Workers Socialist League

Socialist Press, Trotskyism Today and the Trotskyist International Liaison Committee, 1975–1984

Scrap the Immigration Laws

Socialist Press no. 67, 17 August 1977 · scan p. 5 · about 670 words

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Over the last four months the courtrooms of Warwick and Leamington have seen the enactment of the latest state campaign against illegal' immigration.

On March 2, in a move that won national press publicity, the police arrested 15 people in Southall and Leamington. Since then another 17 have been locked up, awaiting charges of "illegal" immigration or of conspiracy to organise this traffic.

The inordinate time it is taking to drag these cases through the courts (especially the conspiracy charges) even caused the chairman of Leamington Magistrates to urge the Director of Public Prosecutions to get a move on.

RACKET

The prosecution's plan has been to push through convictions of actual immigrants to provide the evidence for the trial of the organisers, which will now not take place until at least September, six months after the arrests!

So far four Indians have been convicted for 'knowingly' breaking the immigration regulations-a virtual impossibility, since they all spoke hardly any English and were illiterate.

These men, coming from agricultural areas of the Punat. said beiween £600 and £1600 or me:: a war teach :: : 25. = ite aand hs plare The taxes is alleges to severe touri er Godie Singh Sanchu. three conspiracy claimed that Leamington was operations.

DEPORTED

All the convicted men have been deported, splitting one from his wife who is legally living in Britain. The judge at the appeal hearing for this man remarked:

The important thing is that unless people who enter this country illegally are deported there is precious little to prevent this sort of traffic continuing."

He added: "There is public outrage over this at the moment."

The real political direction of the trial could not have been better exposed. The whole trial is against "illegal" immigration, not the criminal activity or exploitation that surrounds it.

The eftect of successful prosecutions of both immigrants and organisers will be to whip up this "public outrage' against blacks.

In response to these dangerous moves an ad-hoc committee has been formed by both IWA's, the LIYS, Leamington Anti-Racist Group, SWP and the WSt to organise a protest meeting when the mair trial starts and to picket the court if the fascists appear as they have at earlier hearings.

In a letter to be sent out to 220n and Lateur Par 1252225 3t÷=-= 505E 3EK :20E inat "This trial is not charges. It is his she in the base he motivated by a exploitation. It is a dangerous threat to all immigrants. It opens the way to continuous police investigations into the lives of black workers and their families, to increasing numbers of deportations and to increased freedom of activity for the police.

"If the trial is ignored or given support by the labour movement it will strengthen the racialists who eek to blame unemployment, bad housing and allother social problems on immigrants and who favour deportations and the hounding of the black population as a 'solution' "

Police investigations atter the murder ot Mrs. Gautam, an Indian woman, last september, have undoubtedly aided their work for this trial.

The Protest Meeting Committee has agreed to take up these attacks with the platform of:

Abolish immigration controls! Immigration Laws are to blameStop the Trial; No DeportationsEnd Police Harrassment of Black Workers.

This can provide a political answer to this political trial. the immigrants "The theory that Britain would, injection whew bood, sirastr the past, does not appear to be wel founded. The strains and stresse imposed upon our society by th latest wave of immigration out weigh such advantages to the hos community."

Which leads naturally onto the NF. On August 12 the Daily Mai! -defending right to march through a black area of Lewishamsaid the Front was attracting recruits "through the virulence oi its racist propaganda"

Only one week earlier the same paper put at ine top of a page a from National Front" which quoted the NF in Bristol as saying that whites were afraid to go out young menand would walk the streets

← Contents of Socialist Press no. 67, 17 August 1977