[l'ascists organised to break the Imperial Typewriters strike…]

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l'ascists organised to break the Imperial Typewriters strike Federation of Pakistani Movement. This fought for Organisations, UCPA, improvements in the state RAAS, etc.) came together system and also set up its in Leamington Spa to form own school, the George a national bod. the Black Padmore school..

People's Alliance (BPA), a Bernard a Coard, . nOW militant front for Black deputy prime minister in Consciousness and against Grenada, wrote the pamracism. phlet, 'How the West Ind*And in that, the BPA ian Child is made Educat::frince innally: Sah Normal. In about themo. Some struggles were against slum landlordism, some for proper council housing, some for safety from attack on council estates, and others against the break up of established communities while still demanding improvements in housing. In the Hast End of was uncompromising rom the outset. It excluded from membership immigrant organisations that had compromised with governit is.:: ment policy or fallen prey to government hand-outs •. or looked to the Labour Party for redress?"

With the seal of official approval stamped into the hot wax of British racism by Enoch Powell and by successive governments' immigration laws, black organisations increasingly saw themselves confronting the state. They fought the state over immigratate aver Sus procedures. organisations like Blacks Against Police Harassment would later still campaign to expose the knuckle end of state racism.

Immigration WITH immigrants increasingly seeing themselves as settlers rather than temporary migrant labour, blacks' struggles in the late '60s began to branch out to issues of education, housing and health.

In 1963, Edward Boyle, a "liberal' Tory education minister, reported to the Commons that it was undesirable to have more than 30 per cent immigrant children in any school.

The Southall racists" lobby had had its effect.

Soon Southall's black kids were being bussed out of the area. Naturally, there was never a question ot bussing white kids in:

blacks, after all, were the problem...

Bussed

West Indian kids were being categorised as Educationally Sub-Normal (ESN), Asian kids were being bussed out of Southall, West Indian children were being treated as unmanageable (50 per cent of school suspensions in Ealing concerned West Indian kids), black children were being attacked at school and on the way to school, and the school curriculum was both smeared with racism and insensitive to the special probl ems of immigrant children.

Both West Indian and Asian parents protested at racial stereotyping, second class education, and open racism in schools.

The responses were varies. In North London, John LaRose, a former executive member of the Federated Workers' Trade Union in Trinidad and Tobago and a black writer and bookstore owner, initiated the Black Parents' Hackney black teaehers set up the Kwame Nkrumah school, while in West London Ajoy Ghose (ex-UCPA) started the Malcolm X Montessori Programme.

T- Canestha tha ın souln Lonuvu tilt Black Liberation Front and the Black Unity and Freedom Party set up educational programmes and summer schools.

Women

In the forefront of these struggles away from the workplace were black women. They campaigned on issues of black child care, mental health, the enforced use of Depo-Provera and the : establishment of "sin-bins' the so-called 'special adjustment units'). They also took the lead in campaigns over the rights of black prisoners - both men and women.

• By the late '70s, women had shown themselves to be in the forefront of the workplace struggles too.

Caribbean, had sprung up Bengali Housing Action Group. all over Britain and came together to form one powerful national body, the Organisation of Women of Asian and African Descent OWAAD) with its :In 1979 Brixt on Black Women's Group launched the first Black Women's Centre.

"'Asian women in AWAZ and Southal Black Sisters (set up in the wake of 23 April 1979 - the police riot in which Blair Peach was killed) continued to lead the protest against the virguuly. and tootina and Xraying of immigrants.

"Here they gave the lead not only to other women, but to long established, male-dominated organisations such as the IWA, which eventually joined them". Black women like Nasira Begum and Anwar Ditta were the focus also of anti-deportation struggles.

Education, housing and health AS THE children grew up - often poorly education and victims of job discrimination as well as police harassment and criminalisation - the supplementary schooling programmes became skill programmes, clubs and youth centres. The hostility of the state and amninvers was mat LLL WHINTOLD amninvere was mat. with protest, later with rebellion, and also with self-help programmes.

Sivanandan records, •The Mkutano Project, for instance, started by the BUFP (in 1972) taught typing, photography, Swahili; the Melting Pot, begun about the same time Ashton Gibson (once of RAAS), had a workshop for making clothes; and Keskidee, set by an ex-CARD otticial, Uscar Abrams, taught art and sculpture and encouraged black poets and playwrights.

Clubs

"Por older students, Roy Sawh (also ex-RAAS) ran the tres Univereity for Black Students. And then there were hostet for the unemployed and. 11.€ homeless black youth -such as Brother Herman's Harambee. and Vince Hines' Dashiki (both: of whom had been active in RAACI - and rlnhe and youth centres.

"Finally there were bookshop cum advice centres... and the weekly or monthly newspapers...

Self-help Sivanandan's article concentrates on London, and it is not clear how vigorous such self-help movements were and are outside the capital, but certainly they are not restricted to London.

The state made a beeline for the programme leaders (though this is not pointed out by Sivanandan); hoping to co-opt these activists and convert them into a force like the trade union bureaucracy, dulling the edge of struggle and even turning the blade against the fighters themselves.

someumes i succeegea, Canandinin it sometimes it failed. Scarman's proposal to set up statutory police/community liaison committees is only the latest of such moves.

Where black centres

some formal, like RAAS's Black House, some informal, like clubs and bookshops - refused the state's advances and became real centres of a developing militant consciousness, they were frequently raided by police and often closed down.

That happened to the Black House in 1970, the Mangrove Restaurant in 1971, the Carib Club in in amin sardoar bure biet 107A The Black Parents' Movement me against a police attack on a black The youth INCREASINGLY, black youth became a central force in the communities' revolt, particularly in the physical self-defence of the community.

In June 1976 an 18 year old Sikh youth, Gurdip Singh Chaggar, was stabbed to death by a gang of white youths. •The community was stunned. A meeting was held and the elders went about it in the time-honoured way, passing resolutions, making statements.

Sprang

''The youth took over -marched to the police station, demanding redress, stoning a police van en route. The police arrested two of them. They sat down before the police station and refused to move -until their fellows were released. They were released.

•The following day the Southall Youth Movement was born.

•Various Asian youth movements sprang from this initiative... In the course of the next couple of years a number of youth organisations and defence committees sprang up, in London, Manchester, Leicthem in London alone -in Brick Lane after the murders of Altab Ali, and youth groups moved ideas.

RYAM DAND : pupil outside his school in 1975 and working with West Indian youth groups in the procedss, sometimes on an organisational basis (Southall Youth Movement and Peoples Unite, Bradford Blacks and Bradford Asian Youth Movement), sometimes as individuals, often coalescing into political groups (Hackney Black People's Defence Organisation and Bradford's United Rlack Youth League)"

Revealed

The struggles in Southall this spring, in St Paul's (Bristol) last year, in Brixton this spring and in many other cities this summer revealed black youth as a militant force in revolt, a force catalysing both older blacks and whites.

Sivanandan's sketch is not complete - he doesn't pretend it is. It says little about the politics of most black political organisaanisations, it mentions nothing about the recent moves by blacks into the Labour Party in some areas, and it is somewhat over-focused on London.

Little

Not surprisingly, • Sivanandan says little - and nothing good = about mainly-white organisations and their telation to the black struggle.

opion, local have a proved 023: more releyant to blacks because the local black community is the essential point of reference and base for activity. That, in the author's opinion, accounts for the relatively rapid break-up of many black political organisations.

'By 1971 the United Coloured Peoples' Association was also [i.e. as well as RAAS] breaking up into its component groups, with a hard core of them going to form the Black Unity and Freedom Party. (National bodies were by now not as relevant to the day-to-day struggles as local ones and the former's unifying role could equally be fulfilled by ad hoc alliances)"?.

•Experiences and perspectives THE AMERICAN experience - the Black Panthers' children's breakfast •CID programmes, for instance, - suggests that Sivanandan is half-right. Doubly oppressed or specially oppressed groups have a range of needs denied by the state and not within the usual scope of trade union concerns.

Without doubt the situation of blacks - particularly. where unemployment is high - often means that the community is a far more important concept than the union or even the workplace. Though the community is cut through with class divisions, which under certain circumstances are decisive, it does frequently act together.

As long as only local reforms are demanded, the lack of a rounded political programme and a national organisation to fight for it may not be decisive. But can local reforms - important as they are - transform the condition of blacks and liberate them?

Surely not. For that, only a complete overthrow of the existing order will do, and that is something that can. not be accomplished merely by local groups and ad hoc alliances.

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60 65 70 76 81 and because working class our difficulties, while stable familina have anna deener growth enhances all our Percent change from previous year +4 60 66 '70 175 181 60 65 '70 •T5 '81 Reagan "Free eriterprise has gone to hell' WHEN THE Great Depression began in 1929, America's most renowned capitalist, Henry Ford, surprisingly advocated ment to increase the general wage level"

"Nearly everything in this country", , he said, 'is too high-priced. The only thing that should be highpriced in this country is the man who works. Wages must not come down; they must not even stay at their present level; they must go up"

Of course, Ford was thinking mainly of the workers who didn't work for him. But even those who did during the 1930s depression hardly ever faced an ultimatum quite as chilling as that which 1,100 workers received in October 1981 at the Ford plant in Sheffield, Alabama.

Henry Ford's successors told them to take a cut of 50 percent (yes, fifty per cent) in wages and other benefits or else lose their jobs because the plant would be closed.

Extreme

This is an extreme example of the kind of thing which is taking place throughout the US motor industry - the employers' demands for "concessions' by the workers. And that in its turn is an extreme instance of something even more general.

American capitalist industry, driven by the need to restore its eroded profitability, and fortified by Ronald Reagan's union-busting policies, is launching a major offensive against wages, jobs and working conditions.

It is not only the private sector of the economy which is trying to plough up existing labour agreements; many municipalities and states, as well as the Federal Government, are doing the same thing.

Boston is far from alone among American cities in preparing last month unilaterally to pull out of labour contracts negotiated with the unions in order to save money by cutting jobs and increasing workloads in the public services.

Forbids

In Boston's case the Reagan cuts in Federal aid to the local governments are exacerbated by passert las: vear in ... = .. = D.23º:

1=1+272 SHEFLE Britiss ratest in excess 2i2 per cent of the value of the property. In many 1950s 1960s 1970s 1980.1 1980.1l 1980,I1 1980.IV 1980 total 1981.1 1981.11 1981.III 1981.total Massachusetts towns this has resulted in frightening reductions in revenue and services. Firemen, teachers and police have been laid off in thousands.

From other parts of the USA come stories even of whole public school districts closing their schools down for lack of funds when voters have refused in referenda to sanction new education bond issues.

Nobody is dismissing these events as isolated exceptions. They are seen as a foretaste of what may be the general result of deepening recession and of Reaganomics. .

A year ago the newly elected Ronald Reagan promised a rebirth of the American economy, with the restoration of growth rates of 5 per cent every year. He called it 'America's New Beginning' . Last month, however, the administration was finally forced to recognise publicly that the US economy was headed not for recovery but for a recession which is likely to extend at least through the middle of 1982.

In the month of September the recession deteriorated very suddenly. It was confirmed that, after a jump at the start of the year, the Gross National Product had fallen for two consecutive quarters. (The figure for the third quarter has since been revised upwards a little, but not so as to affect the gloomy prospect for the coming months).

Total Capital on the offensive And unemployment had climbed to 8 per cent, poised to exceed the figure for the 1975 slump - and that was the worst since the Great Depression of the 1930s.

In absolute terms there are in the United States coday nearly as many unemployed workers as at the worst moment of the 1930s depression.

More and more fore¿esters are making gloomy pairies of the immed2: 2: 7s: many say ::g: recession anit so is a Cerairit it Patti: len plyme:: *i supais i passinar itura. are inere is now general expectation that it may well go beyond 10 per cent.

A number of indications make it look as if the recession will go further than the White House's predictions: industrial investment is falling; new house building is at its lowest level for decades; and demands for durable consumer goods is falling fast. Much of this is related to the continuation of record high interest rates.

The latest rEceSSOn While today's recession is not yet anywhere near the scale of the present slump in Britain, it comes on the heels of nearly a decade of fitful and low growth for the American economy. Between 1973, when the increase in oll prices transmitted a massive shock to American production, and today, the national income per head in the US has grown only a little more than 1 per cent a year.

Compared with the years of the post-war boom, the cyclical pattern has also changed. Recessions go on for longer and are deeper; expansions last less time than before and are shallower. In fact a recent study showed that the 1980-1 upturn which preceded the present recession was the weakest and shortest-lived in the whole of the postwar period.

During the 1970s the growth of labour productivity in the US was negligible, and far behind rival economies.

One i of the results of differential productivity growth has been that the competitiveness of US production has declined and there has been an enormous increase in the GNP (per Per head Per ker import of manufactured goods from Japan, Europe, and the Third World, which have out-competed many sections of American industry. A decade ago imports were only 5 per cent of the Gross National Product; now they add up to 10 per cent. American industry is much less of an invulnerable isolated citadel than it once was.

During the oil price Unemployment rate (in percent) "through Oct

Real

After -Tax Profits crisis of 1973-4, inflation in the US leapt up. Ever since it has obstinately stayed much higher than it was in the 1950s and '60s. Of all Reagan's election promises (like those of Thatcher), one of the most popular, along with the pledge to cut taxes, was the confident assertion that his radical policies could bring inflation down.

That was certainly something which appealed to the sections of the American working class who voted for him, since there seems to many American workers at present little hope that wages can keep pace with this higher level of inflation. In fact, one of the most startling facts about the American economy in 54.0% Faotory Output the last decade is that real wages have fallen almost continuously.

Measured in terms of dollars with the purchasing power they would have had in 1977, real average take Kome pay of American workers has fallen from $165 a week in 1967 to $147 in 1981. Workers have been able to maintain their standard of living only because more members of working class families have got jobs during that period Inflation Percent change from previous year in the Consumer Price Index for urban arees •frat 8 monthis families have gone deeper into debt.

The experience of American capitalism since the beginning of the 1970s is so clearly qualitatively different from the previous decades of boom that a search is going on among economists for a new name lyptic implications of the Average Gain for Six Previous Expansions Gain for 1980-81 Expansion Real Personat Income name 'capitalist crisis'.

The most common new name is 'stagflation'; another economist has called the 'zero-growth economy'; anuther, the "zerosum economy', implying that if one sector of the population is to get more another has to get less; the most recent neologism is 'slowth' Euphemisms The Chief Executive of the ailing Chrysler Corporation, Lee lacocca, doesn't go so much for the euphemisms of the social scientists: his opinion is that 'free enterprise has gone to hell' 23.7% 10.7% eal Employment NP Nightmare in the Whatever you call the last decade of relative economic failure in the USA, it is giving former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger nightmares as he recently explained. 'Stagnation magnifies all possibilities":

National figures show that stable growth in America now seems to be a dream of the past. Kissinger's nightmare is the reality, and it has woken up the American ruling class in a cold sweat of panic.

The overall national averages for growth and unshrst 8 months the worst of the story, since in many ways the American economy in the last decade has behaved as two. One is the relatively booming economy of the "sunbelt' states of the South and South-West, into which capital has been pouring in search of cheaper, non-unionised labour and a political atmosphere which imposes less eontrols on its ability to pollute the physical environment. These states have done much better than the national average in terms of growth and unemployment.

And so the states of the 'frostbelt' , the region of traditional industrialisation, have done correspondingly worse.

It is in some of the big, long-industrialised, northern cities that the economic and social problems of American capitalism are most acute. Unemployment is higher than average, in some cases already reaching the levels of the 1930s. Houses are scarce and deteriorating.

Gentrified

As neighbourhoods are indiscriminately 'gentrified' , rent controls are abolished, and old tenants evicted in favour of new owner-occupiers, housing for the poor becomes increasingly difficult. And the fiscal crisis which has hit most of the northern cities in the last decade has resulted in a drastic and visible drop in the standards of all public services.

Reagan's policies seem rapidly to be exacerbating alk that. Higher interest rates put home buying out of the reach of everyone except the rich and there are few new houses being built. Meanwhile the squeeze on public services is beginning to make the pips squeak.

Strike

School classes grow bigger and teachers are laid off (circumstances which led to the recent 50 day partially successful teachers' strike in Philadelphia, and the near strike in Boston). Garbage lies uncollected for weeks in the broken-glass-paved streets;

fire services decline;

urban violent crime rises;

public transport becomes less frequent and so more crowded, less reliable and more dangerous.

And with the roads busier than ever, and less frequently repaired and maintained than ever, many urban highways, especially in the East, begin to resemble the Grand Canyon in the West. PATCO striked Unequat bi Just as in E sections of th are disproport Unemploymen the northern? there it is espe for women, to for young peo Detroit, the US motor indian 70 per cent de jobs over ti uncades. Uner much higher 1 ional average three Detroit some form off ance. In New ten people are and for teenag is one in three As in Europ being especa by economk Manv of the women, in 1 health for inst in the firing American ta maintained 1 standards ove years of tallir by married * jobs in thes service secur those jobs ar lost.

Blacks ha relative eco vantage in y the days of not getting * in Britain, cession *are wurse. Nati inemployme

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Bob Sutcliffe begins a survey of Reagan's America, with an analysis of the economic crisis. The survey will be continued with further articles in future issues of Socialist

----- pull-quotes -----

WORKERS HOUSING 10O dousing struggles have been very raried (though Sivanandan does not give much information

London there was a sustained squatting campaign in 1976 by Bengalis organised in the SEND THEM BACK!

"By 1978 black women's groups, Asian and. Afro-

BENGALI HAVEA RICHS TO DECENT

to call it - especially if they don't like the apoca-

employment do not tell Productivity