When Roy Jenkin's Prevention of Terrorism Act was passed last year, it was widely seen as a civil liberties. As far Home Secretary and police were concerned, signified little more than the application of powers that they already possessed under the 1971 Act. The licence given them is one that assumes civil liberties are restricted to whites - Blacks being considered a second-class sub-group.
If you are considered 'undesirable' (or, as the Act specifies, a 'threat to the public good' you can be taken to a special detention centre near Heathrow and deported overnight. You have no right of appeal. If the police suspect you of being an 'illegal immigrant', you can be picked up off the streets, taken to the police station and asked to 'provel you have a right to be in Britain. If you can't prove it, at once, you may well be on your way to deportation or sent to Pentonville where you may be kept for months while 'investigations' are made.
Of course, there are a hundred variations of police harassment of this sort. You may be dragged out of your bed at night, picked up in a club or arrested at your place of work as happened to Abdul Malik. The fact that such intimidation is legally condoned helps explain the constant i tension' that. surrounds the Black community both in areas like Southall and Bradford. today with an escalating jobless total. By refusing to challenge figures like Powell head-on rather, oy preparing the ground for him with their previous restrictions - the Labour leaders have helped pave the way for a racist back- lash, Such a trend can even now be glimpsed in the refusal by teaching unions (the NUT & NAS) to accept immigrant teachers while unemployment exists or in the call by Harry Unwin to stop all foreign workers entering the catering industry.
If this attitude were to spread in the months and years to come, it could seriously 'split! the labour movement and turn its attention away from the real cause of social problems - such as unemploymentby creating a scapegoat only too noticeable by its colour. The local election results in Bradford last year - where the National Front achieved about 30% of the poll - are disturbing in this respect. While partially a 'protest' vote, they are indicative of a dangerous trend developing at the direct expense of Labour itself.
Labour Campaign Although the Labour leaders have, verbally, condemned the National Front, they are quite unable to challenge them since they have accepted -by their attempt to curb Black immigration - that it is Black people who cause the 'problems'. The debate has been reduced to a numbers! game bet -ween them and the ultra-right in which the latter increasingly make the running. As long as Labour continues to implement a racist law, they will find it impossible to struggle against the racists and stop the steady trickle of desertions at the polls to racist candidates.
It is this fact which undermines the campaign recently launched by the Labour Party against 'racism' which brought 15000 out into the streets last November. While the campaign is a welcome change from the passivity of the labour movement to date on the issue - and potentially can lead to a real challenge to racist attitudes - its edge was politically blunted.
Despite the fact that Labourls annual conference has called - by a large majority - for the repeal of the 1971 Immigration Act, the Labour Party campaign refused to feature this demand as the
central one in the struggle against racism. That was no accident since, far from challenging the idea that Blacks cause the problems, the campaign made major concessions to it. It sought to 'calmi racist anxieties by stressing that immigration is under Istrict control! and that the entry of Blacks is on the decrease. It sought to justify the presence of Blacks - those few who manage to get in - by stressing their contribution to the economy as cheap labour in dead-end jobs.
Such a thrust panders to racial prejudice. It tries to offset the influence of groups such as the National Front by assuring people that Labour already operates a 'firm! immigration policy and that those few who do get through the net occupy a second-class status. If the campaign is to become really effective, it is vital that it challenge and not accomodate racist views. This means implementing conference decisions and making the central aim the building of mass action to force the government to repeal the Immigration Act. marginal strand in ruling class thinking -. it embodies a rapidly growing threat that will be used in the coming years to divert ever - more workers from the real causes of unemployment & living standards.
Unfortunately, despite the urgency of the situation, the left have downplayed - if not virtually ignored - the issue. Not only have they failed to respond to the growing racist threat represented by figures such as Powell. They have even remained inactive when this Ithreat! has found a direct reflection inside the labour movement in the willingness of successive Labour governments to operate racist immigration laws.
Confrontation Far from fighting within the labour movement to make the Labour leaders abide by conference cisions - building mass actions on the around the central issue of immigration - they have made their key thrust building 'No Platform for Fascists' campaign. For years, groups such as the IMG or ICL have tended to efforts on 'vanguard actions' afainst the National Front to prevent it holding demonstrations or public meetings. Only recently, Red Weekly patted