Police escort fascists

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The Stalinist dominated Corby Trades Council set out on April 26 to prevent any confrontation with the fascists.

After militant speeches earlier in the week about keeping the fascists off the streets of 'our town' they transformed this on the day into a sterile round of speeches and liberal sloganising.

When a march was finally oreanised in a move by the Stalinists to defuse the mounting militancy of the 1,000 plus anti fascists (many of them local youth who had gathered at the Civic Centre) this turned out to be no more than a circular tour of the town shopping square.

Militant anti-fascists intervened to demand the march head straight for the area where the fascists, were assemblingand were able to win the support of many of the youth.

For a brief moment, with few police about, it was possible to make a decisive move towards breaking up the NF The Daily Mail was unequivocal. 'We are with you all the way' it declared to President Carter on behalf of Mrs. Thatcher.

The Mail was premature. Its clarion call i support of an armed raid on the American Embassy in Tehran came 24 hours before the raid took place, and would no doubt be rubbed out by Mrs Thatcher if she had the chance.

Warmongering is a popular sport with newspaper owners.

It fits easily with their bellicose and instinctive attacks on their own workforces, their hatred for anything foreign and their paranoia over anything that might possibly be tinged with Bolshevism.

• In thé case of Iran, racism has been the dominant method of attack since the Shah was overthrown.

References to Mad Mullahs, jokes about Arabs and a wilfuli determination to find the moods and motivations of the masses incomprehensible has set the scene for a campaign to back a military invasion or anything short of that.

Had the US marines reached their target; had they massacred everyone in the place including march.

But the dithering of some of the SWP contingent allowed the Stalinist stewards to line up with the police to divert the whole thing back to the Civic Under pressure, the Stalinists then agreed to open up the platform to all speakers and take a vote on what action was required to stop the fascists marching.

But the same stewards swiftly changed their minds and made it clear that noone who wanted to drive the fascists off the streets would get near the microphone.

Anti-racists from ' Leicester then intervened, using a borrowed loud-hailer, to argue the case for 'no platform', ; and won a resounding vote for immediate action.

Bigwigs:

The Trades Council bigwigs found themselves alone in the empty square.

As the anti-fascists moved the hostages, and had they left behind a liberal number of their own dead on the doorsteps of the Embassy compound, these same newspaper owners could have found it in their hearts to applaud.

But the US attack foundered not in the drama-filled streets of Tehran but in a remote desert area of eastern Iran.

Even granted that the official Carter story is not the true one, there is little to stir the hearts of the most jingoistic of imperialistic bigots in this tale of bungling death.

What was left for the war hounds of Fleet Street but the gnashing of teeth?

Plaintive :

The Daily Express wailed plaintively that the real issue was that US allies (ie. Mis Thatcher) had heard about the raid on BBC radio. and had not been taken into Carter's confidence.

But while the press had been taking its cue from the Tory front bench it now found itself echoing the opinions of the loyal backbenchers.

The Alliance Comes First, was thé message in the Financial Times.

"Whatever criticism off they came into immediate confrontation with a small group of fascists parading on the opposite side of the road.

There were a number of arrests as youth tried to break through and get at them. The anti-fascists then went for the Front assembly area, breaking through the police lines on the way.

Headed-off by police reinforcements they returned to the town to block the route of the NF march.

The anger of the local youth was: clear, as they rampaged through the shopping area.

When the 400 rabid NF finally did march, under an escort of 1,500 police, they arrived chanting British, Jobs for British Workers' and dalling for import controls' to keep steel in Corby-the very slogans the Stalinists themselves used to knife the fight for steel jobs!

The more than 60 antifascists arrested were largely victims of the frustration caused by the reactionary manoeuvrings of the CP. alliance intact."

The Guardian (which rejected "easy smirks at the fiasco somewhere in the Iranian Badlands") said:

"In short order several lessons flow. That alliance, consultation and loyalty -amid such evident danger-is a two way street. That the White House, wallowing pitifully and alone needs counsel far more than it needs simple obedience ...

Driving Iran pell-mell and needIn that last sentence lies the key.

The press knows that there is a time for criticism and a time for silence.

It knows that Carter and Thatcher together provide the only credible card they see around to play against the Soviet Union.

Amidst the growing aggres sion of frustrated imperialism, and the tub thumping moves in the : direction of military confrontation, the capitalist press finds its own doubts are buried beneath the overwhelming desire to state which side they are on.

It" called for an official public inquiry into the Southall events and in particular into the SPG, whose officers are confirmed to have been found to possess a wide array of illegal weapons, including a metal weighted truncheon, in their lockers. serious answer to the problems PHOTO: Laurie Sparham, IFL It is plain that the inquiry 41. 117_has done much to illuminate the savage reality of the police riot in Southall; but it comes as no surprise that it can offer no it reveals.

In reality such violence from the capitalist state machinery can be brought to an end not by inquiries and protest, but by revolutionary action to bring down the Tories, drive out Labour's right wing leaders, and install à workers government which will set about disbanding the police and 'standing army and establishing in their place workers' militias answerable to the labour. movement.

While the long-running saga over right wing moves to expel Oxford socialist Ted Heslin from the Labour Party drags on into yet another inquiry, an angry letter to Labour Weekly from Northampton shows the problems a constituency faces if it wishes to expel extreme right wingers.

The Northampton South CLP refused to reselect two sitting councillors, who flouted the discipline of the Labour Group.

In a typical display of right wing contempt for democratic decisions the two councillors proceeded to run as indepenMason. dents, producing political material that attacked the local Labour leadership.

When the GMC discussed disciplinary action against them the necessary two-thirds majority was obtained for their expulsion.

Overturned

Yet that expulsion decision was promptly overturned by the NEC-in whose view it is apparently quite legitimate for right wing Labour Party members to run independent election campaigns in defiance of the local organisation.

We can be certain that no such tolerance would have been shown had the "independent"

Tory Lord St Oswald recently invited one of his political acquaintances to ~fish his well-stocked lake at Norstell Priory, near Wakefield recently.

During the European election campaign when the noble lord unsuccessfully made a bid for Yorkshire West, his rather unscrupulous past was revealed.

As a foreign journalist helike many other sections of the ruling class and the Daily Mail -backed the barbarous fascist Franco in the Spanish Civil HOTO: Derek Speirs, IFL War.

• Our readers will be delighted Graira to learn that St Oswald's obviously talented and sporting guest landed a 5½ Ib trout.

They may also be more than interested to learn the identity of this individual-none other than the Rt. Hon. Roy Mason, Labour MP for Barnsley and the Labour government's torture chief in Ireland.

This should aid clarification on what is meant by "extremist elements" in the Labour Party. candidacy been one socialist policies.

Meanwhile, •as National Agent David Hughes intransi gently • defends the NEC'S protection of the Northampton renegades, the local GMC has voted to uphold its expulsion decision, and has publicly challenged the Party to explain why it has been denied its right under rule to select local candidates and why members who run as "independents" against the district party should not all be treated alike.

The answer of course is clear: the social democrats of the Labour leadership are neither socialists nor democrats.

Their policies ate those of seeking piecemeal "reforms" within a bankrupt and crisis-ridden capitalism-and therefore lead consistently to them supporting attacks on the working class.

And the internal regime of the party reflects above all the need of the Callaghan-Healey trolen de rance of a itteard trol 'in moving rank and file membership.

While the fight must be taken up within the Labour Party on policy and on accountability and party democracy, a revolutionary socialist leadership must be constructed.

Callaghan

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The political crisis facing the British working class has been sharpened by the return of the Thatcher government and the response of the trade union and Labour Party leader-

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