It is estimated that approximately ten million Italians left their country between 1860 and 1950 to gamble on a better life in another hemisphere. They were not the only ones: other communities of Spaniards, Germans, French and Irish decided to look somewhere else to shun unemployment and hardship. Massive flows of people, prevalently of the working classes, found a new home; the majority gradually integrated to the host societies of the Americas, others eventually returned to Europe.

Those times are no longer part of the collective memory of a continent which seems to have chosen a trajectory in open contrast with the humanist ideals enshrined in the Enlightenment heritage, which had historically characterised its political imprint. The European Union is adopting a new course in all directions, and immigration provides no exception to the general rule. We should not be too naive in believing that Europe had always strictly followed that road, and that its countries have always been inspired by a boundless largess. By and large, however, Europe was seen with some justification as the place where the respect for the individual had gone beyond the hypocritical and narrow liberal notion to give way to a more extended concept of citizenship, where a range of rights and entitlements found real significance in day-to-day praxis.

Little by little, these rights are being dismantled in all spheres of human life, from labour to immigration, this shift constituting a wrong answer to the global turbulence caused by global competition and the reassertion of the prominence of capital over other paradigms. In other words, it is thought that only by approximating to the US-model can Europe avoid the economic crisis and defend itself against the challenges raised by the global economy. People are unable to think of a different way out, conquered by the hegemonic culture of the right, sometimes camouflaged as a 'responsible' centre-left, and find it easier to blame local immigrant communities for the economic problems, rather than reflecting on wage freezes and labour flexibility.

It is in this context that the European Union has deemed it important to give an answer to what is increasingly perceived as an urgent and sensitive question. If excessive immigration can in fact be detrimental in terms of salaries level and has undeniably carried certain problems, the approach which is now becoming dominant among policy makers and the population is one dictated by fear and revulsion. The recent norm approved by the Christian-Democrat-dominated European Parliament on 18th June adds fuel to fire. The policy provides for the setting of a number of procedures to be applied with regard to the process of expulsion of the illegal immigrant. The new law establishes that the immigrant who is to be deported is firstly conceded a voluntary departure period, limited between seven and thirty days. It is important to note here that a significant number of illegal immigrants are often unable to undertake the return to their home country given to sheer economic impossibility, a fact which makes this first option, in many cases, at best misguided. Moreover, the illegal immigrant is already aware that her/his presence in Europe is no longer permitted. This window period starts when the immigrant is 'intercepted' and identified by authorities. The fear of many people is that proper waves of 'immigrants hunting' will be conducted to remove the 8 million illegal immigrants that currently reside in Europe.

However, the most polemic norm is concerned with the treatment that the illegal immigrant can receive in case she/he ignores the 'invitation' to leave. A six-month detention period, which can be extended to 12, with a possible maximum duration of the custody of 18 months, is introduced. Moreover, children, together with their families, can also be held in custody for the same period, and eventually sent back to their home country, even to "adequate reception facilities" in case no family member would be present. On the top of that, expelled people will not be allowed back in at any point in the next five years. This represents a complete affront to human rights. Millions of people who have been forced to move from their lands because of hunger, persecution, and poverty are now running the risk of being gaoled for trying to look for a better future. Giusto Catania, European MP of the leftist GUE/NGL group, has rightly stated that Europe had "written one of the darkest pages of its history and can no longer be considered the cradle of human rights".

The new policy has been presented by its proponents as a humanitarian and decisive step to regulate immigration. They think that the right to appeal and the access to free legal services, still respected by this law, are the best guarantees of fair treatment. Moreover, they believe that voluntary return is being favoured as opposed to the forced one. But they ignore the fact that the majority of illegal immigrants still prefer the humble and almost second-class life on offer in Europe to the misery that awaits many of them in the country of origin. Meanwhile the much-vaunted right of appeal, which leads to a rejection in the great majority of cases, provides merely an illusion of a fair, respectable process. Instead of trying to regularise and give a decent existence to millions of people who fear a simple cold for the consequences it could have on their existence, the generous European legislators gently encourage these people to go away, criminalising them if they do otherwise, because after being exploited and mistreated as irregular workers, the enlightened Europe has realised they are too many and their presence is bothering. But what is even more staggering is the prospect for these immigrants: without committing a single crime, they can be detained in dreadful temporary detention camps which, as we have already seen in many cases, lack any adequate infrastructure and do not respect any basic norms of human treatment.

The new rules have been met with a clear and harsh response from developing countries, the major 'exporters' of migrants. Latin America in particular has shown its utmost indignation before the 'return' directive, and this preoccupation has mixed with recent episodes of racism and intolerance, especially in Italy, where a national anti-migrants policy is in the making and the rhetoric of the new government and much of the media is creating a dangerous climate of suspicion and diffidence towards foreigners. Venezuela's President Hugo Chávez has been the first to respond, by threatening to halt crude shipments to those countries which will apply the new measures, whereas Ecuador's President Rafael Correa has been talking about the cessation of trade negotiations with complying countries, and envisaging the creation of a united front to fight the initiative. Evo Morales has implicitly talked about the adoption of retaliation measures. Surprise and outrage have also been the dominant sentiments expressed by the authorities of other countries, whose governments have traditionally been less radical: Peru, Uruguay, Brasil have all condemned EU's resolution.

It is time for the European right, and for those on the left who are swiftly moving towards these positions, to start reflecting on how these policies run the risk of exacerbating conflicts and resentments at an international level. These chauvenistic attitudes are creating risky tensions, and are making the image of Europe ever more feeble in the developing world. It comes as no surprise that Europe is increasingly considered as an imperialist bloc, with little differentiation from the US, and that the image of its progressive and humane continent is rapidly fading away.

The Tyne and Wear Metro is a public-sector success story and should be kept that way, delegates at the annual conference of Britain's biggest rail union insisted today.

As RMT's AGM called on the government to implement Labour policy on public ownership, RMT general secretary Bob Crow and Northern TUC secretary Kevin Rowan issued a joint plea for an end to the threat to fragment and privatise the northeast's Metro network.

Letters sent today to Transport Secretary Ruth Kelly and Tyne and Wear Passenger Transport Executive (Nexus) director-general Bernard Garner point out that the Metro is already achieving record levels of punctuality and ridership.

The letters express the concern that funding for a welcome upgrade of the network has been made conditional on splitting up and privatising the Metro's operations and infrastructure.

Nexus bulletins indicate that the government has insisted on the break-up, overruling the PTE's preferred option of maintaining Metro as a 'vertically integrated' railway.

"The model now being proposed for the Metro is in danger of repeating the mistakes of railway privatisation," Bob Crow and Kevin Rowan say.

"Safety will be threatened as the Metro will be fragmented into different sectors, meaning less effective control and private companies cutting corners to save money.

"Fragmentation will lead to a less efficient, more expensive railway which is why Nexus were originally opposed to the break up of the Metro and why we remain opposed to it.

"Large amounts of fare revenue and public subsidy will be used to pay dividends to shareholders instead of being used to improve the Metro for the benefit of passengers and the wider community in the North East.

"And of course Metro workers' pensions, jobs and conditions will be under threat as the private sector tries to maximise profits at the expense of Metro workers," the letters say.

This article first appeared on Socialist Appeal.

The government is trying to push a proposal through Parliament to increase the length of time a suspect can be detained without charge to 42 days. This is seen as an anti-terrorism measure. The proposal has triggered a lot of debate within the labour movement and in society as a whole. This debate has spilled over to the broader issues of civil liberties, as David Davis has resigned his seat in Parliament to run a by-election on the issue.

To make the comparison, none of the other countries within the European Union threatened with a campaign by terrorists feel the need to keep suspects banged up for longer than seven days, apart from Australia, where it’s 12 days. In Canada it’s 1 day, and in New Zealand, the USA and Germany it’s 2. Till 2005 the detention period in the UK was 14 days. Tony Blair then tried to change the law to allow detention for 90 days. He was defeated in the Commons, but 28 days was accepted as a ‘compromise’.

Readers will spot the pattern. The government comes forward with an absurd proposal. Rank and file MPs vote it down. While they are busy congratulating themselves on a defence of our ‘historic civil liberties’ they fail to notice that the detention period has been doubled in the process of what is described as a ‘compromise.’ A year or so later the government again comes to parliament with claims to still more ridiculous and oppressive proposals. If the 42 day period is carried, the government will be back for more. Think of a number, then double it – that’s the strategy.

Britain actually has a good record in the defence and promotion of civil liberties. It is something we can be proud of. It is true that Habeas Corpus (a writ demanding a prisoner be tried or released, with no indefinite detention) is part of the rights associated with Magna Carta, which was actually a document of struggle between the barons and the king in the middle ages. But the right to habeas corpus was defended by the pioneers of the labour movement and frequently denied against the pioneers of the labour movement by the establishment. Democracy and civil liberties in this country are a conquest of the working class.

What argument does the government use as excuse for eliminating rights and liberties we have defended for hundreds of years? Not much. The authorities present the ‘war against terror’ as one that demands secrecy on their part. They hint darkly that lives are at risk if they tell us what they know, but that the situation is grim. Trust us!

There’s the problem. We know that this government is a pack of liars. We all remember the fictitious ‘weapons of mass destruction’ that were used as an excuse for the illegal and disastrous invasion of Iraq. Yet they arrogantly refuse to argue a case. Jacqui Smith, the present Home Secretary, is a talentless crawler, of the kind Gordon Brown likes to surround himself with under the mistaken impression that it makes him look good. She has proved incapable of assembling a convincing case for repression.

New Labour Ministers correctly point out that David Davis is a curious defender of civil liberties. He is a supporter of the odious Section 28, a piece of Tory legislation designed to justify homophobia. He supports capital punishment. But his eccentric stand has lifted him above the conformist riffraff on the New Labour front benches and the pathetic ‘payroll vote’ that provides the Parliamentary support for 42 days. In the end they relied on the votes of minority parties such as the piquantly titled Democratic Unionist Party to get the measure through the Commons.

Gordon Brown has decreed that Labour will not stand against Davis in the forthcoming by-election. In other words New Labour hasn’t got the guts to argue its case in public debate. Brown has proved hopeless at defending his case at Prime Minister’s question time. It is becoming increasingly difficult to argue that this is because he is too cerebral for the rough and tumble of parliamentary debate. It’s because there is no case for the measure. Even the agencies of the state are divided on the proposal.

The government says 42 days will be very rarely used, and then only with Parliamentary approval. This part of the proposal is shot through with holes. It is not evident how Parliament will get information about the background to any referral, since the government’s whole case is that secrecy and keeping us all in the dark is their first weapon in the ‘war on terror.’

Still Brown defends the proposal in press conferences and other formats where other people can’t answer back and he believes he will be shown the deference his position entitles him to. There he argues that a person’s first and most important right is to stay alive. The problem with this is that all of us Londoners who travel by public transport (not Ministerial limousine, as Brown does) know that the government was incapable of saving innocent lives in 2005. They put us in danger from suicide bombers by invading Iraq. This is not to justify the 2005 bombers, of course, but the occupation and murder of up to a million civilian Muslims obviously poisoned relations with Muslims in Britain. 42 days will further outrage Muslims everywhere and serve to convince them that the government is at war with them.

The behaviour of junior Ministers, anxious for preferment, has been shameful. Andy Burnham smears Chakrabarti when he accuses Davis of having “late night hand wringing, heart melting phone calls with Sami Chakrabarti,” Director of Liberty. Sami is actually widely respected for her consistent defence of civil liberties. Burnham is known as a toad. He has form. In 2005 he accused the LSE’s Identity Project, a work of 60 academics criticising the government’s ID card project of being the work of a single disgruntled scholar. He was convicted of ‘systematic and malicious deception.’

We almost give up on looking for reasons for the government’s proposal. We look instead at who they aim to please by bringing it forward. The answer, inevitably, is Murdoch. This American billionaire, who is proud to pay no tax in this country, is telling Brown through the ‘Sun’ what government policy ought to be.

It is actually the case that not a single person has been held under the 28 days’ detention accepted in 2005. So why do they want 42? New Labour are trying to scare us with the ‘terrorist threat’ in order to erode our rights and liberties and hand more power over to the state. Engels defined the state as "bodies of armed men." The state is a standing threat to the labour movement. We must defend every democratic right in the struggle to unite the mass of society in the fight for genuine socialist democracy. The labour movement must support the campaign against 42 days' detention.

This article first appeared on Socialist Appeal.

Which of these countries has the most prisoners per head of population? Sudan, Syria, China, Burma, Saudi Arabia, Zimbabwe or England and Wales? We win, or rather lose: I have ranked these countries in reverse order. On this measure, England and Wales have a more punitive judicial system than most of the world’s dictatorships.

On Friday, the government released new figures for the prison population. It broke all records, yet again. It has risen by 38% since Labour came to power, and now stands at 83,181. What does the government intend to do about it? Lock more people up. It is building enough new cells to jail 96,000 people by 2014. At the beginning of this month it laid out its plans for Titan prisons: vast broiler units, which will each house 2,500 people. But they’ll be only just big enough: the government expects the number of cons to rise to 95,600 in six years.

As ever, Britain appears to be chasing the United States. In both absolute and relative terms, the USA’s prison population is the highest on earth: one percent of its adult population is behind bars. This is five times our preposterous rate and six times Turkey’s. It is over twice the rate of the nearest contender, South Africa. If you count the people under community supervision or on probation, the total rises to over 7 million, or 3.1% of the adult population. Black men who failed to complete high school in the US have a 60% chance of ending up in jail. I feel I need to say that again: 60% of unqualified black men go to prison. It’s beginning to look as if the state has stopped imprisoning individuals and started locking up a social class. Is this what we aspire to?

To judge by the remonstrations of the tabloids, the answer is yes. But why? And why, in the United Kingdom, is imprisonment still rising? It’s not because of rising crime. Last year crimes recorded by the police fell by 2%, while the most serious violent offences fell by 9%. Nor does it reflect the conviction rate. That fell by 4% in 2006 (we don’t yet have last year’s figures). Stranger still, it is not connected to the rate of imprisonment either, which fell by 9% between 2004 and 2006.

The prison population is rising for one reason: people are being put away for longer. Between 1997 and 2004, the average sentence rose from 15.7 months to 16.1. That tells only half the story: the actual time served rose as well, as a result of new laws the government introduced in 1998 and 2003. In 2004 the courts started handing down indeterminate sentences – prison terms without fixed limits. These will be partly responsible for the projected growth in imprisonment over the next six years.

This exposes a remarkable contradiction in government policy. At the beginning of last year, the criminal justice ministers sent a begging letter to the courts asking them not to bang so many people up, as the prisons were bursting. But they are bursting because of the mandatory life terms, indeterminate sentences and other stern measures it has forced the judges to pass. In 2002, England and Wales had more lifers (5268) than the whole of the rest of the EU put together (5046). I can’t find a more recent comparison, and since the accession of the former communist states this is bound to have changed. But it gives you a rough idea of how weird this country is.

So why, when the number of crimes, especially serious violent crimes, is falling, are both the government and the courts imposing longer sentences? Why does the UK consistently rank in the top two places for imprisonment in western Europe? Why, as this country becomes more peacable, does it become more punitive? I don’t know. Nor, it seems, does anyone else. But one thing I’ve noticed is that many of the states with the highest number of convicts are also those with the greatest differential between rich and poor. Within the OECD nations, the US has the second highest rate of inequality. Mexico, which is the most unequal, has the third-highest rate of imprisonment. In the EU, four of the five most unequal nations also rank among the top five jailers. The correlation, though by no means exact, seems to apply across many of the rich countries.

This doesn’t demonstrate a causal relationship. But there are three likely connections. The first is that inequality causes crime. This is what Anatole France referred to, when he claimed to admire “the majestic egalitarianism of the law, which forbids rich and poor alike to sleep under bridges, to beg in the streets, and to steal bread.” But, while this has proved true at most times and in most places, crime is falling in England and Wales while inequality is rising. The second possible link is that prison causes inequality. The sociologist Bruce Western has shown that jail in the United States is a huge and hidden cause of deprivation. When people are locked up, they can’t acquire the skills and social contacts they need to get on outside. Employers are reluctant to take them on when they’ve been released, and they tend to be hired by the day or to get stuck in the casual economy, which is one of the reasons why so many return to crime. Among whites and Hispanics, wages for ex-cons are severely depressed. Among black people the effect is less marked: the “stigma of imprisonment”, Western suggests, appears to have stuck to the entire black underclass.

His ground-breaking research shows that US labour figures, which appeared to prove that the rising tide of the 1990s lifted all boats, were hopelessly skewed. The government’s claim that the boom had enhanced everyone’s job prospects - even those at the bottom of the heap - turns out to be an artefact of rising imprisonment: convicts aren’t counted in household surveys. Western found that while general unemployment fell sharply in the 1990s, when prisoners were included, the rate among unqualified young black men rose to its highest level ever: a gobsmacking 65%.

The third possible reason for a link between the two factors is that inequality causes imprisonment. I can’t prove this, and it is hard to see how anyone could do so. But my untested hypothesis runs as follows: the greater the wealth the top echelons accrue, the more ferociously they demand protection from the rest of society. They have more to lose from crime and less to lose from punishment, which is less likely to strike the richer you become. The people who help to generate the public demand for long prison terms (newspaper proprietors and editors) and the people who mete it out (judges and magistrates) are drawn overwhelmingly from the property-owning classes. “Those who have built large fortunes,” Max Hastings, who was once the editor of the Daily Telegraph, wrote of his former employer Conrad Black, “seldom lose their nervousness that some ill-wisher will find means to take their money away from them.” Money breeds paranoia, and paranoia keeps people in prison.

This article first appeared in the Guardian newspaper on 24th June 2008. The article with full footnotes also appears on [Monbiot.com]

A swathe of closures across the sorting offices of Royal Mail are heralding a new round of major cutbacks, as the company’s profits take a dive in the wake of deregulation.

Following a pre-tax loss of £279 million from last year, largely prompted by a major shift to private-sector companies in the profit-making package and business post sectors, regulator Postcomm have now raised the possibility of privatising the industry.

At the same time, it has been announced that sorting offices in Oxford, Reading and Swindon will be consolidated into a single Swindon site from June next year, and Crewe’s sorting office could be set for closure with the loss of 600 jobs, if plans to merge the centre with Liverpool go ahead.

At Milton Keynes, postal workers claim that plans to close the centre there are well advanced, and have unanimously voted to take industrial action if an announcement is made which could jeopardise up to 500 jobs. It’s rumoured that a merger could see Milton Keynes merge with Coventry and Northampton, affecting 1,400 roles.

In the post offices, continued threats to remove the service’s right to handle benefits and pensions could eventually see far more than the current slate of 2,500 office closures.

Even the universal service is to be scrutinised, with Royal Mail boss Adam Crozier saying: “It is vital that we have the opportunity for a real debate… and (we) share the belief as set out in the report that the Universal Service must be sustainable.”

The report speculated that the financial position of Royal Mail is so bad that the universal flat-rate service may not be viable in future – Royal Mail are already lobbying the postal regulator to rescind some of its responsibilities.

Despite these massive cuts, which follow attacks on pensions, working conditions and job numbers throughout the service, Royal Mail is also poised to ask for more money from the government.

As previously reported by Freedom, the financial problems of Royal Mail stem from New Labour’s early takeup of European legislation designed to open national post services to competition.

As the first country to take on the task, Labour opened up two of the most profitable sectors of the service, business post and packages, to competition, and banned Royal Mail from delivering at the same price as their competitors, while requiring them to deliver their competitors’ post through the Royal Mail network.

As a result, the international arms of mail monopolies and private companies in other countries have been able to undercut prices in the UK while using Royal Mail assets to do so.

The result has been a disaster for Royal Mail, as companies have switched wholesale to private providers.

Other European countries have repeatedly put off going through similar processes, with the Dutch government declaring it wouldn’t be opening its own markets as planned earlier this month.

The process was heavily criticised by postal workers and unionists, who noted that it would effectively destroy the financial viability of Royal Mail and the universal service before it was introduced in 2002.

Rob Ray writes for Freedom - www.freedompress.org.uk

Four month ago I reported on this site how Guy Njike (pictured), a hard-working London graduate who had escaped imprisonment and torture in his native Cameroon, was arrested in his lunch break and told he would be deported to Cameroon within days. Four months on the Home Office has not only cancelled the deportation order but has agreed to review fresh evidence in the claim for asylum by 41-year-old Guy Njike.

In February Guy’s friends and colleagues had reacted with outrage to the news of his imminent deportation. Fearing he would be tortured again in Cameroon they set up a campaign to save him. Guy managed to submit an application for a judicial review of his case just in time. Less than 24 hours before his scheduled deportation the order to deport him was cancelled.

On 16 February, the morning Guy was initially due to be deported, four of his Birmingham friends stormed into the Redditch constituency office of Home Secretary Jacqui Smith and asked her to stop his deportation. Guy’s friend Anna Orrnet who led the group, said: “This was a real emergency which is why we had to go straight to Jacqui Smith. It is outrageous that this country seeks to deport hard working people like Guy, who have made a huge contribution to this society and were even called up for jury service."

It was not only Guy’s close friends who appealed to the Home Secretary. Lord Joffe, who defended Nelson Mandela in the famous Rivonia trial, said: “I arrived in the UK in 1965 as a political exile from South Africa and was allowed to remain here. I naturally have particular empathy with others who, with equal grounds for remaining, are denied that opportunity. The Home Office letters conclude with the slogan "Building a safe, just and tolerant society". A decision to allow Mr Njike to remain would be entirely consistent with this.”

Guys’ friends and supporters were overjoyed when the application for a judicial review into his case was successful at the end of March. Recently, the Home Office has decided to concede the judicial review, treat Guy’s case as a fresh claim and avoid going to court. “I am relieved that the Home Office has decided to take the new material brought forward by Guy into account in deciding his claim for asylum” says Jennifer Hamilton, Professor of Law at the University of Strathclyde, who first met Guy eight years ago. “I have absolutely no doubt about his integrity. I hope that officials at the Home Office will now review his claim with the appropriate fairness and thoroughness.”

Despite this recent success Guy's friends are determined to continue their campaign until his claim for asylum has been successful. Guy’s constituency MP Jeremy Corbyn said: “Guy has huge amount of support in this country and left a strong impression on everyone who has ever met him. He clearly left Cameroon for fear of his safety and will be in danger if he is returned.”

MP Lynne Featherstone also shares the concern for Guy’s safety should his new claim for asylum be rejected: “If Guy is deported to Cameroon - then not only will the Home Secretary have blood on her hands - but she fails to understand the sheer level of failures of her own department and the legal system in making unsafe and unsound judgements. It will be a travesty of justice.”

Left in Vision 2 is an exhibition of work by left wing artists from across Britain and the world. It features Haitian street artist, Andre Eugene, Egyptian photographer Yasser Alwan, Chilean painter Hector Lopez-Kern and East End sculptor May Ayres, among over fifty artists represented.

The show is organised in conjunction with the Marxism 2008 Festival and takes place in the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) in Malet Street in Bloomsbury, from 3-7 July 10am – 7pm, with a Launch at 5.30pm on Friday 4 July. Both the launch and the show are open to members of the public who are not attending the Marxism event.

Much of the work deals with familiar left themes, such as war and racism, but there is also much that is not directly political: abstract painting, traditional portraiture, surrealist sculpture, art and documentary photography, and cutting edge relational art film making are all included. All of it, however, challenges the values of a society based on exploitation and driven by profit. It will be of interest to everyone who enjoys contemporary art.