[15-21, living in Newham in Last London, face…]

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15-21, living in Newham in Last London, face serious charges ranging from conspiracy to assault persons unknown to assault and threatening behaviour.

The case of the Newham 8, coming close after that of the famous Bradford 12 victory, raises certain fundemental issues for antiracists everywhere and black people in particular.

With the decline of the NF and BM in electoral terms, many thought that the fascist threat had declined. Sad to say, this is far from the case.

Racial violence hasn't stopped: according to the evidence received by Searchlight and other anti-racist organisations, it is clear that it has become so much a way of life for black people that many take it for granted as a hazard of living in Britain.

Newham has always been an area where racial attacks occur with frightening regularity. The Newham Monitoring Project receives on average 2-3 cases a week and these represent only the tip of the iceberg.

Spitting

Harassment like spitting JOHN HARRIS OUT OF OUT OF 1 GRAC -GIVE TOM In the week preceding the 24th a number of cases of assault upon Asian schoolkids took place in the Manor Park area of Newham, mainly centred around one OI two schools.

In one such attack, a 10 year old Asian schoolkid was seriously injured and hospitalised. In another incident, 60-70 white youths with iron bars and sticks went on the rampage in East Ham and Manor Park looking for Asians to beat up.

By this "time strong rumours were circulating that there was going to be another attack upon Asian schoolkids on September 24. schoolkids decided safety to go To ensure the home in a group. They were set upon by three armed white men, who, as it later turned_out, were plain clothes police officers.

When the youths defended themselves from what they thought was a fascist attack, about 50 uniformed police appeared and arrested the youths.

The black community responded almost immediately. At a day's notice a meeting attended by about 250 people was called and the Newham • 8 Defence Campaign was launched.

The Campaign has since attracted unanimous support from the black community of Newham, Labour Party branches and white collar unions like the NUT and NALGO.

The first court appearance of the 8 was marked AS PART of Sir Derek Rayner's report on the social services, ethnic monitoring was due to be implemented on January 4 1983 in the Department of Employment (DE).

There are to be two 'checks'. . The first is voluntary, for a "statistical collection' , to identify all non-whites, It involves 'UBO staff showing claimants whose appearance of speech suggests that they are in one of the specified groups, a card containing a list of ethnic groups and asking to which ethnic group the claimants congroup the claimant considers he or she belongs' The groups are: 01 white, 02 West Indian/Guyanese, 03 Indian, 04 Pakistani, 05 Bangladeshi, 06 African, 07 other Commonwealth.

The second would involve staff making a visual assessment of the ethnic origin of the claimants' This will not be voluntary, and as far as possible the claimants will know nothing about this 'visual assessment' , for which there are four categories, negroid, Asian (excluding Chinese), white/Chinese, and refusals.

A major conclusion of Rayner's study was that black claimants are more likely to commit fraud than their white counterparts. Having the black claimants labelled as Negroid, Asian, etc on their files enables the fraud squad to select likely cases to investigate.

What this means for black claimants is a 'very big increase 'in the amount of harassment. Effectively the reception clerks will become immigration officers (even more are already).

In face of opposition from the civil service union CPSA the Tory government has postponed the implementation of ethnic monitoring until April, when it will coincide with the CPSA's pay claim - the tactic appears to be to sneak in the ethnic monitoring when the CPSA membership will be more concerned with their pay claim.

It must also be borne in mind that the union leadership in the past has been very reluctant to take up the fight against race checks: Previously race checks were conducted at the Job Centres on registration, and not one bit of resistance was ever put up to these checks.

The attitude of the CPSA leadership can be summed up in the contribution by its conference racist laws. He said he was not opposed to ethnic monitoring: the statistics gained could be put to good use.

Only the pressure from the membership has forced the CPSA to take even token action. One major DHSS in each region will be called out on strike. All other DHSSs will carry on as normal, including the new checks.

More pressure must be brought to bear in order to make sure that these new checks cannot be implemented. The government has launched an attack on black people, and the working class must united to defeat it.

The race checks must not be implemented!

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Unmesh Desai reports EIGHT Asian youths, aged