Six refugees from Afghanistan died in the Channel when the boat they were travelling to the UK on capsized. Predictably, the Mail on Sunday ran a suitably horrid front page, while GB News screamed about ‘taxpayer cash’ – and less predictably (but becoming more the norm), the Labour Party under Keir Starmer gave both of them a run for their money.
Six refugees dead, yet who’s to blame?
As Agence France-Presse (AFP) reported, on Saturday 12 August, six people died and 61 others were rescued including children. They were mostly from Afghanistan, with some coming from war-torn Sudan.
A spokesperson for the Utopia56 humanitarian group blamed border “repression” for the tragedy. They told AFP that the difficulty of securing legal passage only:
increases the dangerousness of crossings and pushes people to take more and more risks to reach England.
Previously, five people died at sea and four went missing while trying to cross to Britain from France last year. In November 2021, 27 people also died when a boat capsized in the Channel.
Of course, this is also a Europe-wide problem. As the Canary‘s Afroze Fatima Zaidi recently wrote:
almost 2,400 refugees have died or gone missing so far in 2023 while trying to reach European shores via the Mediterranean Sea. Moreover, as the BBC reported:
“The United Nations has registered more than 17,000 deaths and disappearances in the central Mediterranean since 2014, making it the most dangerous migrant crossing in the world”.
The Tories (and their mates in the corporate media) in the UK are quick to blame anyone except themselves, of course. The Mail on Sunday‘s front page on 13 August was a case in point. It ran with the headline:
Was French patrol boat to blame for migrant drownings?
I mean, really?
An old law of journalism: when there’s a question-mark in the headline, the answer is invariably ‘no’ pic.twitter.com/LG0wxPRtR6— Jon Sopel (@jonsopel) August 13, 2023
AFP reported that Dover MP Natalie Elphicke blustered that:
These overcrowded and unseaworthy deathtraps should obviously be stopped by the French authorities from leaving the French coast in the first place.
It shouldn’t need saying, but as a reminder, people are fleeing Afghanistan because of the mess the UK helped create:
Britain occupied Afghanistan four times over the last two centuries and created the borders of the country.
6 Afghans drowning in the English Channel have everything to do with Britain.
— Lowkey (@Lowkey0nline) August 13, 2023
So, the Tories and the Mail on Sunday‘s responses were predictable. But what of the Labour Party?
Labour: courting the right
Sky News interviewed the shadow education secretary Bridget Phillipson. Her response to the deaths of six people from Afghanistan? First, blame the Tories:
Labours Bridget Phillipson is asked about six refugees drowning in the channel, & in her reply she talks about the criminal gangs & the asylum backlog. She doesn't mention creating safe routes so people fleeing war & persecution don't have to drown trying to get here pic.twitter.com/FpzNWlrNd5
— Saul Staniforth (@SaulStaniforth) August 13, 2023
And next, say Labour would do everything except open legal routes for refugees to get here by:
As more refugees drown in the channel, Bridget Phillipson is asked what Labour would do differently. She mentions a new cross border police unit, ending the Rwanda scheme, processing cases more quickly, and getting more return agreements.
She dones't mention creating safe routes pic.twitter.com/hUaJkJ6y4A
— Saul Staniforth (@SaulStaniforth) August 13, 2023
Oh, and she dropped everyone’s favourite right-wing talking point on right-wing GB News – that the asylum system is costing the good-old British taxpayer a “fortune”:
'It's all about having a fairer system that deals with cases quickly.’
Shadow Education Secretary, Bridget Phillipson, says the Government's 'total failure' in tackling the asylum process is 'costing us all the fortune'.
GB News on YouTube https://t.co/Wa58gYGZwF pic.twitter.com/v7QAn0uyRs
— GB News (@GBNEWS) August 13, 2023
The same line former Brexit Party MEP Ben Habib used:
'It's certainly leaving our taxpayers' pockets and not delivering the effect that we wish of it.'
Ben Habib says France's attempts to stop migrants crossing the Channel into the UK is a 'pantomime' and questions where the UK's funding is going. pic.twitter.com/4StGNMUVrJ
— GB News (@GBNEWS) August 13, 2023
The fact Labour are now sending front-bench members onto GB News says a lot about the kind of voter it wants to attract.
Colonialist UK: where Ukrainians matter more than Afghans
Back in the real world, the six people who drowned will likely have families mourning in Afghanistan. It didn’t have to be this way. The government has a resettlement scheme for Afghans in place – yet it has barely let anyone in:
Thousands of Afghans are eligible to enter the UK via the government's Afghan Relocations and Assistance Policy, but only six have been allowed to enter on this route since 22 December 2022.
All six refugees who died yesterday were Afghan.https://t.co/HLHjBAMRIN pic.twitter.com/RBzeDpBHfA
— Alan Ferrier (@alanferrier) August 13, 2023
Compare the six people from Afghanistan the government has resettled with the 10,000 Ukrainians that we accepted a week in May 2022. As LBC host Sangita Myska summed up regarding the Tories detaining refugees on the Bibby Stockholm barge:
if they were 39 white men from Ukraine walking up that gangplank into that barge, I’m telling you now there would be a hue and cry, the like of which you have never seen.
I love Sangita for saying what many are not willing to say
The double standards in the UK against migrants of colour has never been clearer. It cannot be denied @SangitaMyska
Regardless of race and background, these migrants are human beings and deserve the same treatment and… pic.twitter.com/IxR2yrlVeW
— KWAJO- Social Issues Campaigner (@Kwajotweneboa) August 12, 2023
As always, at the heart of this story is the underbelly of racism and colonialism that pervades UK society. As the Canary‘s Maryam Jameela previously wrote:
It’s almost as though people in the UK don’t value and respect the lives of Black and brown people. They merely tolerate us. They don’t value us as human beings; they see us as cockroaches to keep out of the way. Ukrainian people are considered as a whole – their culture, their traditions, their communities. Black and brown people don’t get that luxury. This is because white people only consider fellow white people to have inalienable rights.
You’d expect the Mail on Sunday and GB News to push these racist, colonialist mindsets. But Labour? Well, that’s where we’re at, now.
Featured image via GB News – screengrab
By Steve Topple
