ONE striking feature of the proposals from both leading parties about “reforming” the EU is that they will do precisely the opposite of what they claim to want.

Both parties say they want to control immigration. Their proposals will instead allow immigration — but make immigrants into new second-class citizens. This nasty scheme will cut into wages and conditions of migrant and non-migrant worker alike.

The Conservative manifesto makes migrant benefits the central issue in David Cameron’s supposed renegotiation of Britain’s position in the EU.

The manifesto says: “Changes to welfare to cut EU migration will be an absolute requirement in the renegotiation.”
So Cameron claims he will cut the number of migrant workers by cutting benefits.

In particular, the manifesto promises to “reduce the numbers of EU migrants coming to Britain, we will end the ability of EU jobseekers to claim any job-seeking benefits at all.”

Cameron’s cut-the-migrants-benefits stance is mirrored by Labour. If you looked into the detail of the promise to “control immigration” chiselled into the “Ed Stone” and appearing on Labour’s “racist mugs,” it was mostly not a control on immigration at all but a control on benefits.

Ed Miliband promised: “With Labour, when people come here they won’t be able to claim benefits for at least two years.”

Labour said that this was to stop immigrants “undercutting” established wages and conditions. The Tory manifesto says it wants to stop the “exploitation of migrant workers.”

But their proposal will do the opposite.

These are not proposals to cut migration, they are proposals that will allow migration but then be horrible to migrants when they arrive.

Migrants do not come here for benefits but for work. However like all working people, they sometimes don’t find jobs and they sometimes lose them.

Cutting benefits will have no effect on the number of migrants.

But stopping migrants claiming benefits will very quickly create a new, second class of worker. Workers who, if they lose their jobs, are thrown into absolute penury and will become poor and homeless right away.

This means they will be easily pushed into to undercutting all existing conditions — whether safety or wages or hours.

If the boss can drive a minibus full of staff onto a site or up to a warehouse or call centre who are literally penniless if they don’t do what they are told, what does that do to conditions?

Too cold? Getting pushed into unpaid overtime? Worked too fast ? Floor too slippery ? All those negotiations about conditions will be chipped away very quickly.

It isn’t true that a low immigration labour market is a high pay one — say hello to the 1930s, when immigration was low and pay stagnated. 

And it isn’t true that a high immigration labour market has to be a low pay one either.

In the ’50s and ’60s immigration was high and wages were going up. But the key to this was, more or less, that British workers welcomed their Caribbean and Asian co-workers as brothers and sisters, entitled to the same conditions.

They didn’t do this always or perfectly but that was the general trend.

It was the broad stance of the unions and the Labour Party, in opposition to the Conservative Party. Get this wrong, be convinced by Cameron, and whoever Labour picks as next leader will go down the “no benefits for migrants” road — and we all lose out.

This road doesn’t cut the number of migrants or stop “undercutting.” It just leads to division in the workplace and a general depression of wages.

These are not new lessons but the Labour Party has become an organisation underpinned by amnesia on this issue.

In the US, the main trade unions tried to exist in the last quarter of the 19th century as anti-immigrant organisations.

Under Samuel Gompers, the American Federation of Labor (AFL) tried to keep wages high by excluding immigrants from skilled jobs.

Yet AFL-affiliated unions lost members and made little impact on the national stage.

They responded by promoting anti-immigrant laws. But this made no difference. It was only when the new trade unions of the 1930s under the Congress of Industrial Organisation (CIO) reached out to organise unskilled workers that the position changed.

And that meant bringing migrant workers into the fold. The CIO constitution aimed “to encourage all workers without regard to race, creed, colour or national origin to share in the full benefits of union organisation.”

Again, they didn’t do it perfectly. But it was a major shift and one that transformed pay and conditions in the US for decades, transforming a low0wage economy to a high-wage one.

These lessons are written into the labour movement — reading The Grapes of Wrath makes us understand that oppressing migrant workers hurts us all. We know that we either stand together or get fleeced separately.

But thanks in part to the current leadership of the Labour Party this basic lesson is being forgotten. Labour’s stand has become so poisonous that the unions need to distance themselves from it, lest any of the poison spreads and gets in the way of recruiting our migrant brothers and sisters.

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Is there an alternative to selling RBS at a loss? George Osborne and Bank of England governor Mark Carney are saying that it will be more of a loss if we keep it. 

But, actually, publicly owned banks have quite a good record in Britain, as long as they have a social mission.

In 1945 Labour was angry that banks failed to invest in industry during the ’30s depression, so it founded the Industrial and Commercial Finance Corporation, an investment bank backing British companies.

In 1968, Labour was angry that banks would only serve middle-class customers and set up Girobank, a “retail” bank for workers.

Both banks were very successful and later privatised by the Tories. So splitting RBS into an investment bank with a mission to back industry and a retail bank with a mission not to rip folk off is the answer.