Workers Socialist League

Socialist Press, Trotskyism Today and the Trotskyist International Liaison Committee, 1975–1984

Leaflets burnt but ANL sticks to pacifist line

Socialist Press no. 106, 28 June 1978 · scan p. 12 · about 423 words

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As news emerged of yet another murder of a Bengali by white youth in East London and the burning of the Anti Nazi League's London headquarters by National Front supporters, the bankruptcy of the ANL's pacifist campaign of pure propaganda has been once more exposed.

ANL leaders and sponsorswho range from the self-styled "revolutionaries" of the Socialist Workers Party, through bishops, actresses, • Liberal politicians and football managers to Labour 'lefts' and now the Communist Party-have concentrated on "fighting" the NF thugs through leaflets, posters and badges.

But the fascists have refused to be bound by such restrictions and 50,000 ANL leaflets were destroyed in the fire on Friday which did an estimated £20,000 worth of damage.

Labour movement meetings have also been attacked-the latest being a Labour Party meeting in Ashton under-Lyme, broken up by NF thugs on Friday.

In many other areas physica attacks by racists and fascists or black workers have been stepped up.

Defence squads

Yet the ANL, tailing its mos! bourgeois supporters, still refuses to put out a call for the building of workers defence squads to put an end to fascist The only policy that can defeat the latest NF attacks is a call to every workplace, factory, working class estate and immigrant community to unite in forming defence squads trained to combat the fascists.

If the ANL or any other organisation would fight for such a policy then the Workers Socialist League would fight alongside it. *Indeed, if Peter Hain and the rest were even once willing to use their TV time to put out a call for the building of defence squads this would be a step forward.

The Workers Socialist League appeals to all those who support the policy of workers defence squads to discuss with us and to raise it inside their organisations. The fight must begin now!

League

Public meeting "Trade union democracy and the fight for revolutionary unday 2 July at 7.3( Wheatsheaf Hotel Delamere St.

Winsford

OUT NOW! . The first edition of Red Youth, the monthly paper of the Socialist Youth League (in political sympathy with the WL).

Available from SYL, 31, Dartmouth Park Hill;

London, NW5 1HR for 5p plus 7p p&p (for individual copies) or £1.44 for a year's subscription.

(Regular Socialist Press subscribers need only send In our front-page article on TGWU ballot rigging last week we inadvertently referred to National Committee and General Executive Council pos¡tions as 'national officers' of the Union. They are of course lay, not full time positions.

← Contents of Socialist Press no. 106, 28 June 1978