Unity! against racism

Workers of all lands, unite!

A WORKING CLASS VIEW FROM MERSEYSIDE Unity!

AS THE smoke clears around the Suites Hotel on the outskirts of Kirkby following the 10 February protest against refugees being housed there the tasksofr anti-fascists is becoming clearer. Lazy sloganeering and disdain for the 500 or so local men, women and children who came to intimidate other disadvantaged and marginalised workers with similarly rare accents and, crucially, different coloured skin is no help in understanding what happened and why.

Whether the, now notorious, video posting apparently showing a white Year 11 schoolgirl being sexually harassed on her way home from school by a young (but significantly older) man ultimately leads to police action is still in question although we now know that following arrest, he was released without charge.

If it turns out an offence was committed, it will be rightfully condemned and the guilty party punished. If guilty, he should reflect on where his action led.

Nevertheless the manner in which the film has been cynically manipulated and the local community exploited has produced complex dilemmas for the left and the labour movement on Merseyside and it is going to need more than a romanticised notion of ‘scouse exceptionalism’ to turn this around.

Within hours of the crowds dispersing sa ‘Refugees Welcome Here’ demonstration in central Liverpool was arrnaged for the

solidarity is understandable and welcome such events cometimes miss the point and risk obstructing a solution to the problem of hostility to regugees and migrant workers.

The anger and searing alienation that was evident that Friday was palpable – if not wholly rational in its expression. Residents of the proud Kirkby community – an overspill estate from the Liverpool slum clearances might be right to be furious about an incident of alleged attempted child sexual exploitation but they’re manifestly wrong to deflect that anger towards innocent, frightened refugees from north Africa and Afghanistan.

These are people who don’t want to be abandoned in low-budget rooms occupying the Knowsley hinterland – boxed in by the M57 motorway, A580 East Lancs trunk road and a busy industrial estate – any more than many of the locals evidently want to have them there.

Those baying for violence against the people in the hotel – and against a modest group of anti-fascists shielding them – could have legitimately directed their physical and metaphoric volleys at the rotten economic system that brought poverty and harms the life-chances of people across the Borough of Knowsley and vast swathes of our city region.

From what I witnessed, having spent a nervous, undercover 15 minutes amongst them, very few in the mob were organised fascists or committed racists – even fewer would describe themselves as such.

in those circumstances is a both a tactical and strategic error if our object is to isolate the fascists and win among working people an understanding of the causes of mass migration.

In considering the correct response to a threat new in character and scale, we should acknowledge that it’s wrong that people are dumped by the Home Office while asylum applications take forever to be processed.

The environmental, military and economic push factors displacing so many from Middle Eastern war zones or regions devastated by climate change needs to be better explained.

Committed anti-racists and anti-fascists in working class communities need to make sure that rational and informed discussions take place in every factory, office, Post Office queue, on the bus and in the pub.

It’s hard going countering casual and racist scapegoating but such practical discussions, like explaining Marx’s ‘wage robbery’ theory of surplus value or how the ruling class rule, are vital. But if we’re going to do it well it needs to be done in communities – town by town, estate by estate and street by street –not by shouting through megaphones into an echo-chamber of already committed progressives from across the spectrum of the left who happen to have a Saturday afternoon to spare.

PETE MIDDLEMAN IS CHAIR OF THE NORTH WEST TRADES UNION CONGRESS

Black and white unite and fight!

Luke Daniels

AND FIGHT!

UNITE

CARIBBEAN LABOUR SOLIDARITY was founded over forty years ago and from our inception we adopted an internationalist anti-racist perspective. The founding members were made up of British trade unionists, communists, Caribbean political activists and trade union leaders, men and women committed to supporting the struggles of the masses in the Caribbean for peace and justice.

Our leaders recognised the importance of working-class unity, and it is no accident that ‘solidarity’ is central to our name. We have jointly campaigned with anti-fascist organisations and were present at the last Cable Street demonstration to register our commitment to challenging racism wherever it raises its head.

We recognise the importance of working closely with our white working-class allies in Britain and seek to strengthen our alliances with the progressive movement wherever possible. We are affiliated to several trade

BUILDING COMMUNITY RESILIENCE TO RACISM AND FAR RIGHT IDEAS

Ruth Styles FAR RIGHT

IN RECENT weeks we have seen across the U.K. far right groups demonstrating outside of hotels that accommodate refugees and asylum seekers. They are aided by a government that blames refugee and asylum seekers for wider society's ills, using unacceptable racist terminology, (e.g. describing the 'small boats' bringing refugees to our shores as an 'invasion').

The main stream media runs anti refugee narratives and we are fed a constant diet of racist, xenophobic ideas claiming that the U.K. cannot cope with, or afford, more people coming into the country. Not only is this factually incorrect, it is designed to hide Government responsibility for the crises impacting on the working class, it is designed to divide and enables far right and fascist groups to try to exploit the situation.

Whilst these far right demonstrations are being met with admirable resistance, with counter demonstrations making clear that refugees are welcome here, we do need to ask if this is enough?. Does this combat extreme right wing ideas gaining a foothold. I would argue it does not. So what do we need to do?

We need to build community resilience to unite local working class people and provide the facts and information to combat right wing propaganda.

We can only do this by local community organising, uniting all sections and ethnicities in localities. It means identifying common concerns and communities developing their own voice. It means organising so that they communities can represent their own interests, combat racism and challenge far right ideas.

union branches and with Camden Trade Council and are continually seeking affiliations with progressive organisations. Our strength as an unfunded organisation is in the solidarity we receive from the progressive movement and individuals. Our aim is to support the working class of the Caribbean and their descendants in the diaspora. We played an active role in exposing the Windrush scandal and continue to offer resistance to the’ hostile environment’ unleashed on immigrants and their British born children. We make the fight for reparations for slavery one of our main objectives in striking at the roots of racism. By demanding an apology, we insist on a recognition that a wrong was done to our ancestors, who were enslaved and trafficked to the Americas. A wrong, whose legacy is with us today in the form of violence, poverty, and disease. We demand compensation for the enslavement of our ancestors for profit, a profit that helped make Britain one of the riches countries in the world. Whilst compensation was paid to the slave ownersthe slaves received not a penny. We say this is an insult and in injustice that demands

compensation.

We intend to step up our activism for reparations for slavery until justice is seen to be done. We note that some individuals and organisation are beginning to accept there is a case for reparations and have made some useful gestures of reparations. So far the British government is refusing to have a ‘conversation’ with our CARICOM leaders, who are demanding they sit down to discuss the matter. We believe that our role in CLS is to get the attention of the British establishment to listen to the call for reparations and make adequate response. We may not have gunboats, but we have the sense of justice of the British people on our side. We call on all anti-racist organisations to support us in the fight for reparatory justice. Our aim is to keep making the claim for reparations and to do this by raising awareness of the issue on the broader public and in the trade union movement in particular. Black and White Unite and Fight.

LUKE DANIELS IS PRESIDENT OF CARIBBEAN LABOUR SOLIDARITY

Such organisations are build on hard work, primarily a neighbourhood-based approach, which begins with knocking on doors and listening to the concerns, motivations, and aspirations of people about their lives and communities. Organising with neighbours and friends develops trust and hope. It enables local people to speak in a united voice for themselves, and not have others claiming to speak on their behalf.

Community organisations will be built around local issues, e.g. poor housing, community crime, poor services, food poverty, or any other community concerns. Once organised they will be able to link up with other similar local groups and organisations such as trades unions, creating wider influence, understanding and strength.

The aim is always to bring people with shared interests together, enable them to develop confidence and a sense of collective power. They will be able to identify common goals and build an organisation to develop strategies and goals and act in unity to achieve them.

Key principles must be to engage widely across a local community and local people democratically controlling any organisation that is set up. Communicating effectively with all sections of the local community is essential to achieve the widest representation of the local community.

People from minority ethnic backgrounds have direct experience of racism and discrimination and must be involved, have their voices heard and taken seriously and be encouraged and enabled to take a lead. This does not mean that the local white population has no role, on the contrary they have a very important role. It is precisely by all sections of a local community supporting and engaging with one another that representative and powerful local working class unity can be built.

We must build long term community resilience to racism and the extreme right by organising our local working class communities to have the confidence to challenge racist and divisive ideas.

Pete Middleman FIGHTING FASCISM

RUTH STYLES IS CHAIR OF THE COMMUNIST PARTY

EVENTS&IDEAS&ACTION

WE CAN FREE OUR MINDS OURSELVES

ROGER MCKENZIE CONSCIOUSNESS

MOST DISCUSSIONS about racism usually centre on what we can and should be doing to fight against it in a physical sense or to educate the aggressors.

There is nothing wrong in any of those things but all too often the mental strain that racism imposes on black people – either in its most subtle or in its most blatant forms are skirted.

One of the ways that black people have fought the mental impact of racism is by building and then demonstrating our black pride and consciousness.

Steve Biko in South Africa and Frantz Fanon from Martinique are most easily identified with the black consciousness outside of the seemingly default United States centric view.

Black consciousness is ‘an attitude of mind’ or ‘way of life’ of black people who believed in their potential and value as people of African descent who needed to work together.

This is an entirely revolutionary view when one considers that for hundreds of years black people have been told how worthless and, indeed, how sub-human we are.

To break the mould that has been created for us to reach even the potential for unity is astonishing. Steve Biko argued that ‘the most potent weapon in the hands of the oppressor [was] the mind of the oppressed.’

The work of black activists has always been to go beyond defending ourselves against the daily onslaught of racists or campaigning for improved social and economic conditions but to change the black mindset.

Once we reach an understanding of our ability to look inward for our personal liberation then revolution becomes possible.

In his writings Biko said that colonialism, missionaries, and apartheid had made the black man ‘a shell, a shadow of man, completely defeated, drowning in his own misery, a slave, an ox bearing the yoke of oppression with sheepish timidity.’

It is vital that we understand that this does not just apply to the apartheid South Africa, Jim Crow racism in the US or to the colonial era.

This is a process that continues to this day.

So the self liberation of black people that must still take place is more than just about the clothes we wear, such as dashikis, or the hair styles we choose, like afros or dreadlocks.

It’s about coming to the realisation that we have a black radical tradition of resistance to racism that goes way beyond the superstars who are always readily remembered on these occasions.

It’s a radical tradition that comes from our internal and collective strength to endure and fight against enslavement, colonialism and the colour bar.

Once we are conscious of this rich heritage we have a chance of bringing about not only revolutionary change in ourselves but the possibility of building the unity necessary to end the rotten capitalist system that promotes the notion of black inferiority and sets black and white against each other for the sake of profit.

Steve Cushion REPARATIONS

TRADE UNIONS in London and the South

East have set up Reparations for Afrikan Enslavement Steering Group.

In the 400 years of the ‘Atlantic slave trade’, 12 to 15 million Africans were enslaved and transported by force to the Americas and the Caribbean. Between one and two million died in the crossing and millions more people in Africa also died because of raids, wars and on the way to the coast for sale to European traffickers.

Once in the Americas, these enslaved labourers were forced to work in labour camps where the conditions were so harsh that most only lived for about seven years before the accumulation of fatigue, whipping and hunger sent them to an early grave. The attrition rate in a Caribbean plantation was worse than the Battle of the Somme. The UN World Conference Against Racism 2001 recognised this as a crime against humanity.

Profits from British trafficking and the unpaid labour of enslaved workers contributed significantly to the accumulation of capital in England, which financed the Industrial Revolution and, conversely, contributed to the underdevelopment of member states of the Caribbean Community. These profits went, directly or indirectly, to the manufacturers and other suppliers of the trafficking, to the shipping industry, into the construction of infrastructure such as canals and railways, but above all to the financial services industry. Many of today's banks and insurance companies can be traced back directly to concerns that had their first growth through their financing of trafficking and enslavement. It would therefore seem reasonable that these modern corporations should refund the unpaid wages from which their predecessors profited so handsomely.

Racism, which was used as a justification for enslavement, has infected British society. The racism of the police, the unemployment figures for young Black people, the endless discrimination and petty humiliations of everyday life, the Windrush scandal: all these factors and more have their origins in the invention of racism to explain the wealth and power that the British ruling class gained from enslavement.

The call for Reparations for enslavement appeals in a broader sense to the "correcting of a wrong". This means implementing measures of compensation at different levels in the form of collective investments that would address structural racism and the legacy of colonialism. Besides financial transfers, claims for Reparations demand support for historical and commemorative activities, the erection of memorials, returning artefacts, removing statues of enslavers and similar measures that would contribute to decolonising the history of enslavement and its legacies. STEVE

Workers fighting each other solves nothing

TONY CONWAY END RACIST LAWS

FAR RIGHT groups are doing the rounds of Britain's towns and cities using local concerns – some legitimate some not – to target people who have been compulsory relocated to run down hotels.

The racist rhetoric of government, its treatment of refugees and the ongoing cuts in public services has given rise to violent demonstrations across Britain. Sinister far-right formations, of nazi inspiration, are spreading rumour and lies and preying on frustrations and fears of the most poverty afflicted working class communities.

Millions of people are displaced due to war, poverty, persecution and natural catastrophes.

Communists stand in defence of working people in every community – including those who are seeking a life free from war and all those exploited and oppressed.

We stand for working class unity.

The current industrial disputes sweeping across Britain are symptomatic of the failure of government and the capitalist system – the value of wages is falling to its lowest levels in

decades while working class communities are left to rot.

Mortgage rates hiked up and runaway rents mean familes face hunger and cold.

At the same time banks maximise profit by driving down terms and conditions. Energy Company profits rise on the back of unaffordable energy prices.

Home Secretary Suella Braverman scapegoats migrant workers and refugees migrants adding exra pressure on people already persecuted by the system.

March 21st is the International Day for the elimination of racial discrimination.

It marks the 1960 police massacre of peaceful demonstrators in South Africa, who were protesting against the apartheid pass laws. Likewise in 2023 we must all unite to defend our rights and those that are peresecuted.

Government immigration policies are fundamentally wrong. Britain needs anti racist immigration and nationality laws and working class unity not division. Let us take the fight to government, the bosses and the bankers.

TONY CONWAY CONVENES THE COMMUNIST PARTY S ANTI-RACIST & ANT-FASCIST COMMISSION

COMMUNIST PARTY

THEORY AND DISCUSSION JOURNAL

NEW SERIES NUMBER 106 • Winter 2022/23

£2.50

Editorial Martin Levy Viewing decolonisation through a Marxist lens Vijay Prashad

Cultural policy and decolonisation in the Cuban socialist project Abel Prieto

Ten Theses on Marxism and Decolonisation: Tricontinental Institute

New possibilities for revolutionary change

Ruth Styles

China after the 20th Congress: Anything to be concerned about? Marc Vandepitte

Is Russia an imperialist power? A response to Andrew Murray Stewart McGill

SOUL FOOD On poetry and working class joy

Fran Lock

THE FIGHT OF OUR LIVES

Trade unions in the crisis of capitalism

In this pamphlet, the Communist Party offers perspectives on the urgent priorities for the left in the trade unions and on the need for greater left organisation. What is the left doing now to offer leadership? What should our key demands be and how can we best organise to achieve them? £2 www.communistparty.org.uk

Unity!

is the newspaper of the Communist Party published every month, daily at the TUC conference and with supplements for labour movement events, solidarity demonstrations and strikes. It appears in print, online and can be found at www.communistparty.org.uk Ruskin House, 10 Coombe Road CR01BD Download the pdf and/or send the link to friends, family and comrades.

The Great Money Trick Drawn by Andy Vine Text by Jenny Farrell Based on Robert Tressell’s The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists £3.50

‘Black women have had to develop a larger vision of our society than perhaps any other group. they have had to understand white men, white women, and black men. and they have had to understand themselves. when black women win victories, it is a boost for virtually every segment of society’ Angela Davis