"British Jobs for British Workers” is a xenophobic and racist slogan

"British Jobs for British Workers” is a xenophobic and racist slogan: the left can debunk it.

In the 2016 EU referendum, opposing the migration of workers from central and eastern Europe into Britain was the key issue for many Leave voters, and one which was highlighted by the xenophobic UKIP party. The Leavers’ arguments were as simple as they were wrong. They said the the migrant workers took away ‘our’ jobs, depress wages and put pressure on housing and other social services. Moreover, they undermine the cultural homogeneity of ‘our’ country.

Essentially this xenophobic/racist argument is the same as the one used to oppose and discriminate against the Catholic Irish in the nineteenth century, Jews escaping pogroms at the beginning of the twentieth, blacks from the West Indies and Asians from Africa and the Indian subcontinent in the post-war period. By contrast, the British moving abroad for economic reasons are never labelled as migrants, but as ‘expats.’

It is completely correct to oppose this racism, to point out that the economy is boosted by young, migrant workers and to defend EU freedom of movement as an essential liberty. But in opposing racist lies, we shouldn’t blind ourselves to truths lurking behind the racist propaganda.

Let’s take a hypothetical case to illustrate the point. What is the sense of school cleaners in an English town commuting monthly from Romania? The workers live in appalling overcrowded conditions and receive no more than the minimum wage, while indigenous people in the town join the lines of the unemployed. At the same time a pressure is put on the local housing stock. Do circumstances such as these prove the xenophobes’ argument?

Not at all. The situation in that English town would be no different if the cleaners came not from Romania, but from Scotland or another part of Britain. The effects on local resources and local unemployment would be the same. The issue for certain jobs is not, as the racists claim, “British jobs for British workers,” but local jobs for local people. There is nothing wrong in principle in offering employment first to people who have lived in the area for a certain amount of time. Nationality has nothing to do with it. If a Romanian has lived in the town for say two years, s/he is at the front of the queue. The Brit from the other end of the country is not.

Once we accept in principle the idea of local jobs for local people in certain limited instances, we solve much of the ‘legitimate’ complaint and reveal the xenophobic and racist character of the slogan, “British jobs for British workers.”