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Recent anti-immigrant riots were met by the new Labour government with ‘tough’ rhetoric, with prime minister Keir Starmer asserting that rampaging racists had highlighted the need to “totally overhaul the British legal system”.

Yet not only were the riots far smaller than was portrayed by the media, they were actually led by state-connected ringleaders such as ‘Tommy Robinson’ (aka Stephen Yaxley-Lennon). Social and establishment media willingly and routinely facilitate the spread of false information about the ‘dangers’ associated with immigration, despite a plethora of existing legislation banning ‘hate speech’ and mandating ‘equality’.

There are more than enough existing laws to deal with the more vicious side of the criminality that was on display over the sumner too, if that were the government’s genuine concern. It is, after all, to destroy public property, to commit arson or to attempt murder.

The truth is that anti-immigrant sentiment is relentlessly stoked by the entire capitalist establishment, not least by Britain’s corporate media and mainstream political parties – Conservative, LibDem and Labour alike.

Ignoring this, the government is proposing to ‘fix’ the legal system by ensuring maximum repression of dissenting speech and of organised political resistance by the working class.

It is clear that the real target of this planned assault on free speech, the right to a fair trial and the right to protest is not the “swastika-tattooed racists” (with whom the vast majority of Britons have no sympathy at all) but the growing ranks of the anti-genocide, anti-racist and anti-imperialist activists of the Palestine solidarity movement (with whom increasing numbers of British workers are in full sympathy and accord).

It is this phenomenon that led to Tory PM Rishi Sunak’s frenzied denunciation of George Galloway’s sensational Rochdale by-election victory, and indeed to the precipitous calling of the general election in July, during which the Tories fell on their sword in order to assure a smooth handover of British capitalist ‘democracy’ – that very best shell in which to clothe the dictatorship of British capital.

We can expect Labour to continue to attempt to ‘fix capitalism’ by drumming up pogroms that set workers against one another, and to use the ensuing outrage to move to ‘fix’ (suppress) the genuine and growing opposition of the working class.

In this context, now more than ever it is our duty to grasp the true significance of the question of immigration: what drives it, what it really signifies and how it is used by the monopoly financier elite to keep workers divided and fighting one another instead of unified and fighting them.

Come and hear more about these issues, join the discussion, meet our comrades and get involved in our work.

Presentation by Ranjeet Brar.

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For more on immigration see Capitalism and Immigration by Harpal Brar.