31 years after we kicked the BNP off the Isle of Dogs, the fascists are back. They will always be back. The target keeps changing though. In 1993/4 the enemy, apparently, was homeless families. Now it is refugees. There were refugees in the late ’90s, but they weren’t ‘the enemy’ then. Now, after decades of propaganda from the MSM and successive governments about all these terrible asylum seekers (many of them ‘bogus’, of course) the Nazis have seized their opportunity.
As an alternative to the prison-like detention centres, many refugees now get temporary housing in hotels. This is hardly an act of benevolence on the part of the authorities but the result of detention centre overcrowding, local opposition to the prison ship off Weymouth, and the collapse of the notorious Rwanda deal. In a newfound zeal for openness and transparency, details of which hotels are to be used become public knowledge. So then we have ‘protests’ outside various establishments, including in Epping and outside the Britannia Hotel on the Isle of Dogs.
It has been suggested that the ‘protesters’ are not the Far Right, but merely expressing concerns about the use of taxpayers’ money to house refugees. Taxpayers’ money! If you visit Canary Wharf (maybe join a Stand Up to Racism counter-protest) have a look at all the glass-and-steel towers, the bank headquarters, the corporate head offices. Canary Wharf used to be docks and warehouses. The Port of London Authority closed the docks and threw many hundreds of people out of work. Later, the wasteland thus created could have been handed over to the local authority to build homes, schools, health centres and maybe shops in which people could afford to buy things.
But no, it was handed over to the LDDC (locally believed to stand for ‘London Docklands Destruction Corporation) who proceeded to attract the aforementioned corporate giants – with tax breaks! Some of them got tax holidays for ten years. Bear in mind that they were stinking rich already and could easily afford to pay the taxes. And they didn’t create anything, they just moved from somewhere else, bringing most of their staff with them. We met with the LDDC and protested that none of this would help the local unemployment statistics, only to be told that there would be jobs for local people – the offices and banks would need cleaners.
So forgive us if we point out that refugees didn’t close the docks, refugees didn’t cover Canary Wharf with towering concrete monstrosities, and refugees have cost us taxpayers a tiny fraction of the dosh showered on City fat cats. We’re on the side of the refugees, and the protesters are on the side of turbo-charged capitalism.
Labour Briefing Co-operative 