresponsible and sensationalist media whipped up moral panics over paedophiles. That resulted in some paediatricians being hounded out of their homes by mobs of ignorant, “concerned” citizens who couldn't even distinguish between the two, such is their lack of knowledge of their own English language. Of course rights trump concerns, or interests, because that is precisely the point of having rights, so as to protect individuals from being the subject of persecution by bigoted, ill-informed mobs, whoever the individuals might be, whoever the mobs might be.
After all, we all may have concerns about crime, but does that concern justify a removal of the right to a fair trial, by a jury of our peers, based on facts and evidence, and the principle of being innocent until proven guilty? Of course, not. Down that road, indeed, lies the kind of mob rule, and lynchings seen in the US, during the era of the Jim Crow laws, not to mention, of course, the anti-Semitic pogroms of the late 19th and early 20th century, across Europe. Of course, its no wonder that the racists and Bonapartists of Reform and the Tories seek to whip up the same kind of mob rule, because they do, indeed, like Trump in the US, Putin in Russia, and Netanyahu in Israel want to deny those basic rights, and instead to implement authoritarian rule from above. The result will be that many of those protesting today, will be its victims, tomorrow.
That's not just because many of those organising the racist protests are themselves petty criminals, and people who have been convicted of actual, serious physical sexual assaults, domestic violence and so on. As James O'Brien points out, two-thirds of those arrested in last years Farage riots, had previously been convicted of violent domestic abuse, and the supporters of Farage openly declare their support for the convicted felon Trump, who stated the way his wealth and position had allowed him on frequent occasions to just "grab women by the pussy".
Starmer and Blue Labour, of course, are no better, precisely because they cannot put up a principled argument against the racists and authoritarians of Reform, as they have tagged along on the coattails of Reform themselves, in an attempt to curry favour with the same reactionary sections of the electorate. Hence the abysmal performance of people like Brigitte Phillipson on Sunday morning TV in trying to say why their racist position is any different from the racist position of Farage.
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