Labour movement must combat wave of fascist violence

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Statistics published by the anti-fascist journal Searchlight show that convictions of fascists for violent crimé have doubled in the last year. Piyushi Kotecha spells out the need for a labour

ANTI-RACIT ien... thnin unadinose in drive faspists off the streets THE BUILD-UP of fascist activity since the spring of 1981 must be seen in the light of massive closures redundancies, the growth of unemployment and poverty, the betrayal of-the 1980 steel strike, and the vacuum of leadership in the labour movement, coupled with the growing public realisation that the Tory government is unable to solve the economic crisis.

It the facts ever emerge, this wave of fascist violence will be seen to have resulted in the death of probably over twenty black people.

Brsides the countless stabbings, physical assaults, and fire-bombings, aimed at blacks - of which there are several thousand documented cases - there were also attacks on Labour Party buildings, meetings and militants, and on left bookshops For several weeks in Coventry the fascist gangs were able to keep most blacks out of the city centre, and all over the country cases have occurred where the fascists have driven black families to leave their homes.

The fascists cynically use gangs of unemployed youth who have been put on. the scrap-heap by capitalism and are ignored by the Labour and TUC leadership.

They have skilfully directed the potentially revolutionary anti-establishment hatred and violence of these youth into racist attacks.

Public image

The fascists' programme of racist hatred and violence is specifically used to project their public image, show their seriousness, and through this appeal to the weak and confused layers of the middle classes. wurenny yau Through their actions the fascists prove their usefulness to the ruling class.

Even when public outrage pressures the ruling class to act against the fascists, they take care never to do so without condemning the militant working class or black community leadership as well.

When they are forced to ban a march by the fascists because they fear the resistance it will provoke, they always take the opportunity of banning all labour movement activity as well.

Ten fascists threatening to march through Brixton or Foleshill provide the pretext for the state to end all mobilisations for the month. This is not something which the ruling class is ashamed to make use of.

Although today only small sectors of the ruling class actively support the ascists, the history of vorkers' struggle in Italy, Spain, Germany, Austria, France, etc, show us how eagerly they can reach out to the fascists when there is no other option left open to them.

with Tories Sections of the far right of the Tory party have always had links with fascism, and recently these links have been strengthened and extended to wider layers of the party.

With the intensification of class struggle, the ruling class cannot always rely on the army and police alone.

More reliable, more exanti-in the I: increa! effecti which streng class.

For peddie could the sti ionary tinued growt] come :

Thii lapse vote it signal da cal .on to blacks milita fascis orking class hatred, ascists become an singly attractive and ve second club with to cow the organised th ..of the working those who for years ed the illusion that i was an issue that be dealt with outside ruggle for a revolut• leadership in the • movement, the con1 and accelerated h of the fascists has as a shock. nking that the colof the National Front n the General Election lled the success of anti-racist propaganmpaigns, they moved other issues, leaving 3 and working class nts alone to face a i threat which. far from receding, had grown sharper all the while..

As the recent Searchlight editorial argued, the anti-fascist movement is in disarray and showing an alarming inability even to out-mobilise the fascists.

Last year's expulsions and splits from the Socialist Workers' Party, involving differences over defence squads, illustrate the extent of disagreements among those who were the hard core of the Anti-Nazi League.

The Labour Party and trade unions, too, have largely been totally unable to mount any opposition to fascism.

And black organisations themselves are often split and divided on how to defend their communities.

The question faces every

movement answer.

member of the labour movement, and it must be answered soon. Only the nroanised strength of the labour movement can defeat fascism: but that strength has been dissipated through lack of clear perspective.

Black self-defence groups already exist in some areas. The working class youth, black and white, of Southall, Toxteth, Brixton and Muss Side, in a few hours did more to blunt the Tory offensive and halt the fascists than the labour movement reformists and bureaucrats, or the Anti Nazi League leadership, have achieved in a lifetime of words and gestures.

But just a few months later, the Tory attacks are as strong and the fascists are out of the gutters and back on the streets Tagain.

The growth or failure of fascism is ultimately determined by the course of the class struggle. Capitalism inevitably propels the classes into conflict, and the working class seeks to protect its interests. The determining question, though, is under whose leadership?

These struggles are easily defeated when they develop in isolation. Not only are industrial struggles kept isolated, but so too are political issues.

While the Leyland workers were struggling against the treachery of Duffy and Kitson, the racist Nationality Act became law.

It is the same labour leadership which helps slowly strangle strikes, which ignored Toxteth and Brixton, which formed the last Labour Government, and which gave way to racist pressure on every issue.

Anti-fascist rallies or carnivals that occur in a vacuum - divorced from the mobilisation of the working class and the political struggle for leadership - easily become so much indignant liberal hot air.

Middle class liberals of course recoil at all skinheads, and feel that fascism is morally wrong -in the same way as they abhor the vandalising of telephone booths.

When the anti-fascist movement becomes politinally denendent on the frEAT m--nJon has lost its way.

Where sections of the middle classes are prepared to fight fascism, we must of course fight with them. But such people have never felt bound by the interests of the working class; and the working class should not for one second limit itself to the reformist programme pushed by the middle class liberals.

Socialist Organiser seeks to build for immediate defence against racist attacks by the state or fascists.

And we fight inside the organised labour movement for workers' self-defence. This fight must be pursued on every shop floor, in every school and college, and in every working class community.

The political battle must be won, to show that neither black nor white workers can rely on the police for protection against the fascists, any more than they can rely on the state and its bosses courts for protection against the police.

The labour movement cannot lead the fight against racism and fascism if it is left in the hands of the likes of Roy Hattersley and Merlyn Rees.

When they talk about abolishing the present Nationality Act, we know that they introduced previous equally racist immigration acts. When they talk about positive discrimination, it is not to bring forward the authentic voice and politics of the black working class and youth, but it is rather to make a shabby deal with the so-called 'black community leaders' and those black middle class opportunists who put their own advancement first.

The fight for workers' self-defence is the political struggle to make the working class impregnable to racist, fascist and state attacks.

It is the central demand around which to build a campaign in the labour movement, to turn every Trades Council anti-racist sub-committee, every Labour Party ward, into a fighting body that can play a role in politically and physically smashing the racist attacks of the fascists and the state.

Such a campaign around the need for workers' self-defence is the only way to coordinate the struggle nationally, and to build real support for the black self-defence groups that already exist.

Self-defence

Anti-fascist defence cannot be organised simply by the mainly white labour movement acting for, and over the heads of, the black communities. Unconditional support and assistance for the self organisation of black activists to defend their communities has to be a starting point for our policy. But at the same time we must campaign for the whole labour movement to take up its political_ and physical responsibilities against racism and fascism.

In this way we can lay the basis for defence groups uniting black and white workers on a basis of equality, and provide black militants with links with the labour movement through which they can fight for supporting strike action and the full weight of the labour movement.

A national labour movement organisation against fascism would take up the following demands:

• Expel all fascists from labour movement bodies, • Build the organisations of the unemployed and youth around working class policies, • Build workplace defence of workers against racist attacks, and force the bosses to pay the expenses involved, • Build students' unions in the schools to fight for their interests and counter the fascist offensive against youth, • Unite anti-racist org anisations around a pro gramme of struggle.

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