Byron Burger, the high-end restaurant chain owned by Ex-Etonian, Tom Byng, once dubbed ‘The Bourgeois Burger King’ by the London Evening Standard, has become a new flashpoint in Britain’s post-Brexit immigration row.
Byron Burger, the high-end restaurant chain owned by Ex-Etonian, Tom Byng, once dubbed ‘The Bourgeois Burger King’ by the London Evening Standard, has become a new flashpoint in Britain’s post-Brexit immigration row.
For many this feels like a disgusting betrayal by Byron Burger, who commented that they “co-operated fully and acted upon the Home office’s requests throughout the course of the investigation leading to this action and will continue to do so.” So after having benefitted from the labour of these exploited migrants, the company then threw them under the bus to avoid a £700,000 fine – a meagre price for a company worth over 100million. Despite this, the restaurant’s management protests its innocence in upholding the correct ‘right to work’ checks and blames the employees for producing false documentation and visas. The 35 workers came from a host of countries as varied as, Albania, Brazil and Egypt, and all now face immediate deportation. A stronger enforcement of migration law has seen nearly 36,000 people removed from the UK in the last year, an increase on previous years.
When the news of the raids broke there was a big public reaction. The criticism rolled in thick and fast with the hashtag #boycottbyron trending on social media. Small solidarity protests initially popped by spontaneously but were later co-ordinated by Unite Union activist, Ewa Jasiewicz. These proved successful in closing the Holborn burger branch and disrupting others throughout the city. Protesters lined the pavement waving banners with the slogans, “No one is illegal” and “Shame on you Byron #grass”. Two men were even caught releasing cockroaches and locusts in the toilets of two restaurants in an act of retribution almost biblical in scale!
Striking Deliveroo workers have also shown solidarity with the protests, refusing to cross picket lines to pick up orders from the restaurant. This shows the instinctive internationalism of workers in struggle. The major unions should stand aloof from this – an affront to any worker, “illegal” or otherwise, is an affront to all!
However, many in the media supported the chain and commended its actions to root out illegal workers. This comes as no surprise, especially after the recent wave of anti-migrant rhetoric in the media following the EU referendum. In predictable fashion, right-wing commentators such as the Telegraph’s Byrony Gordon were quick to villainise the protestors and praise the police force.
To criminalise people who are so desperate for wages that they often risk everything may appear to be an unnecessary cruelty, but it is an inevitability under this cruel and irrational capitalist system. Capital doesn’t respect national borders and therefore neither will labour. Employers like Byron will always seek the cheapest labour available, whatever the legal status of the workers, but it’s always the workers who are duped, arrested and scapegoated by the state for the sake of ‘defending’ its outdated and nonsensical borders.
This shows us that capitalism is a truly global economic system and yet one that cannot efficiently allocate resources – just look at the problem of global unemployment. Why should workers in such naturally bountiful countries as Brazil have to travel thousands of miles to flip burgers? An international system which plans the economy democratically for all could eliminate the madness and injustice of capitalism, which simply drains the world for its own profit.
We say a world without borders or exploitation is possible – make the bosses pay! If we take all the wealth hoarded by the capitalists into public control we can provide decent work and homes for all, wherever they are. This is the future we are fighting for.
