Workers Socialist League

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

Socin Bosses Renew Racisi Campaign

Socialist Press no. 35, 2 June 1976 · scan p. 1 · about 789 words

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working class. The campaign, carefully orchestrated by the capitalist class through the press and mass media, aims to turn the frustration felt by many workers at the declining living standards and working class itself.

The plan emerged clearly in the sequence of stories publicised last week.

*On Sunday (23rd May) every single news centred around a long main item on 30 fascists (from the National Front and National Party) protesting at Gatwick Airport against the arrival of 40 Goans expelled from Malawi coming to live in Britain. Since planeloads of people arrive and leave Gatwick all the time it was hard to see any hot news in such a story._ *On Monday the Powell story broke in Parliament. Powell just happened to have got hold of a "confidential" government document, which just happened to support his racist views. To ensure the story was followed up the Assistant Under Secretary of State who wrote the document went out of his way to defend it thus lending the authority of the government to Powell's rantings.

*Also on Monday "ATV Today" presented nearly 15 minutes of coverage on the strength of the National Front in Leicester. The television has played a key role in this campaign.

*On Tuesday the television splashed the trial of Relf, the ex-bodyguard to Colin Jordan, who had tried to start a branch of the Ku Klux Klan, and is an acknowledged Nazi.

FILM

ATV Today showed film of a handful of fascists demonstrating and an interview with Relf's wife.

This spate of propaganda was backed up by a series of articles in the newspapers, and follows on the articles in the Sun on immigrants in hotels.

The Sun articles certainly helped create the racist hysteria which murdered the two overseas stabbed in North students, London last week.

There has been some surface response in the working class to this orchestrated campaign.

But in order to fight this we have to look at the source of the response - the frustration felt by workers facing problems they cannot solve.

REFUSAL

This frustration is caused by the refusal of the trade union and Labour leaders to mobilise the working class in action over housing, jobs and wages. Racialism cannot be separated off from all this.

While some trade union leaders are themselves strongly opposed to racialism, this is not enough.

- Racist divisions once built up by capitalism can only effectively be knocked down when workers come into action as a class against the main enemy. By blocking this, and carrying out instead the policies of the employers the bureaucracy strengthens racism.

For the most part the union bureaucracy and Labour leaders have the most abysmal record of capitulation to racism and every kind of backward nationalism.

The Callaghan government itself was already considering further restricting immigration before Powell moved on to the offensive..

This is consistent with the vicious attacks of the previous Wilson administration on the right to free immigration. Not only did they refuse to repeal the Tory Immigration Act, they even tightened it further at the time of the expulsion of Asians from Kenya.

We stand as socialists for the unrestricted right of all workers to live and work in whatever country they choose. The working class is an international class, exploited in every country by capitalism and with a common interest in the struggle for socialism.

We condemn the notorious record of successive Labour governments in supporting the actions of British imperialism against the struggles of workers and peasants in the colonial and ex-colonial countries - as continued today by British troops_ in Dhofar and Northern Ireland.

And we equally condemn the thoroughly reactionary stand of the 'left' Labourites and union leaders who now daily advocate the nationalist and divisive policy of import controls - seeking to ally workers with British capitalists against "foreign" capitalists rather than pose a socialist programme for the crisis.

POWELL

This policy can now be seen further fuel the reactionary tire Powell's nationalism and racism.

While it is vital that every trade union leader and Labour MP and councillor be forced to take a stand against racialism, correct speeches are now not enough.

The bosses moves to whip up divisions and violent splits within the workers' movement can only be fully answered by an all out struggle in defence of jobs, wages FORTNIGHTLY PAPER OF THE WORKERS SOCIALIST LEAGUE NO 35 * 2nd JUNE 1976 * 10p TIM It is becoming clear that the NUM ballot on the TUC 4½% wage-cut plan could well result in its rejection.

We urge all miners who still have the chance to vote to help defeat the More news Page 11.

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MINERS MUST DEFEAT PAY CUTS

← Contents of Socialist Press no. 35, 2 June 1976