Tories out, Xenophobes in?

by Phil Duncan

With Winston Peters announcing that his New Zealand First party is going with Labour and not with National, it looks like the Tories are out and the Xenophobes are in. We’ll now have the two most xenophobic of the four main parties in coalition government (Labour and NZ First). Although the last Labour government was pretty racist in relation to immigration, a Labour-NZF coalition may well be the most xenophobic government since Muldoon in the late 1970s (and the pre-Muldoon Labour government which began the dawn raids on Pacific Islands immigrants).

Watch out immigrants, especially poor people who want to migrate here to make a better life for themselves!

While no-one is under any illusion about Winston Peters’ xenophobia, given that for the last several decades he has made a career out of anti-immigrant – especially anti-Asian immigrant – policies, the liberal left prefers to turn a blind eye to Labour’s anti-Asian racism.  In fact, much of the liberal or centre-left shares that racism.

Let’s just recall some of Labour’s track record on immigration.  The last Labour government had a political refugee from Algeria held in prison for several years, much of it in solitary confinement.  The last Labour government deported a Sri Lankan girl who was a rape victim back to where she had been abused.  The girl was deported in a wheelchair in a catatonic state.

The third Labour government began the dawn raids against immigrants from the Pacific.

The first Labour government largely shut the doors on Jewish refugees from the Nazis; they preferred ‘Aryan immigrants’ to Jewish refugees.

The early Labour Party totally supported the White New Zealand policy, even campaigning to have it strengthened.

And the current shower has campaigned in the past couple of years against immigrants with “Chinese-sounding surnames”.

The only problems that the Labour and NZ First xenophobes might run into is that the anti-Asian racism that is so much their stock-in-trade does not get much take-up from the public-at-large or within the mainstream of the capitalist class.  Several years of racist anti-Chinese campaigning didn’t get Labour any traction in the polls.  And the capitalists haven’t shown a lot of interest in restricting immigration; indeed they tend to be less anti-immigrant because they understand that immigrants are essential to the economy and expand the size of the workforce – more workers, more exploitation, more surplus-value.

Since Labour is finely-tuned to the needs of NZ capital, it remains to be seen to what degree they will move forward on their plans to substantially cut immigration.

Meanwhile, however, the NZ nationalist left celebrate.

This is like celebrating the victory of people who want sectional rights for white-skinned workers as against brown-skinned workers or for male workers as against female workers, rather than for the working class as a whole – after all, the working class is a global class and the fight for workers’ emancipation can only begin with an understanding of that.  Focusing on “New Zealand workers” is simply sectionalism on a national level.

Good public health and education for “New Zealand workers” and screw the oppressed peoples of the Third World.

When, oh when, will we have a real left in this country? One which starts from the interests of workers as a global class.  One which is internationalist rather than nationalist.  One which is anti-capitalist rather than crudely anti-Tory.

Further reading: Redline on the Labour Party