No Borders is an activist network that supports Freedom of Movement and the Right to Remain for all. The network links No Borders groups across the UK and there are transnational ties to groups on the continent of Europe and across its borders. The No Borders group in Nottingham includes many local activists who are involved with supporting and working alongside asylum seekers who live in the area, detainees wherever they are, migrants in the squats and on the streets in Calais and supporting solidarity between domestic and migrant workers.
[Click 'Read more' for the rest of the text. For details of Mayday 2010 read our older blog article below.]


What does No Borders believe?

No Borders is completely opposed to the concept of nation states and the control of borders for the purposes of the control of the movement of people, whether on land, at sea, or within territories. Nation states and borders are artificial creations that do not benefit the majority of people on Earth. They continue to foster mistrust, racism, conflict and poverty. They arose from elites taking what they wanted; though colonisation and the making of empires, from lines drawn on maps after wars, and from forced movements of people into countries based on their ethnic background or religion. And all over the world, by highlighting these divisions for political ends, the painting of migrants as security threats creates fear. Such a view creates a smokescreen, hiding the need for a scapegoat, presenting myth as fact.

We know that people are on the move around the world for many reasons …

• In response to the global capitalist relations that bring poverty, starvation and war;
• In response to political and religious persecution;
• In response to bigotry against women and homosexuality;
• In response to the adverse affects of climate change;
• In response to the world getting smaller;
• In response to our human needs.

The attempts by nation states to control the movement of people leads only to criminalisation, apartheid and death. People are divided into those with and without documents, workers are divided into those with and without rights, and countries are divided into a strict hierarchy of wealth. Thousands face fear or death as they try to cross borders, as the conditions of detention become unbearable or as the threat of return to unbearable conditions hangs over them. Selective inclusion and ‘illegality’ are methods to divide and control us all. Imprisoning people because they decide to move from one part of the world to another is barbaric. We say that No One Is Illegal!
(Note: click ‘Read More’ for the rest of the text. See older blog for details about Mayday 2010 in Nottingham).
What do we do?

No Borders brings together people who want to stand in solidarity with migrants who participate in a variety of ways and on a number of related projects. In Nottingham individuals work with local organisations and groups on various projects and on independent projects and direct actions. We try to bring a radical anti-state perspective into these projects. One example of this was Full Circle where we worked with the local campaign against Heckler & Koch to link the arms trade to asylum. We hold local meetings. We have also participated in actions outside Nottingham, such as demonstrating at immigration detention centres and also outside the UK, such as in Calais.

More generally we aim to increase awareness and to challenge media and government lies about immigration and so-called security. We want an end to the forced destitution of asylum seekers who are not allowed to work. We support them in their right and opportunity to work. In the meantime we support asylum seekers in detention centres. All detention centres must close and we applaud their brave uprisings against terrible conditions, deaths in detention and abuse during removal attempts. We oppose the UK Border Agency and the private companies who benefit from the imprisonment of people coming here for help by building and running prisons on behalf of the Home Office. We oppose the deportation of asylum seekers and the airlines that are complicit in their removal.

We want more and more people in Nottingham to show solidarity with asylum seekers and migrant workers so that we can see that the artificial division of nationality just helps the rulers to rule, the powerful to remain powerful and the rich to stay rich.

Please get involved!
Visit our website: www.nobordersnottingham.org.uk Email us at info [at] nobordersnottingham.org.uk

One of the UNISON members picked up, who was traumatised by the clandestine nature of the raid and the appearance of around 40 officers in full body armour, arrived back in Bogota, 48 hours after the raid, wearing the same clothes she was arrested in and with 75pence in her pocket. Others were deported or are detained at Yarl’s Wood.

Full story: http://www.indymedia.org.uk/en/2009/07/433893.html

This is a perfect example of the practice of companies like Amey and organisations like NPL who bring them in to cut costs. These companies are responsible for attempting to lower wages through casualisation. More solidarity action is needed to support workers who are brave enough to stand up to these attacks and so help protect the wages of all.

Less well reported (but actually to be found in the Telegraph today) is the prediction that up to one million immigrant workers might leave UK. So Britain is effectively “exporting unemployment” that would otherwise be 3 million instead of 2 million.

Not only do we find that 100,000′s of EU nationals in the UK have already left due to losing jobs or deciding it’s not worth staying anymore, but even though many are eligible to claim benefits including Job Seekers’ Allowance, government figures show there have been only 4,647 successful JSA applications from eastern Europeans since 2004. So any idea of migrants scrounging of the state is nonsense. If any finger is to be pointed, it’s at the capitalist system that cares little about working people whereever they are from, as long as we work and don’t cause trouble.

See also: “Migrants come here for an easy ride? – don?t make us laugh!

Until the day when people are able to escape war and torture freely without borders, all asylum seekers should be able to work so they can try and avoid destitution while they concentrate on their cases and appeals, without this unnecessary additional hassle from vehicle licensing snoopers, immigration officials, police and the so-called justice system.

Full story from Evening Post:

Illegal Zimbabwean worker spared jail. Monday, September 15, 2008, 07:30

A ZIMBABWEAN man who used fake documents to get work has been spared jail.
Judge Dudley Bennett described Weldone Javangwe as a “perfectly respectable man” who has contributed to the Nottingham community.

The court heard Javangwe, who is a member of the political party Movement for Democratic Change, could not go back to Zimbabwe because his life would be in danger.
But he is not able to work legally in this country, because he has been refused asylum.
Judge Bennett said: “You are a perfectly respectable man who fled from Zimbabwe.

“You have been paying your taxes and you have not been a drain on our society in any way.”
Failed asylum seekers are normally deported, but deportations to Zimbabwe have been suspended because of the difficult political situation in the country.

The court heard Javangwe, 26, paid £50 for a false letter giving him refugee status. He used it to get work for employment agencies.

He came to England in 2002, and has been working since 2003. He has even been making contributions to somebody else’s National Insurance, because the number on his documents was a real one.

Javangwe, who pleaded guilty to possession of a false ID document, has not committed any other offence since coming to the UK, and only came to the attention of police after applying for a driving licence in June.

He was arrested after the DVLA realised his documents were false.
Javangwe is living in Cranwell Road, Strelley. The court heard the rest of his family have either come to the UK or fled to South Africa.

Judge Bennett gave Javangwe a nine-month prison sentence, suspended for two years. He will not have to serve it unless he commits another offence in that time. He will also have to do 80 hours unpaid community work.

The decision was welcomed by Regis Manyanya, chairman of the Nottingham Zimbabwean Community Network, which campaigns for Zimbabweans refused asylum to be given the right to work.

He said: “There are a lot of people in the same situation. Because they are living in destitution some of them feel they have no option but to work illegally. Some are being pushed into prostitution.

“They are hard-working and want to make a living, but because of the system they are forced into committing these types of crime.”

Read earlier article or go to http://www.nobordersmanchester.blogspot.com/ to read about about No Borders action at the Labour Party Conference (from 19th Sept).
Click on ‘Read more’ for a report about police repression outside Republican National Convention in USA on Labor Day earlier this week.

Repression prior to the Labour Party Conference, Manchester, UK

In an outrageous act of media manipulation, Greater Manchester Police announced a couple of weeks ago that “A major operation to police the 2008 Labour Party Annual Conference has resulted in the arrest of three more people on suspicion of immigration offences.”
http://www.citylocal.co.uk/cities/Manchest…/article/24583/
The news follows removal of one Manchester resident with expired work permit that has already resulted from GMP’s proudly proclaimed ‘Operation Protector’. This major (and presumably expensive) security operation to protect the Labour Party against the most dangerous kind of terrorist mastermind in Manchester, that is, someone working their butt off in a hotel or other city centre venue (allegedly) without 100% correct visa/passports, seems to be geared for maximum publicity effect. Time and time again, migrant workers get criminalised just for surviving, in a world of uncertainty and war created by the same nation states with their armies and police forces. That these authorities can go round making out that harassing a few immigrants, most likely a result of stop & searching anyone with a dark skin, will keep warmongering politicians safe from terrorist threats inside their cosy conference centres, is a slur on all of the hardworking and exploited people that modern capitalist economies depend on.

Read earlier article or go to http://www.nobordersmanchester.blogspot.com/ to read about about No Borders action at the Labour Party Conference (from 19th Sept).

Repression at Republican National Convention, USA, Sept 2008

More recently another example of state harassment at a party conference, this time against activists protesting at the Republican National Convention in the USA, where NORNC were making known their opposition to “[...] the rapid growth of racist militarized borders across stolen lands, the raids and deportations, destruction and commodification of our shared and living earth, police brutality and prison industry, fear propaganda and subjugation, exploitation and robbery of peoples worldwide, and all forms of injustice and oppression[...]“. Police met opposition from the Poor People’s March for Our Lives’ with extreme brutality, using local anti-terror laws for the first time.

More info and pictures from RNC protests and repression:

Anti-Capitalist Bloc Call for the 2008 Republican National Convention in Saint Paul, MN
http://www.iww.org/en/node/4284

March For Our Lives: Photo Galleries from Poor People’s March on the RNC:
Photo essay from the Poor People’s Economic Human Rights Campaign March on the RNC (Part 1)
and
Photo essay in two parts from Poor People’s Economic Human Rights Campaign March on the RNC. September 2, 2008. Part 2: Marching On the XCel Center

New evidence of ‘bonded labour’
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/6593827.stm

Migrant ‘underclass’ to be probed
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/6594577.stm

Lets work to do something about it….