Fighting for action against Fascism

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Riot shields-continuity of police violence from Lewisham to Southall Demonstrators raised clench fists in salute as they pass the point at which Blair Peach was cla The battle of Lewisham in 1976 marked the first time large numbers of trade unionists and youth became involved in a direct struggle to prevent the National Front from marching and meeting.

But since that point the crucial weakness in the struggle against racism and fascism has been the retreat by almost every current on the left from any fight for a policy of No Platform for This retreat was no accident or temporary tactical adjustment but reflected the bankruptcy of the political method of the groups involved.

Reactionary

The Communist Party, who had already spelt out their reactionary position by opposing the Lewisham mobilisation despite its mass support, sank even deeper into the moralising cant of the clergymen, liberals and professional community leaders in whose circles it finds itself most at home.

The Socialist Workers Party on the other hand, had enthusiastically espoused 'No Platform' at Lewisham and gone so far as to claim Lewisham asa victory for themselves.

But, confronted with a press witch-hunt which branded them as red fascists' the SWP ran from any fight for a principled position in the labour movement and scampered to the right, seeking cover.

"Victory"

Thus, at Hyde in Manchester, the SWP declared the use of a state ban (which in practice left the question of combatting fascism in the hands of the police and the capitalist state) as another "victory" for the anti-racists.

. And within months the SWP's cynical Anti-Nazi League charade was on the road.

The SWP vanished into a seedy propaganda campaign which extended no further than touting for celebrities -together with Transport House and Stalinist bureaucrats-to declare their verbal • opposition to fascism.

That . such a popular frontist campaign could never hope to drive the fascist gangs trom the streets and was therefore a dangerous diversion should now, in the wake of events at Leicester and Southall, be clear to all.

At the time of the launching of the ANL, however, • the International Marxist Group-knowing an opportunist band wagon when they see one-were only too keen to jump aboard.

Inside the ANL, any pretence at a struggle to take into the labour movement the class questions raised by the growth of racism and fascism in terms of the developing crisis of capitalism and the lessons of Germany was abandoned in favour of the pursuit of large carnivals, small stunts and mass publicity.

The two ANL Carnivals in fact, though they certainly attracted tens of thousands of anti-fascist workers and youth, by their very political aimlessness served as a major diversion from the policies needed for a real fight against fascism in Britain.

They coincided with major political provocations by the National Front in the form of a May Day march through the East End of London-the first such fascist march since the warand a march through the predominantly black areas around Brick Lane, where the fascist intimidation was at its highest.

Far from mobilising opposition to these provocations, the ANL actively worked to prevent any such mobilisation.

Safe harbour

At a local level the ANL groups, opposing the demand for workers defence (which would alienate its cherished celebrities) served to disorientate and disarm the various developing antiracist organisations.

Instead they provided a safe harbour for the right wing and Stalinists in the labour movement who were desperately seeking a means to head off the growth of militant anti-racism and avoid any pressure to take up the fight to smash the National Front.

The final nadir of this disastrous, opportunist course was the cynical stitch up between the SWP.s Paul Holborow and the police at Winchester to prevent antifascists from even approaching the same part of town as the NF march.

In 2½ years the Socialist Workers Party had moved a long way from what Police in action at Southall 10 208 00.. 00320752 we She.

remained the real need-a fight to implement No Platform, through the mobilisation of the labour movement. and the black communities.

At Winchester, under the auspices of the ANL, SWP member Holborow performed precisely the role mapped out at Lewisham by the Communist Party.

It is vital, therefore, that clear and correct lessons are drawn from the events at Leicester.

In retrospect, the mobilisation there to stop the Front march must be seen as an important political victory.

The principled struggle of the Leicester Trades Council, through its antiracist committee, within the local labour movement for a position of No Platform for Fascists and for Workers Self Defence over the past two years was crucial to the events in Leicester.

It laid the basis for a political, fight against the paralysing reformism of the ANL:

To organise independently through a local co-ordinating committee, with or without the ANL, rejecting all deals with the police and appealing directly to the organised labour movement throughout the Midlands and the black community for support, made it impossible, despite Holborow's bravado at meetings, for the ANL to impose another defeat on anti-racists.

A crucial meeting on Sunday April 8 saw Holborow and the ANL defeated 26-23 on a show of hands after they had eagerly backed an LPYS plan for a diversionary demonstration.

Holborow, clearly working for a re-run of the Winchester fiasco in which the police kept anti-fascists on the other side of town from the NF, proposed that the counter-demonstration should be held at 12.00, marching from the opposite end of town to the NF, through immigrant areas to park miles from the Front's chosen route.

The defeat of this wretched plan and the refusal of the coordinating committee to kowtow to the ANL's bullying allegations that "the tail is trying to wag the dog", , forced the Leicester ANL into a formal stance of "no platform"

But this position flowed directly from the principled political fight put, up by militants in Leicester, and not at all from any change of tactic or strategy by the ANL and the Socialist Workers Party.

Indeed within a week the ANL contingent at West Bromwich was once again striking out on a demonstration headed directly away from the planned National Front meeting.

The response to the demand for No Platform at Leicester, notably amongst black youth, was subsequently repeated and amplified at Southall.

It showed beyond doubt the fighting determination of both blacks and whites when given a clear political perspective.

More particularly, buried in one weekend the reformist double-talk which characterises ANL politics and which had been spelt out most eloquently only two weeks earlier when Arthur Scargill had called in Leicester for unity of all forces opposing fascism "whether Tory, Labour or Liberal" and denounced the fight for a class perspective as "sectarian"

But there should be no illusions on the role of the SWP and IMG at Leicester.

The same opportunism that led both groups to shamelessly liquidate themselves into the a-political, pacifist morass of the Anti Nazi League led them in Leicester to adopt a 'left' face, posing as the best• fighters for the policy of "no platform".

Indeed .. the IMG even temporarily dropped its customary patronising call on white workers to 'support' "black self-defence" and postured instead as advocates of the correct policy of "workers' self defence"

But these policies, so readily switched from yesterday, can as easily be abandoned tomorrow.

The cynical political manoeuvrings of these groups is only outmatched by the outright treachery of the Workers Revolutionary Party. Behind a smokescreen of conferences on the 'Armed Forces and the State' the WRP actually attacks anyone who participates in the fight on the streets against racism and Newsline of April 26, ıgnoring the obvious fact that virtually the entire Asian youth population of Southall had moved determinedly onto the streets to drive the NF fascists from their town, described the Monday night events as a "state organised provocation" and "a protest stunt" which they claimed was organised by the Anti Nazi League.

"Who cares whether 59 members of the NF meet in a hall or not?" asks Newsline.

The answer to anyone other than the most infantile WRP sectarian is that tens of thousands of immigrant workers and youth in Southall care very much and are prepared to fight on the streets to crush the fascists, despite the arm chair criticisms of the WRP abstentionists!

Major onslaught

What is the reality of the political situation? The Tory campaign on law and order and to expand police

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TATAHIL FRONT The Leicester march-stopped by mass mobilisation FRO

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