EU EXPANDS: Britain Eyes the Bus Station In a New Dawn

By Sanjay Suri Reprint | | Print |

Sanjay Suri

LONDON, May 1 2004 (IPS) - Britain was looking south to the English Channel Saturday morning as it has at many turning points in history.

The English Channel has set British history apart from Europe while it has always remained a part of it. The island nation has in the past fought off invasions from Spain, France and Germany, with the Channel as front line.

At the beginning of a long weekend, there were enough signs of hysteria within Britain to suggest it was preparing for another invasion, this one from people in the new European Union (EU) members looking for work.

Dover and Folkestone on the Channel are now open to all fellow EU members, which now means 24 instead of 14. Also, Britain and Ireland have said they will be open to workers from the new ten where many other older EU members have imposed restrictions and quotas.

A willing employer in Britain will get near automatic approval by the Home Office. Many British companies have already begun recruiting workers from the new EU member countries – Cyprus, the Czech Republic, Estonia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Malta, Poland, Slovakia and Slovenia.

The Grafton Recruitment Group has said it will bring in 3,000 workers from Poland to fill job gaps in Britain. Many of these jobs are in the transportation and hotel companies and in hospitals.

"We believe that managed work migration of this kind will not only help Polish workers find better work as EU members, but fill critical skills and labour shortages in many of our sectors," a spokeswoman for Grafton told IPS.

"An open Europe will be a fairer, stronger and more economically active Europe, provided we adopt the right pro-employment policies and regulations, which are in turn clearly publicised for all," Grafton Chairman James Kilbane said in a statement. Flow of workers will be better for "both Europes", he said.

Work and Pensions Minister Andrew Smith has said many of the new workers will be welcome. "With half a million vacancies in our economy and with vacancies high and rising, we can certainly cope and benefit economically and socially with the contribution these workers can bring," he said in a statement.

Early estimates suggest that up to 50,000 from the new member states will come to settle in Britain over just the next few weeks. But the new workers will have to go through a registration process.

The Trades Union Congress, the leading workers union in Britain, has prepared a leaflet in several languages to give new workers information on rights and on working laws and conditions in Britain.

But not everyone is welcoming the new workers. Two generations ago Britain opened its doors to workers from the Commonwealth, a group of 53 countries that include Britain and others once a part of the British Empire. The flood of workers that came in forced Britain to close its doors to them in the early sixties. The far right û and many others û have since then continued to resent the South Asian population in Britain.

Fears about the new wave of migrants echo some of the concern over the influx from the Commonwealth. There has been a strong outcry, particularly in the tabloid press, that the new EU workers will steal British jobs and alter the British way of life.

British Prime Minister Tony Blair has acknowledged that there are "real concerns" about migration and that these are "not figments of racist imagination."

The government has sought to prevent any misuse of the benefits system by placing tight restrictions on housing and welfare claims from the new EU members. The message is clear; that the new workers are welcome on British terms, and for tasks the host country wants them for.

This has not deterred the thousands headed for Britain. Bookings on coach services to Britain from Poland have risen by a third. Airlines have reported a 15 percent rise in bookings to London over the long weekend.

Most of the new EU Europeans have been saying they are coming in as tourists. But as EU members they enjoy free travel within the bloc, and there may be no way of checking who comes in and stays on to work.

Britain has a large ‘informal economy’ that could absorb hundreds of thousands of workers. A tourist who stays on to work without registration could do so indefinitely.

The fears so far have been vague. But many are watching to see what happens at Dover, and later within the country. This one promises to be a genteel and more beneficial invasion than any that have threatened Britain before. But it could also be a more successful one.