Migration

Life is a series of consequences. History is a record of those consequences, unvarnished history in any case, not just the history written by the victors.

Migration has always existed. No nation on earth, no people, is uninfluenced by nations and peoples around it. The current UK government is evidently oblivious to this, just as oblivious as it is to the unarguable fact that the British imperialist expansionism of previous centuries is directly to blame for what is now happening in the Middle-East, the wars which are driving migrants northwards across the Mediterranean.

Let me make my position clear – there should be no obstacles to migration in any country in the world. There should be no boundaries or borders to hinder the movement of peoples. There should be no such thing as an illegal immigrant. Nor should there be this easy conflation of the terms “immigrant” with “asylum seeker.” That’s the bottom line.

In the UK, around 4% of the population is accounted for by migrants from overseas, people who produce well in excess of 4% of the UK’s GDP. I should think that a certain 4% of UK-born people account for far less than 4% of GDP. The obsession, of all parties, with migration is dog-whistle politics built on the drifting sands of xenophobia.

Rishi Sunak’s government, after today’s Supreme Court judgement that the UK’s “Rwanda plan” to deport migrants to Rwanda is unlawful on the grounds that Rwanda is not a safe country, is now planning to introduce and pass emergency legislation in Parliament declaring that Rwanda is actually a safe country. I wonder if it will, at the same stroke, pass legislation declaring that in its list of safe countries are Gaza, Israel, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Russia, Hungary, and that whole list of other nations which have made one or more natural characteristics of human nature illegal and punishable by prison or death. How far a step until Sunak and his mob (and remember that Sunak is just as right-wing, xenophobic and racist as Braverman) decide to declare certain human characteristics illegal in the UK. It’s not actually that big a step. A country which threatens and plans to break international law won’t hesitate to break national law (as this government has done in the recent past with the illegal prorogation of Parliament when Boris Johnson was Prime Minister).

The problem, of course, is that the Tories have so far succeeded in brainwashing very many people to believe their propaganda, to believe England is for the English alone. How long before they come for those of us with mixed heritage, before they legislate against certain skin colours, certain gender types, and ultimately certain beliefs which are left of centre.

Those like me have warned of right-wing extremism before, and weren’t believed, only to see our predictions come horribly true. This is another warning. Please don’t ignore it.

CYLINDER

We buried it in the garden,
A capsule of the now, to be
Uncovered in centuries.
In reality, this is a cylinder of
Time, an entire cosmos in one
Small space, with infinity compressed
Infinitely, just like our universe is
Endless in another universe’s tiny
Container buried insome forgotten
Soil, and waiting to be discovered.
This is science, that infinity between
Fractions, distances we can never cover,
Destinations never to be reached.

R 15/11/2023 19:24