Hattersley's 'anti-racism'

Scan page 2

ON the occasion of the second reading in Parliament of the new Police Bill (Sus revamped and in many respects strengthened), my MP, Roy Hattersley, was waxing indignant again about how this gave police powers which would bé "unacceptable in a free society"

He ic cartainly an eynert in blowing up his differences in emphasis from White15-1:57 I 20PE :50 law's approach into a great principled divide, and he did the same over the Nationality Act last year.

Yet a further example of his clever tub-thumping was his much-trumpeted "stand" in favour of positive discrimination for blacks. Quite an anti-racist activist you would think!

Well, hardly. The reality has been slightly different.

A good recent example withdrawal of support from the Pino Khan Defence Committee, which was set up. to campaign tor the dropping of Grievous Bodily Harm and other charges which Pino faces.

Pino is a Pakistani AUEW member (and a constituent of Hattersley's in Sparkbrook), who defended himself when his home was attacked by racists. For this he was arrested and faces trial in the new year.

Hattersley has withdrawn his support for the Conimittee because the Committee is "not in Pino's best interests" he says. There are numerous sceptics about, however, who believe that perhaps a better judge of this may be Pino himself!

Pino continues to support the Defence Committee and because of this. while it is true that to some extent ine Commune ras been hines es Rexiudonar Commrs: Paro. the Commitsord sill be supporThere is no alternative for those whose aim, in criticising, is to help not hinder Pino.

The reason why the RCP are able, despite their ultraleft politics, to hijack campaigns such as this, is the failure of the left and the broader labour movement.

According to accounts, when Pino and a delegation from the dissident Sparkhill ward of Hattersley's constituency went to see him recently, he stood firm on his position and said that he had done all he could.

In fact, he didn't issue a clear public statement of support for Pino and he certairly hasn't "stirred it" in the press - or in Parliament where all we believers in parliamentary "democracy" tink a Shadow Home Secretary could be quite effective.

All good form for a mossible future leader of our Feat part!. you think? He'll certainly play an important part in the next Labour government, you reckon?

Ah, you incorrigible

cynic! tant kept itself rather aloof from the broader Left.

Now it threatens to go to Militant's statement on this says that they don't see the courts as a substitute for a political fight. Yet plainly that is what it is. That is how it has developed. should illustrate the lhese practica points issues of principle.

Justify

Militant carried an editorial on November 12 justifying its action. Right from the beginning it misstated the issue by asking: "Is it justified for socialists to go to the capitalist courts?' Only an unusually rigid anarchist would answer no to the question in this form. Militant brings in past incidents as precedent, but they are irrelevant to the case.

Karl Marx wanted to sue a man named Vogt whom he suspected - correctly as it turned out - of being an agent of the French government; Trotsky sued the Hearst press, and so on.

But the principle is not that we do not use the courts. It would be quite

Scan page 3

Socialist Organiser no.112 December 9 1982 Page i SIXTEEN already dead as we go to press in the latest indiscriminately by British soldiers. From be right if they refuse to withdraw the invitation undcarnage in the Six Counties, five of them civilians. August 1981 alone, five people died like this. er pressure of the hypocrites and of those whose Is the Peace Camp separatist? Is the sort of nonOver 60 are injured, some hideously. More deaths are The press scarcely reports it. There is no shock and double standards on these matters are a glaring ob- violent direct action it exemplifies diversionary?

no outcry in the broad labour movement. Just indif- These are the sort of objections raised on the Left.

Predictable cries of outrage in the press, which was ference made smug by denunciation of the activities Civil disobedience by small groups won't stop the already baying for Ken Livingstone's blood over the capitalist war machine. But then neither will any invitation by GIC Labour councillors to two elected We are not hypocrites in Socialist Organiser. We reennam action short of trade union boycotts of the war representatives of Sinn Fein. They didn't want the know that the main responsibility for all the deaths in machine and/or organising in the labour movement Labour GLC to arrange talles with Republicans. Carn- Northern Ireland lies with the British state. Britain sufficient to force a new Labour Government to age and more carnage is the alternative to 'talking' created the artificial Six County state with its murder- hold to its unilateral nuclear disarmament pledge. and finding a just solution to the war in Northern ous communal antagonisms. Britain maintains that Socialist Organiser argues that the campaign agIreland. But the Derry explosion is the pretext for new state. Britain has spent the last dozen years beating ainst the Bomb cannot be 'non-political' or "allhowls of outrage that Ken Livingstone and the GLC down the Northern Ireland Catholics. That is what party', but must orient primarily to the labour moveLeft have dared initiate talks with Sinn Fein Assem- produces the embitterment of mind and spirit that can This coming weekend, a mass women's demonstra- ment. But to build up to the decisive action, many set off a bomb in a crowded discotheque. (The bomb- tion has been called by the Women's Peace Camp at forms of agitation and protest are useful. The Peace The setting off of a bomb in a dancehall crowded ing has been claimed not by the Provisionals but by Camp is not necessarily counterposed to mass action with soldiers and civilians can only produce indiscrim- people allegedly speaking for the INLA). The organisers are confident of getting more than or to the work socialists can do in the labour moveinate slaughter. Most British workers will react with The deaths will continue, and can get much worse, the 16,000 women needed to completely encircle ment. The women are, after all, calling a mass horror. Understandably, and more honestly and sin- unless a democratic solution is found. The only pos- the base, where Cruise missiles are due to be installed cerely than the double-dyed hypocrites of the British sible solution is some form of federal united Ireland, There have been, and will surely continue to be, with as much autonomy for the Protestant minority as The Peace Camp women have called for a women many mixed nuclear disarmament demonstrations.

Yet there is hypocrisy in the labour movement as is compatible with the rights of the majority of the only demonstration, and are disturbed by reports Women, who have long been relegated to a secondwell as in the press. Take the following contrast. 14 that many men intend to come. Socialist Organiser ary place in such activities, want also to have their unarmed civilians, half of them children, have died in Ken Livingstone and the Left on the GLC were right supports the Peace Camp women's call, and urges own autonomous demonstrations. Their wish should the last decade from rubber and plastic bullets fired to invite the Sinn Fein Assembly deputies. They will male readers to go to the Polish solidarity expected. blymen, dared seek a solution.

press. of 'the terrorists' Irish people as a whole. in 1983. scenity in the labour mr vement. Greenham Common US Air Force base. demonstration the same weekend. demonstration.

be respected.

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

FiDBRIDGE AMPAIGH AINST RACISM EG FASCISPO

of his activity "back home in Sparkbrook" has been his