Workers' defence call suppressed at protest meeting

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I self-styled 'libertarian socialist' Workers Party whose speakers vho warned the meeting of refused to take un anv call for Mark South-called for Council of Action and workers defence squads "difficult" and fraught with "problems" like confronting racialism head-on where it exists within the organised labour movement, the SWP prefer to aim their demands where they can be sure of a sympathetic hearing.

The Workers Socialist League will continue to raise the class issues involved in the anti-racist struggles and in particular fight for the establishment of workers defence squads to put an end to the fascist terror campaign of which Carl Foster is a victim.

The Daily Mail noted last week that Metropolitan Police Commissioner, David McKnee's attacks on the bail system "do imply a presumption of guilt not yet established by the But they do not let that stand in the way of a little morale boosting for the forces of the state.

"Men freed on bail, who use their conditional liberty to steal and mug and attack young girls, are being permitted to do damage to this country far in excess of the actual crimes they commit".

It is this, says the Mail, that has stung McKnee "a taciturn man by nature", to his attack. Nothing of course to do with the desire of the police to use custody as a means of locking up strikers, political activists and other undesirables on whom they are unable to make charges stick.

Some 500 workers and youth-black and white alike-flooded into a stormy public meeting, in Spitalfields last Tuesday to register their hostility to the racist rampage by 150 youth the previous weekend.

• Called by 'community action' figures and reformist immigrant leaders, the meeting was intended to hear GLC Councillor and Tory housing spokesman Mrs. Tatham.

Tatham is the person responsible for formulating the already infamous ghetto housing policy, according to which Bengalis should be allocated to special blocks of flats from which white residents would be excluded.

She attempted the futile task of defusing the explosive situation by claiming she had been 'misquoted' and terribly maltreated by the media generally with regard to her desire to herd the immigrant community together for their 'own protection' wing 500-strong audiencecomposed not onty of the Bengali community, but also of white working class families in the Spitalfields area.

A rightwing Labour Councillor fared no better, as angry tenants correctly blamed the violence of fascist thugs and racial tension on the chronic housing conditions, lack of amenities and dead end prospects of their area of East London, which is centred heavily on the sweat-shop clothing trade.

Betrayals

All these conditions have been worsened under Labour and Lib-Lab governments.

An Asian youth denounced the betrayals of the Labourite leaders and the attacks of the Tories, explaining that the fight against racialism involved not only the destruction of the divisive ghetto plans but a struggle for an end to Spitalfields social problems.

Contrary to the picture painted by the press the meeting showed the hostility of the white working class for the National Front fascists who have exploited the frustration of sections of youth in the area.

The traitors and class enemies on the platform were howled down time after time as they offered feeble apologies for their systematic attacks on the working-class.

Mark South, a supporter of Socialist Press received stormy rounds of applause when he explained the need to organise a fight back against the Labour traitors and the Tories.

Council of Action

He argued that the meeting was only called as a protest and must go further.

The police protected the fascists from the working class and had done nothing to track down the fascist thugs who murdered Bengali machinist Altab Ali in the area, he said.

A Council of Action, based on the white and immigrant working class organisations in the area should be established to lead 'a struggle for jobs for youth, decent housing and living standards and to organise defence guards to deal with the fascists.

At this point the organisers of the meeting snatched away the microphone, ensuring that no resolution on this question could be taken.

Then began their practice of suppressing speakers who showed any sign of militancy by claiming that they came from 'outside the area' Trotskyists' and a group of adical 'community types' called he 'East London People's Alliince whose star performer, 'hyllis Barber, raged about outsiders' and 'troublemakers' rom the sidelines of the meeing.

The enormous frustration let oose in the meeting demontrated the readiness of the vorking class to fight and to espond to revolutionary olicies.

Tame protest

At the same time it demonstrated, the crisis of working class leadership, in the form of the tame protest resolutions put from the platform, and the collapse of pretenders to rèvolutionary politics like the 'SociHousing conditions in Spitalfields POs. * odwa sonte Prioni STOP STIRRING RADIAL VIOLENCE workers defence guards, or any- -PUT VUI U thing else that could lay down a challenge to the class enemy.

The GLC is now in crisis over its ghetto plans and is unable to implement them in the face of massive hostility.

Labour Party wards and GMCs must press resolutions denouncing the support given by leading London Labour councillors Sir Ashley Bramail and Ken Livingstone to the Tory 'ghetto' policy, and calling for the removal of its defenders.

But the struggle will not end there. Ine material conditions TL -remain for the explosion in East London that will terrify all those who wish to chain down the working class to reformist protest ‚polities.