On 12 May 2025, the UK Prime Minister, Sir Keir Starmer, gave a speech on immigration.
He said migrants make a “massive contribution” to the country, but this was outweighed by them putting “pressure on housing and our public services”. He condemned a “one-nation experiment in open borders” as a “squalid chapter” in the country’s history; in remarks to journalists after the speech he said immigration had caused “incalculable” damage. Echoing Enoch Powell’s infamous 1968 claim that British people ‘found themselves made strangers in their own country’ due to immigration, Starmer said this was “an island of strangers” meaning that any people coming to “our country” had to “commit to integration”. He said he wasn’t saying this with the aim of “targeting these voters, responding to that party”, but “because it is fair”. He said he blamed “the previous Government” for all this. But it sounded a lot like he was blaming – no, shamefully scapegoating – people who have come here from other places.
The UK is one of the world’s richest countries. If our social fabric, infrastructure, public services, and universities are breaking apart – and after years of inequality and austerity it is hard to claim they’re not – it is not because there isn’t enough money here, or because there are too many migrants: stopping ‘the boats’ won’t get you a GP appointment quicker, and cutting language classes doesn’t help people integrate. We are impoverished because the wealth we generate isn’t shared fairly; it is because decades of low wages for many (especially women) mean high profits for some; it is because benefits raised through tax subsidise those low wages and those profits. Migrants pay huge NHS surcharge fees, pay National Insurance, and, yes, pay tax. They put more in than they get out. Scapegoating migrants for people feeling like “strangers” to each other, or for not delivering economic growth, fractures our communities even further. This is a mistake, and deplorable. It is a betrayal of “our country”, and an affront to so many people, within and beyond the labour movement. It is a self-inflicted wound, far from “fair”.
It might seem easy to separate “migrants” or “strangers” from everyone else, but it isn’t. We all know about Windrush, and all the people from all over the world who make the NHS or social care what it is, or who have come here due to the effects of colonialism and modern imperialist wars. Yet no-one was here ‘originally’. Everyone’s family came to this collection of islands from somewhere else, or has friends, family, or colleagues who were. So which migrants is Starmer – or Farage – talking about? We know people have complained about ‘strangers’ for hundreds of years – Elizabeth I did – so how far back do we go before they are allowed to stop being migrants? Separating migrants from everyone else is not ‘dog-whistle’ politics, hinting at racism or bigotry. It is racism and bigotry.
And that racism and bigotry are destroying our workplaces, especially universities. That may be the aim: cut student visas, charge universities for teaching the foreign students who can get here (who subsidise domestic students), and continue the death spiral of higher education. This will destroy for ever the idea of education as a public good worth funding that drives innovation, social mobility, criticality, and creativity, benefitting everyone.
But racism and bigotry, and the fear and hatred on which they depend, are learned, not innate. Division is a choice, not inevitable. So we have to continue to teach different lessons, which condemn division, racism, and bigotry in all their forms, whether on the streets, or dressed in a suit.
We can also teach that cruelty never beats cruelty, and that you can’t and don’t appease hatred. Appeasement never works. It didn’t work with Hitler. It doesn’t work with Trump. And it won’t work with Farage, or people who vote for him. You don’t beat Reform by being Reform. Headlines in the right-wing press following Starmer’s speech show no-one can ever be ‘tough’ enough on immigration. No nation is ever secure enough for far-right nationalists (which is why, after dealing with perceived outsiders, they always eventually turn on what they see as enemies within, like trade unions). Of course, the more people not like Farage complain about what Starmer has said, the more Starmer thinks it is right to say it. But when a politician that isn’t Farage tries to be, they can never convince people, and simply push Farage, his supporters, and everyone else to the even harder right. People who voted for Starmer’s Labour party didn’t vote for this. People who didn’t vote for him still won’t.
UCU members are diverse, with different views on the state of the country and universities. But however much some will seek to scapegoat, or divide, or appease, UCU will always support and cherish our students from near or far, just as we will always stand in solidarity with and celebrate everyone – including international colleagues and their families – who makes these islands, our communities, our union, our movement, and our universities, what they are, wherever we are from. No-one is a “stranger” when we do.
