INTitu AGAINST RACISM Responsibility The fact that the Labour leaders have not, SO far, challenged the racists head-on places a clear responsibility upon socialists in the labour movement. It means that unless they can turn their verbally anti-racist stance into concrete action -into helping to build a serious campaign to root out racism - those prejudices implanted over centuries of imperialist rule will become ever more inflamed by racist demagogues in the years ahead.
It is an urgent question. The influx of Black immigrants (now 2% of the population) has tended to create a more explosive situation than in pre-war years. The racial prejudice rooted in the Labour movement over 300 years of imperialist rule are no longer directed at the Icolonies' but, potentially, at the thousands of Blacks encouraged to enter Britain during the past decades. The ugly results of this prejudice could already be seen as far back as the early 'sixties with the Notting Hill race riots and the demonstrations of support for Powell among the dockers.
Such prejudices represent a trump card for the ruling class in its ability to divide and confuse a labour movement potentially strong at the leconomic level. Although this card has not yet been decisively played - Powell representing only a itself on the back for its efforts wich "helped produce the internal warfare and eventual split in the National Front that for a time weakened its The startling error of this tactic can be most clearly in the fact that, despite the IMG's claim, the National Front is probably bigger today and has more influence than ever before. The recent election results in areas like Bradford are proof enough. The attacks on the National Frontthe 'heroic! confrontations - were a for seriously trying to combat racist ideas in the labour movement. Sending a few National Front members home with a bloody nose may have been emotionally satisfying; it certainly did nothing to 'uproot the racial prejudice among backward layers of workers which has continued to grow and which has drawn many of them to the anti- immigThe INo Platform for Fascists! tactic was not only inadequate but dangerous at two levels. First, by campaigning under such a slogan - extended, at times, to include figures like Powell - the left were pictured as being in favour of 'denying' the right to free speech. Instead of posing the issue defensively, instead of standing as defenders of democratic rights which the ultra-right are intent groups like the National Front to appear as the 'victims' of an while the left was concentrating on 'heroic' confrontations - isolated from the ranks of the labour movement who were reduced to the role of mere spectators - the National Front was engaged in more serious activity. Sinking roots in the mass movement; it was playing on the racial prejudice of backward workers to whip up support for its anti-immigration campaign. Instead of politically meeting this threat, instead of building a campaign to repeal the Immigration Act that could have drawn thousands into real struggle against the National Front, the left gave them virtually a Ifree hand'.
ensive is clear, the left has learnt little from its
previous mistakes. While Powell and the ultra-right continue to gain support for their policies, the left has not yet launched a political challenge to them. It is not enough, as has done Red Weekly and Socialist Worker, to wax indignant over the growing assaults on the Black community for protest actions against the fascists. li is a question of organising a political challenge to the right that can mobilise thousands in real struggle and that can begin to break down the prejudices in the labour movement off which the right Such a challenge must take into the political focus of the offensive launched by the right. All forces - from Whitelaw to the National Front - have stressed that the cause of high employment and falling living standards is due to the high influx of Blacks into the country. To whip up race hatred - and divide the labour movementthey have made calls tightening the present Act, ending immigration altogether or repatriating those Blacks aiready here. It no accident that their offensive has centred precisely around the immigration issue. They hope to the racist climate past Acts have helped createto carry the attack against Blacks one step The central task before socialists is to meet this challenge head-on. This means buiiding a campaign calling on the Labour government to repeal all racist Immigration as demanded by last year's Labour Party conference. Building such a paign will not be easy and will mean confronting the deep prejudices built up over centuries within the labour movement. utopian, however, to think that the racist offensive can be while this Act - which justifies racism and which the 'right! are seeking to tighten still more - remains on the statute books. It is by building action to repeal the Act - and not by small Ivanguard' actions against the ultra-right - that really effective challenge can be will undermine those prejudices off which National Front will increasingly feed.
This is not to say, of course, that the struggle against racism should be 'limited' to a campaign to repeal the 1971 Immigration Act. Such a struggle should also include supporting, as well as popularising, in the labour movement the need to build defence committees against fascist attacks C:
Al hAON on the Black community. The key question, however, is to give the struggle a concrete, political focus which takes up head-on the policies of the ultra-right. It is only by calling for the repeal of the present Immigration Act - countering head-on the idea that Blacks cause unemployment - that it will be possible to check the growing support for the racists.
Many left groups have, belatedly, begun to raise in their press the need to repeal the 1971 Act. It is not enough, however, to confine that demand to the pages of a newspaper, It is necessary to turn that demand into a concrete campaign by fighting, within the labour movement, for the government to abide by conference decisions.
----- pull-quotes -----
Campaign Even today, when the virulence of the racist off-
Should the labour movement or anti-racist movement support laws aimed at restricting fascist or ultra-right groupings? The growth of the National Front today - its deliberately provocative marches and assaults on the Black community - have made the question a serious one at present being debated Only recently Red Weekly (journal of the IMG) pointed out in an article headed 'How do we fight Racism?' that socialists should demand that ".. the Labour government ban all provocative marches & demonstrations of the National Front and other similar fascist bodies".
Such an attitude is not confined to the pages of Red Weekly. It has spread to wider layers of the labour movement where, over the past months, increasing calls have been made for legal action to be The following article by Leon Trotsky is a valuable contribution to the debate over what trade unionists and anti-racist fighters should adopt to calls on the government to lact!
The article was written in 1935, only a few years after Hitler's seizure of power in Germany. The coming to power of the Nazis gave an impetus to the violent attacks launched by native fascist parliament passed a law disbanding all para-military organisations which, it was obvious, could be used as easily against the workers' self-defence organisations as against the fascist bans.
The idea was picked up in Holland where it won the support of the conservative government headed by Premier Colijn. Trotsky's article was an attempt to orient the Dutch Trotskyists to oppose the Bill Trotsky wrote the article, the arguments it puts forward are as valid today as they ever were.
ON in the socialist movement.
taken against the National Front.
socialists, against the fascists.
ments in countries throughout Europe. and to provide them with arguments The question of our attitude towards governmental measures ostensibly aimed against fascism is highly important.
Since bourgeois democracy is, historically, bankrupt, it is no longer in a position to defend itself on its own ground against its enemies on the right and the left. That is, in order to 'maintain! itself, the democratic regime must progressively liquidate itself through emergency measures and administrative arbitrariness.
This self-liquidation of democracy in the fight against right & left brings to the fore the Bonapartism of degeneration, which needs both the right and the left danger for its uncertain existence in order to play them off against each other and to progressively raise itself above society and its parliamentarism. The Colijn regime has seemed to me for a long time to be a potentially Bonapartist regime.
In this highly critical period, the main enemy of Bonapartism remains, of course, the revolutionary wing of the proletariat. Thus we can say, with absolute assurance, that as the class strugall emergency laws, extraordinary powers etc will be used against the proletariat.
After the French Stalinists and Socialists to use against it. While the situation has changed from the time voted for the administrative disbanding of paramilitary organisations, the old scoundrel M. Cachin wrote in 'L'Humanite' as follows: " A great victory.. Naturally, we know that in capitalist society, all laws can be used against the proletariat. But we will strive to prevent this".
The lie here is in the word 'can!. What should have been said was:"We know that as the social crisis deepens, all these measures will be used against the proletariat with tenfold intensity". There is a simple conclusion to be drawn from this: We cannot help build up the Bonapartism of degeneration with our own hands and supply it with the chains it will inevitably use to bind the proletarian vanguard.
This is not to say that for the immediate future, Collin will not want to free his right elbow from the excessive presumptuousness of the fascists. The social revolution in Holland does not seem to be an immediate threat. Big capital hopes to allay the threatening dangers by using the strong, concentrated state. But to keep the real enemy, the revolutionary proletariat, within bounds, Colijn will never completely eliminate or even sidetrack fascism. At the most, he will simply keep it in check.
That is why the slogan for the disbanding and disarming of the fascist gangs by the state (and similar measures ) is reactionary through and through. This would mean making a whip out of the proletariat's hide, one which the Bonapartist arbiters might use to softly caress the fascist rear ends nere and But it is our binding responsibility and duty to protect the hide of the working class, and not to hand over the whip to fascism.
There is another aspect of the same situation wilich seems even more important. Bourgeois democracy is a sham by its very essence. The nore it flowers, the less it can be utilised by the proletariat (compare the nistory of England and the Linited States). But the dialectics of history commands that bourgeois democracy can become a powerful reality for the proletariat, at the very time when it is falling apart. Fasc -ism is the outward sign of this degeneration.
The struggle against fascism, the defence of the positions the working class has won within the framework of degenerating democracy, can become a poweriul reality since it gives working class the opportunity to prepare itself for the sharpest struggles and partially to arm itselt. Tie last two years in France, since 1934, have given the woriers' organisations an excellent opportunity ( and perhaps one that will not be so soon repeated) to mobilise the proletariat and the petty bourgeoisie on the of tie revolution, to create a workers! militia etc. This precious opportunity is supplied by lie decay of democracy, by its clear inability to inaintain lorder! by the old means, an example. One could, perhaps, find better, more exact formulations. Will Messrs Social-Democrats and Stalinists deny their support or even vote against them? Even if they vote for them, the motions will fail nevertheless then it will be absolutely clear why we vote against the government motion as a whole- and we must do this without any second thoughts whatsoever for the reasons given above (even if the Colijn parliamentarians rule these amendments out of order on the grounds that they apply only to propaganda technique and not to the essence of the matter).
We have to take strong measures against the abstract 'anti-fascist! mode of thinking, that finds entry even into our own ranks at times.
collaboration with the Radicals. Many of our comrades wanted to give the Peoples! Front, i.e. class collaboration, positive support in the same way that we are ready to support the united front, i.e. the separation of the proletariat from the other classes. Starting from the thoroughly false slogan 'Peoples Front to Power', in the name of 'anti-fascism! they go still further and declare that they are inclined to support Bonapartism - for voting for Colijn's lanti-fascist! Bill would mean nothing less than direct support for Bonapartism.
----- pull-quotes -----
'Anti-fascism' is nothing, an empty concept used to cover up Stalinist skulduggery. In the name of 'anti-fascism', they instituted class