Belgian workers fight racism

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support to the popular and anti-imperialist Revolution"

It is a sad commentary on the extent of the influence of Stalinism on the British labour movement that leading figures in it such as Joan Maynard, Alan Sapper and Terry Marsland (deputy general secretary of the Tobacco Workers Union) have lent their support to the Tudeh Party's front organisation Britain, the ludicrously named 'Committee in Defence of the Iranian Revolution"

The Tudeh Party's craven support for a thoroughly reactionary regime flowed from its subservience to the • Stalinist bureaucracy in the Soviet Union who favourably looked upon the IRP regime as a possible ally in its bargaining with American Nesat Tolunay and Selim Duzgun have won the right to stay in Britain.

These two Turkish immigrants had been threatened with deportation by the Home Office. As members of the revolutionary organisation Dev Yol, they faced jail or death if sent back to Turkey.

A campaign by the Turkey Solidarity Campaign and others has now succeeded stopping the deportation.

Contact TSC at BM Box 5965, London WC1N 3XX. to Andropov. A statement issued by its Central Committee in March declared that it 'is wholeheartedly linked to the anti-imperialist and popular revolution of Iran, and still resolutely struggles for the unity of all genuinely revolutionary forces of Iran and the support for the Islamic Republic against imperialist provocation."

It claimed that the real threat to the 'Revolution" came from conspirators "undoubtedly acting under the directives of the CIA and other imperialist and Zionist intelligence organisations."

But all this cant was to no avail. At the beginning of May Kianouri appeared on Iranian television and confessed to 10,000 people marched through Brussels last Sunday, 8th, in defence of the rights of immigrant workers.

The demonstration was supported by Belgium's two main trade union federations, the Socialist FGTB/ABVV and the Catholic CSC/ACV. Leading the CSC/ACV contingent was a large and vocal contingent of Muslim workers.

Other contingents came from local anti-racist committees and from the far-left groups.

The march was in protest against moves by several municipalities over the last year to stop issuing identity cards to immigrant workers. The municipalities say that they have a financial crisis and can afford no more immigrants.

The consequences for immigrants are that they can't get jobs, they can't get welfare benefits, and they are vulnerable to victimisation by the police. In Belgium everyone has to have an identity card always with them, and the police can demand to see it at any time.

Immigrants who already have an identity card dare not move for fear that the municipality they move into will refuse in register them at their new address.

This refusal to issue cards was initiated a year ago by Roger Nols, mayor of Schaerbeek and a member of the Francophonenationalist FDF. It was, and Nols said it was, illegal -legally, the municipalities can refuse to issue a card only if the person does not live in their area. But other mayors including Socialist Party mayors - have followed Nols' example, and Jean Gol, minister of justice in the right wing coalition government, now talks of introducing a law to legalise the municipalities' attitude.

There are some 900,000 immigrants in Belgium - about 9% of the population. But the racist harassment is directly mainly. against the 105,000 Moroccans and 64,000 Turks.

These communities have also suffered physicai attacks from extreme Flemish nationalist and uther fascist groups. In some areas there have been moves to form self-defence squads.

The roots of the growing rarism are to be found in Belgium's deep economic crisis. Unemployment, at 14%, is even higher than in Britain, and on a dollars-per-head basis Belgium is nuch more heavily in debt than even Mexieg or Brazil