Statement at Limpiadores screening

Comrades, friends, and fellow workers,

We thank the SoAS Justice for Workers campaign for arranging this screening and inviting us to be a part of it.

We gather here today not just to watch a film but to bear witness to a reality that too many of us already know too well.

Limpiadores is not just a story about cleaners facing deportation; it is the story of a system that thrives on exploitation, a system that treats migrant labour as disposable while reaping the benefits of their toil.

And it is clear: this is not just the work of the Tories. When these deportations happened, who was in power? The Labour Party. And now that Labour is back in power, what have they done? They have deported a record number of people, carrying on the hostile environment they once claimed to oppose. The rhetoric of the Tories has simply become Labour policy. They tell us they are the alternative, but they act as the continuity.

The conversation about race in this country is often limited to representation -who gets to be seen, who gets to sit at the table. But what about those who clean the table? What about those who are never invited in but keep the whole structure running? Diversity in boardrooms or classrooms means nothing if the workers who keep the university doors open, clean the lecture halls, and guard the buildings, are left to be discarded- underpaid, overworked, and at risk of deportation.

We see this in our workplaces: a two-tiered system where cleaners, security staff, and other so-called 'low-skilled' workers are treated as less than. But let us tell you something: when a professor doesn't turn up, the university carries on. When a manager is away, the company still runs. But if the cleaners don't turn up? If security doesn't turn up? The whole operation grinds to a halt. They call these 'unskilleď' jobs, but the absence of these workers is felt more intensely than any of the bourgeois positions they claim are more important.

This is why we must organise. This is why we must build coalitions not just with those who are documented, not just with those in secure jobs, but with everyone. Because they will try to divide us. They will try to pit us against each other-migrants against citizens, one group of workers against another, the 'legal" against the 'illegal'. It is an old game, divide and rule. And the only way to win is to refuse to play.

We must create a community together. We must work in solidarity-- raising mutual aid, organising strikes, and building networks of resistance that do not just ask for reform but demand the destruction of the systems that keep us in chains. Universities, corporations, and governments are all working together to enforce neoliberal policies that profit from our suffering. It is time we work together to tear them down.

So let us stand with the cleaners, with the security guards, with the undocumented workers. Let us fight the hostile environment not just in words but in action. Because solidarity is not charity. Solidarity is power. And together, we have the power to win.