FASCIST DISARRAY drive them from the streets

Scan page 8

Class action needed to Tory conference: the Tories stole racist vote from NF fight in town after town to keep physically powerless they The series of splits which have recently shaken the National Front and now erupted into open factional warfare need to be taken very seriously by socialists.

Not only do they give us a clear picture of the state of British fascism, but also, by refraction, they offer an image of the very real political crisis which confronts the bourgeoisie.

In the winter of 1973/4, as the Tories staggered under the blows of a determined and undefeated working class, the NF was able to win around itself a considerable layer of disenchanted right wing Tories.

In towns like Leicester, leading local Tory party workers shifted to the NF and the base was built for a sustained NF electoral campaign.

Total collapse

The total collapse of this NF electoral strategy in the 1979 elections, where their candidates lost votes as well as their deposits, inevitably caused major problems for the self-appointed vanguard of the master race.

All the old arguments of electoralism against street violence, populism versus open fascism, 'democratic' party versus dictatorial group and, of course, about the identity of the future British Fuehrer, reemerged at the NF's policeguarded Yarmouth conference.

The crisis was, however, far greater than that which broke out at the time of the earlier Kingisey-Read split.

This time, a decisive factor in the Front's failure had been the relentless campaigning of anti-fascists throughout the country and their willingness to fascism off the streets.

Memories of clashes m Southall and West Bromwich hung over the Yarmouth NF Conference like a black pall.

Al the same time, the willingness of Thatcher's Tories to openly embrace racism as an electoral gambit and to garnish this with more than a touch of open anti-communist witch-hunting offered the right a more respectable forum. for their politics. The NF were boxed in.

Politically threadbare, and in a blind alley.

The hardcore thugs were drifting into the British Movement in search of a means of expressing their frustration, whilst the organisation staggered from defeat to defeat on the streets and in the ballot boxes.

In a very real sense 1979 was the year the police stood between the NF and extinction.

In this situation the major battle which emerged in the NF was over credibility, and in particular the credibility of the Both the NF Constitutional Movement led by the Fountaine/Kavanagh faction and Anthony Reed-Herbert's new British People's Party have focussed on the fact that the history of the NF is damaged by Webster and Tyndall's own careers.

In the open letter sent by himself and the NF West Midlands organiser, Stan Goodwin, to members, Reed-Herbert states:

"We criticise the leadership of the National Front for its past, the Nazi image it has in people's minds, the image of violence that the media has been allowed to build up thanks to many of the tactics adopted by the leadership and the homosexual connotations which have caused distress to many members".

Clearly there are no political disagreements here.

In fact Reed-Herbert and Fountaine have gone out of their way to assert the continuity of their nationalism:

"Let us make clear immediately that our nationalist policies are in no way in issue here," they state in the open letter.

What disturbs the minifuhrers is their inability to break out of the narrow ghetto of hole-in-the-corner racism to a genuine base amongst the petty -bourgeois and the most backward , racialist elements of the working class.

As Reed-Herbert puts it, the question is "whether the National Front as a political movement is capable of taking these policies forward to power and implementation"

Thus, the internal intriguewhich saw Reed-Herbert detending the NF in the Excalibur House inquiry at the very time he was preparing the BPP splitcentres fundamentally on how to impose fascism on the British working class.

The new BPP has clearly found a resonance amongst NF members.

In Leicester, Birmingham, Northampton, Loughborough and Nottingham they have taken a majority of NF members.

As their NF Northampton spokesman, Marilyn James put "More than half the Northampton Branch has left the And the new focus, according to this demoralised petty bourgeois, is to be "stamping out Communism in Britain"

Reed-Herbert may well claim that he is seeking "a party of clean, creditable political figures with no Nazi taint," but behind this lies a well trodden path of open support for Tyndall and Webster's line.

In 1975 he backed them on the NF Directorate against Kingsley-Read, having wavered at first under the temptation of being a councillor.

He has also been the tame NF house attorney for years, defending Relf, Webster, et al against the various charges against them.

But with such clear disorientation and demoralisation in the fascist ranks, there is now an opportunity for anti-fascists decisively to intervene.

The NF rump must now be firmly driven off the streets, and an offensive begun to ensure the BPP is stillborn.

The breeding ground of fascism is the material conditions and problems which confront and frustrate the working class, denied any perspective from the leaders of the labour movement. It is not adequate to write off the NF as the Anti Nazi League has done.

Class action

Fascism does not destroy itself, it has to be physically defeated by class action.

This means stepping up the moves in union branches to bar fascists from membership,. and driving them out of the unions.

At the same time labour movement defence squads must be built wherever the fascists retain a presence to drive them off the streets-whatever they call themselves.

And in the workers' movement the struggle must be stepped up for a programme of action through which workers can fight to resolve the problems they face-falling living standards, mass unemployment, housing queues and slashed public services.

United class action against the employers and Thatcher's bosses government is the most effective answer to fascist and racist agitation: those labour leaders that obstruct such action must be confronted and removed.