responded, "we're ready for the battle". among young people.
Southall that Asian youth rapidly organised themselves following the racist murder of Curdip Chaggar in summer of 1976. And the ith that has appeared in this other Asian communitics often been UPLE ise to the passivity of the ional leaders. in the wake thousands have taken up the fight it the repression they face West Indian youth have been Elected to one of the most me, systematic campaigns harassment and violence bertaken against any com nity by the British state, The HEYE TABBERE They've been in the front in the pobtical mobilisaloes, like during Ladywood by-election in 1977 have been the teN eceiving end ardware used by the police ines at Lewisham; and in ocessive Notting Hill carni was. And they have organised actions in defence of victims of "sus laws, charges conspiracy and other attacks by the to demoralise the mistancy of the West Indian population.
But perhaps the dramatic indication that youth are the move of. WOrKINE youth who have rallied behind Anti Nazi League banners and flocked to gigs organised by Rock Against Racism. "ARE the young lions ready?" asked a 60-year-old | and individual achievement in Sikh woman before the fascists arrived in Southall the day Blair Peach was murdered. "Yes,' the youth It's not surprising that Southall was the scene of a mass show of seething militancy amongst youth. For the youth of this West London borough have come to symbolise the emergence of a new factor in the political scene in Britain: an enormous explosion The discontent of the times is reflected in today's music — from reggae to punk to new wave - which heralds the new youth revolt.
And it is partly thanks to the growth of women's bands that young women are expressing a growing mood of discontent Rock Against Sexism is out to focus both the anger women feel when they come up against sexism in their political activity, as well as the growing concern about problems of sexuality.
This is an issue which is finding its way into the columns of the music press as well as While many of the themes which have sparked women into activity are testimony to the presence of a Strong wone a moycient — a product of the youth radicalisation of the sixties radicalisation has quite differ ent roots.
Today's youth are not at all the product of boom that the "Children of '68* were. Young people today have been through nothing dole queues, deepening social crisis, of little prospect of improveBlack and instance. experienced an astonishing 800 per cent increase in unemployment figures between most 1973 and 1976, The crisis of the capitalism is the backdrop of class solutions to the problems they confront. Capitalist society has little to offer.
The vision that hard work school will bring a rosy future recedes as it becomes evident TESTUO CAREERED STOCHES for jobs that don't exist. When students recognise this, hard fact that schools are used to discipline and repress the future work force netumes even sharper.
The family, already straining under the crisis, finds it more difficult to take over where the schools have been unable 1o cope. And thanks to all the problems the individual family unit is farced to shoulder. youth are not ready to rush headlong such insocurity:
Not only the sanctity of the family, but all other tenets of morality crumble. parties hold few attractions for young people condemned to unemployment And so, with a new army of young youth on the march — more working class in character and younger than in the 1960g — the question of leadership is posed the new The issues which youth are fighting around out of Ireland, for solidarity with the liberation struggles in capitalist Southern Africa, as well as on all the different anti-racist and anti-sexist themes product of this situation. Youth radicalisation is not and being channelled through the traditional organisations of the enormous potential weaknesses but one advantage is that youth are not held intransigence of labour caucrats.
Revolutionaries have to win youth. for the 1930s showbe political that a mighty force may unleashed to other ends if they don't.
the financial Traditional political and misery for troops This back by the bur confidence OPPOSE POLICE BRUTALITY confining them to the prescribed role that bourgeois society defines for them.
ruling class has two contradictory explanations for the inferior social position of the young: on the one hand they are weak and helpless, on the other violent and tough Working class youth are not seen asincapable of fending for themselves, They are a threat to the very fabric of society work-shy, hooligans who have to be policed and Black youth are muggers rapists and need extra special authority to be controlled "sus' laws and the like.
Either way around - weak and helpless or violent vandals - it ends up in the same place:
have the ones in control.
As socialists, our explanation is completely different understand that the oppression of youth → as with other groups - flows from the nature of class society The concept of 'childhood' is a fairly recent innovation, In societies where extended families were work unit, this notion weak and incapable child didn't exist.
True, the young were seen to be weaker, but they were not cut off from the society of adults because of it. They played a role in tending the crops or the sheep and were integrated indiative fely the family. into the Early society began to bite into this. The young, even the very young. were an easy source of cheap