How we deal with the new Far Right – Lessons from fighting the BNP

How we deal with the new Far Right – Lessons from fighting the BNP

 

In the past year we have seen the beginning of a re-composition of a new far right in Britain.  This became evident at the huge 9^th June 2018 #FreeTommy demonstration once again raised the issue of a resurgent far right in Britain. This demonstration was addressed by the new leadership of the Anti-Muslim Alt right. Gerrard Batten leader of a rightward moving UKIP. Geert Wilders from the Dutch Freedom Party, Anne Marie Waters from For Britain and a journalist from Breitbart the right wing media company. This was the largest far right demonstration in Britain since the 1930s and shows that the far right have achieved at least to some extent a level of unity that they have not managed to show since at least the mid 70s if ever. This unity may turn out to be short lived and based on very specific situation caused by the crisis in British politics caused by Brexit. But for any anti-fascists or anti-racists in Britain we need to be aware of this new phase and think how to fight it.

One thing that happened last year that is welcome but was hardly noticed is that in May 2018 the last BNP councillor stood down. This marked the final end of a previous chapter of far right organisation.

There is in the febrile atmosphere of now and especially the worsening international situation a danger that we forget the real threat that the BNP posed in its most successful phase. The BNP had dozens of councillors elected in the period after 2001, the party grew to a membership peak of over 10,000 in 2009 and in the 2009 European election they won nearly 1 million votes and two MEPs.

It is also true to say much of the racism the BNP embodied has become more apparent on the more mainstream right over the last few years especially since Brexit. However the BNP with its fascist pogromist lineage, its policy of 'repatriation' of non whites and the  violence against minorities and the labour movement that followed in its wake is a qualitatively different order of threat to right wing Tories or even Nigel Farage.

Fascism in Britain had never  had the influence or success that some such movements had in Europe. However both the British Union of Fascists in the 1930s and the National Front in the 1970s still had a major impact. Both focused on often violent marches and propaganda directly inspired by the Nazis and Mussolini's Fascisti. To a large extent both these movements were beaten back by Anti-Fascist mobilisation of the labour movement, socialists and others in alliance with self-organised groups within migrant communities. This mobilisation was both physical and ideological. Yes these movements felt less able to organise publicly but also these campaigns left them exposed and embarrassed amongst the populations and communities they sought to recruit from.

This is a relatively well documented history. But with the collapse of the BNP this analysis does not seem to really exist in a detailed form.

Dave Renton in his book Never Again about the role of Rock Against Racism and the first iteration of the Anti Nazi League and its role in defeating the Far Right opposes the theories that it was the rise of Thatcher’s racist rhetoric and  the internal crisis alone that doomed the National Front in 1979 and sees RAR and ANL playing a key role. However in passing Renton when talking about the demise of the BNP does talk about a resurgent Tory Party, UKIP and the flaws of Nick Griffin as playing a key role in the fall of the BNP and outside of Barking he sees the role of Anti Fascists as marginal in this story. This seems to be a commonly held view.

Obviously Hope not Hate and Unite Against Fascism would beg to disagree but neither of these groups but neither of these groups have put a detailed, clear eyed or comprehensive account forward to push the case of how their campaigns were decisive.

Its my contention that ultimately the Left, Labour movement and anti-fascists in the BNPs did play a major role in the BNPS downfall. This record was mixed but there are lessons to be learnt and inspiration to be drawn from this fight at a time when in some ways the left was weaker or at least more marginal then it appears today in the age of the Corbyn movement.  

 

The Origins of the BNP

The BNP grew out of a group who left the National Front in the early 80s led by the former leader of the NF John Tyndall. Tyndall said that the BNP was ideologically identical with the National Front. If anything the early BNP cleaved more to neo Nazi and anti Semitic theory and culture then its more populist predecessor.

It focused on Marches and Rallies, as anti fascists drove these behind closed doors they linked up with the white power music scene. They stood in elections haphazardly but Tyndall's purpose was to build a 'street army'  The parties "stewards" became the notorious nazi terrorist group Combat 18. Tyndall denounced C18 eventually as he thought the association could lead to a ban of the BNP.

 In 1993 by exploiting concerns over social housing in Millwall, East London the BNP won a council by election. This cemented the BNPs position as undoubtedly the main Far Right force in Britain. A massive mobilisation by the left led to the ousting of this councillor at the elections the next year.

This short-lived electoral success and the example of electoral success of the French National Front and Geert Wilders election to the Dutch House of representatives inspired a group of 'Modernisers' in the BNP to advocate turning to electoralism and moderating some of their rhetoric and image. In 1999 they succeeded in ousting Tyndall and replaced him with a new Leader Nick Griffin. Griffin had a long history of holocaust denial, extreme Anti Semitism, racial pseudo science and Hitler worship himself. Initially hostile to the ‘Modernisers’ Griffin opportunistically swapped sides when it became clear this would allow him to take over the Party. 

Publicly the party started to couch the parties racism in cultural and economic terms. They would take genuine concerns about the lack of social housing, the lack of jobs or the poor pay in jobs or issues with the NHS and racialise these concerns. They would blame migrants and ethnic minorities and falsely claim non-whites were getting a better deal. They also would talk about a lot about British and English identity being under threat and exaggerate or simply make up stories about St Georges flags been banned or other tales of Political Correctness gone mad. Internally the party still talked in terms of heredity and blood and remained White Supremacist throughout. Even in their public literature they still opposed interracial relationships and advocated "voluntary" repatriation of non whites. The biggest change in the parties style was dropping the most overt Anti Semitism and Anti Black racism and a shift in focus towards anti Muslim racism.

The BNPs Breakthrough

The BNP made its big breakthrough after 2001 by exploiting specific conditions.

The 9/11 terrorist attacks, the subsequent "War On Terror" and domestic Islamist terror attacks all fed into a growing tide of Anti Muslim racism in society that parts of the right wing press stoked. In some parts of the East End of London, Midland Towns and northern Milltowns this rising racism intersected with very local community tensions, discrimination and segregation that were exploited by local politicians. This climate gave a sense of legitimately to the BNPs rhetoric.

Specifically there were also a small but highly publicised numbers of protests and riots by parts of the Asian community as a response to police racism and racist violence in general during the summer of 2001. These were in Leeds, Bradford, Burnley and Oldham. Its by exploiting the racist backlash amongst many white inhabitants in these towns that the BNP made their first big inroads outside London.

Meanwhile The Labour Party under Tony Blair focussed on winning middle class swing voters in largely marginal constituencies. New Labour was disdainful of its working class roots and pushed a policy agenda that did little to reverse the decline in social housing or poverty in areas of the country hit by the decline of industry and the defeat of the unions by Thatcher. Labour parties and unions in these areas had largely shrivelled up and become inactive. Historically the 2001 election showed a particularly low level of engagement and turnout particularly in safe labour areas. This reflected a general dissatisfaction with New Labour but a continuing hostility to the mainstream right of the Tory party. This left a vacuum that the BNP could exploit.

 The media often painted the rise of the BNP as Labour voters defecting straight over to the BNP. Whilst this did happen the BNP drew much of its support from previous non voters and Tories in safe labour seats. The BNP became the main opposition to Labour in many wards. The BNPs support did include working class voters but this could be sometimes over stated. There core support was less likely to be waged / salaried workers then the self employed and small business people. However the ideas of the BNP spread far beyond those who would vote for them and BNP ideas were much more widespread in the working class then the BNPs vote would suggest.

Throughout the period up to 2010 the BNP grew its support. There were some local set backs such as the failure to win council seats in Oldham but by 2008 they won their first London Assembly member had around 50 councillors. At the European elections the following year they got 943,598 votes. Their success should not be overstated they were still beaten by the Greens and only scored 6% of the vote.

However the overall percentage hides the concentrated nature of the BNP’s support. In the prosperous tory shires or university towns their vote was negligible if they even stood at all but in many outlying estates, ex-mill towns or in some of the scruffier dormitory villages on the edges of big multi-cultural cities they were becoming an increasingly hegemonic political force without ever having that many activists on the ground. Their views, their propaganda etc was having an impact with people who still voted for the main parties or not at all.  Where the BNP did well incidents of hate crimes rose and the BNP was often the inspiration for violent attacks even when the party officially disavowed violent acts.

Beyond the direct effect of the BNP they shifted the politics or least rhetoric of other parties to the right. In the 2005 General Election the Tory Party focused on immigration using the slogan "its not racist to control immigration". UKIP shifted from being a cranky single issue party to an increasingly populist anti migrant party where anti EU propaganda took a less prominent role. Even Labour responded by using the far rights rhetoric at times. Gordon Brown revived the BNP's and NF's old slogan "British Jobs for British Workers".

 

The Decline of the BNP

From their victories in the European Elections in 2009 the wheels very quickly fell off the BNP. Griffin had predicted the BNP would make their big breakthrough once an economic slump hit. Actually at the 2010 general election in the midst of the worst economic crisis for a generation the BNPs vote shrank to over 600,000. Whilst this was their biggest vote ever in a general election they stood many more candidates and there was an increased turnout in general leading to many more lost deposits and only 1.6% of the vote.

Around this time the parties membership list was leaked. It showed a much more middle class membership then had been supposed by many in the media with a number of people working in influential jobs. However the effect of this was to make it much harder for them to recruit or keep hold of those didn't want to be publically associated with the party. Amidst the recriminations over the election set back the factional squabbles that had been simmering for a while exploded with expulsions and resignations convulsing the party that eventually led to Griffin himself being ousted. By 2012 they were a finished force.

Commentators in the bourgeois media point towards a number of reasons for the BNPs demise. Their Incompetence where they did win office. This did have an effect but often very localised.  The resurgence of the Tories electoral fortunes has been cited as squeezing space on the right. There is no doubt some truth to this, although in 2009 and 2010 it was not apparent that David Cameron’s Tories who were trying to present a socially liberal face would appeal to those who otherwise supported the BNP. Nick Griffins poor showing on BBC's question time has been cited. Again it had an effect but at the time opinion polls showed people minded to support the BNP anyway thought he was ambushed. It’s in retrospect that this event seems like a turning point.

Sometimes people credit the rise of UKIP as dooming the BNP but the chronology does not quite stack up. UKIP started doing well in the 2004 European Elections. Their success in these elections repeated in 2009 sat alongside the BNPs growth. At the 2010 General Election UKIP only did slightly better than they did in the 2005 election and their support tended to be geographically and demographically different from the BNP. UKIPs spectacular growth in local council elections happens from 2012 onwards, which probably killed off any hope for a BNP revival, but did not contribute to their decline in the period before then.

 So what of the left and more specifically the anti-fascist groups? What were they doing and what role did they play?

 

Unite Against Fascism

 

The two main national anti fascist organisations that participated in this fight were Unite Against Fascism (UAF) and Hope Not Hate (HNH). In some ways both of these organisations were very similar and many criticisms could apply to both. However one  Hope Not Hate, seemed able learn from some its mistakes and the other UAF seemed incapable of this leading to increasing irrelevance.

Both organisations were created specifically to fight the BNP. UAF was formed in 2003, when the Socialist Workers Party decided that they had gone as far as they could with the Anti Nazi League and wanted another body less associated with street fighting against the fascists that could get support from mainstream politicians, religious leaders and 'moderate' union bosses to fund campaigning against the BNPs new electoral turn. The Anti Nazi League was merged with the ‘National Assembly Against Racism’ a group in which the group Socialist Action played a leading role.

The SWPs theoreticians argued UAF was a "united front of a special type" but UAF looked suspiciously like a Popular Front. A cross class alliance tying socialists, trade unionists and other working class forces into a common political project with bourgeois liberals and even moderate conservatives.

Whilst the SWP and to a lesser extent Socialist Action were always a driving force behind UAF and kept tight hold of the leadership it would be unfair to say they were the only forces involved. Some trade union activists and independent lefties gave a lot of their time to UAF. However UAFs conferences were never democratic and did not take motions.

Their campaigning was simplistic but eye catching. The slogan was "Dont vote Nazi". It wasn't hard to find plenty of evidence of BNP candidates and members Nazi affiliations. They also exposed the BNPs racism but again in quite a simplistic way. It was often clear that UAF and the SWP rarely comprehended why working class people and others would vote BNP. Indeed if you worked with UAF their activists often seemed stumped as to how to convince people who said they were going to vote BNP even after you told them that the party was Racist.

UAF in their literature rarely if ever spoke about the material conditions which the BNP exploited. They argued to not focus on the Racism and Fascism centrally would be to somehow concede that the BNP has anything to say about these issues. However this allowed the BNP to portray UAF as not caring about these issues and themselves as the only people talking about council housing or jobs.

UAFs campaigning largely consisted of leafleting areas the BNP stood in, stalls and public meetings. They did also organise counter demonstrations against the BNP when they were holding events or conferences. Something Hope Not Hate largely opposed.

They would also hold marches and rallies with worthies like Bishops and Councillors speaking out against the BNP.

 Two of the major problems UAF had from the beginning was firstly that as a SWP front they would often prioritise recruiting anti racists rather then contesting the BNPs racism in the communities were the party was entrenched. This was made worse once Love Music Hate Racism was formed as a companion organisation. Gigs with right on indie bands and World Music held in multi ethnic inner cities  were unlikely to ever attract a crowd in serious danger of supporting the BNP. LMHR was lousy as  a method of contesting fascism but good for recruiting young people into the SWPs periphery.

There second problem was that UAF was such a centralised sectarian body that its relationships with existing anti racist campaigns in the community or run by trades council were often fraught, much of this caused by the inflexibility of UAF. Anti Racist groups were often just expected to liquidate into UAF. In some places wiser heads prevailed in the local UAF but it wouldn't be rare to have two anti fascist campaigns in the same district duplicating effort because the UAF would not operate genuinely as part of a broader coalition.

Beyond this the SWPs political weaknesses spilt over into UAF hobbling the effectiveness of their campaigning. The SWP like all socialists at this period were faced with a major dilemma of what to advocate at elections. At the beginning of the decade the SWP were involved in the Socialist Alliance with the AWL and other groups. Later the SWP played a role in killing off the Socialist Alliance and forming Respect with the Muslim Assembly of Britain and George Galloway. Standing socialist candidates was never going to resolve the major issue of what you said about New Labour. With New Labour moving so far to the right and seemingly irreversibly marginalising the unions and the labour left its understandable that socialists had major caveats when advocating a Labour vote. This was just compounded further by Blair leading Britain into war in Iraq further disillusioning the broader anti-war left with the Labour Party. However the SWP’s attitude towards the Labour rank and file including the Labour left was always deep suspicion and antipathy.

Yet it was clear that the BNPs major political adversary’s on the ground was always the Labour Party and it was the only party with a mass working class base that could challenge the BNPs appeal. UAF could never bring itself to advocate a Labour vote, closely work with Labour activists etc. Partly this was because it wanted to keep non labour bourgeois figures on board but also reflecting how split the SWP was on the issue. At the 2010 election the SWP didn’t give its members and supporters a clear steer on who to vote for. The author remembers talking to a number of SWP people whose votes seemed to be spread across socialist candidates, Labour, Greens and in a couple of cases the Lib Dems.  

 

Another major weakness carried over from the SWP to UAF was a silence about racist and reactionary ideas and organisations with a Islamist background. After the 2005 terrorist attacks in London more attention was played to radicalisation and reactionary views of a minority in the UKs Muslim background population. The BNP exploited this for all it was worth. UAF were incapable of any kind of nuanced approach to this and just condemned as racist those who brought up the issue of Al Mujaharoun or other Islamist forces. This hobbled their ability to address these issues when raised.

There is no doubt many UAF activists put themselves on the line receiving threats and even violence from BNP members. Often in many places the UAF was the only force in small towns making noise opposing the BNP and many people got involved on that basis. Even with all our criticism's AWL members and supporters along with other socialists would work with (or try to work with) UAF where there was no other organised opposition to the BNP.

 

Hope Not Hate

Hope Not Hate was founded in 2004 by Nick Lowles, a former editor Searchlight Magazine. It was even more of an undemocratic NGO then UAF. It also was even more concerned with appearing moderate then UAF, opposing direct confrontation against the BNP in demos.

Especially in its early days its propaganda could often be quite naff. Based on celebrities or stories about Nick Griffin not supporting the England Football team. UAF activists criticised HNH for focusing on the BNPs fascism but not its racism. This often was a fair criticism. It sometimes seemed as though HNH wanted to convince voters that the BNP wasn't consistent in its nationalism and racism.

Yet despite these issues HNH campaigning proved more successful then UAF in counteracting the BNP. Despite or because of the fact they did not have local forces on the ground Hope Not Hate built relationships with local anti-racist groups that were set up or re-founded to fight the BNP. These groups were often based around the local trade council or Trade Union branches. Unlike UAF, Hope Not Hate did not demand liquidation or uniformity in propaganda. On this basis Hope Not Hate Campaigning often seemed much more rooted in the working class communities and had answers on local issues the BNP were exploiting. Hope Not Hate activists sometimes could present a prolier-then-thou attitude and accused UAF of being middle class students bussed in not understanding working class communities. This was often overdone and unfair, this attitude in itself could mask Hope Not Hates sometime reluctance to take on more conservative or reactionary attitudes amongst our class directly. Yet these campaigns were genuinely often more rooted in working class life. As an activist in general you wouldn’t get involved in Hope Not Hate at a local level, You would get involved In Keighley Together or North Staffordshire against Racism and Fascism etc who were the organisations campaigning alongside Hope Not Hate.

Hope Not Hates propaganda evolved over time and was much more detailed and thorough then UAFs. It was also much more effective at getting its message into the media. They worked closely with the Daily Mirror and TV producers to run a series of exposes based on undercover filming and ex members of the BNP they had turned. Locally they would actually have responses to the positions the BNP were advocating rather than simply replying ‘Don’t Vote Nazi’. Their style of campaigning differed. Unlike UAF they did more focused campaigning over longer periods which sometimes included door to door canvassing. They trained their activists to have ‘difficult conversations’ and not give up on people who said they supported the BNP but try to convince them. Often it was found BNP voters has never been canvassed by Labour or any other party and the BNP was the first political organisation to ever actually ask them their opinions. This made Anti Fascists like Hope Not Hate canvasing vital.

Hope Not Hate as a charity could not be seen to support one or other party but often worked closely with local Labour Parties and by running their stories in the Daily Mirror, a Labour supporting paper, it was clear that Hope Not Hate believed that it was Labour is who you needed to vote for to defeat the BNP. This did tend to blunt any criticism of the Labour leadership at a time they began adopting anti migrant rhetoric as a response to the BNP.

Workers Liberty and Working Class Anti Fascism

Workers liberty and other socialists, trade unionists and Labour members tried to build working class anti fascist movements locally against the BNP with some successes.

 In Nottinghamshire the BNP had built quite a bit of support in the outlying small towns and ex pit villages. Workers Liberty, the Socialist Party, local Labour activists, trade unionists and (initially) Antifa Anarchists set up Notts Stop the BNP. They had quite a bit of success campaigning against the BNP with explicitly working class demands to undercut the BNPs economic demagogy and the despair that many working class people felt. The slogan adopted was ‘Jobs and Homes not Racism’. A similar campaign grew up over the county border in Derbyshire. They also used canvasing alongside leafletting and stalls in working class neighbourhoods.

Notts Stop the BNP held a number of conferences for anti-fascists to plan actions and discuss how best to fight the BNP that tried to counter the lack of democracy and top table rally approach of Hope Not Hate and UAF. At the same time local UAF and HNH activists were invited and were involved in some of these conferences.

In 2008 and 2009 the BNP held their yearly “Red White and Blue festival” at a farm outside the town of Codnor, Derbyshire. The Derbyshire and Notts groups built large national mobilisation’s against this but also ensured there was a lot of door to door community campaigning. The main events to try to stop the festival involved thousands of people including blocking roads. After two years of this the BNP gave up and moved the Red White and Blue festival back to a remote location in Cumbria.

Even though UAF had been invited to get involved from the Beginning of the mobilisation against the Red White and Blue Festival the UAF took their usual approach of demanding the local groups liquidate into UAF. When this was refused they refused to work with the Notts and Derbyshire group. In the end UAF could not ignore the mobilisation but built for this alongside the local groups in a very sectarian way. At the first demonstration in 2008 UAF turned up mob handed with its own set of stewards whose job seemed to be to keep their activists protected from contamination by the local anti-fascists. By 2009 the UAF felt the need to show their militancy to their own members so unilaterally tried a separate attempt to block off an access road. This failed and upset the plans local activists had to try to block off the festival themselves later in the day.  

Such behaviour only increased the impetus to set up working class anti-fascist groups independent of UAF and a few more were set up on the Nott’s model around the country. In Sheffield There was an attempt to unite these forces into a ‘Stop Racism and Fascism Network’. However this project never got off the ground. Partly because by 2009 and 2010 anti-austerity activism was increasingly taking up activists time and because the threat of the BNP was receding.

The Battle for Barking

The climax of Anti-Fascist campaigning against the BNP probably was the campaign known as the “Battle of Barking” in 2009-2010. Barking and Dagenham is a working class outer London borough that developed a particularly acute housing crisis made worse by a third of the boroughs social housing being lost due to right to buy. There was also issues of long term unemployment caused by the closing down of the industries that used to dominate the area.  The BNP and the far right in general  had a long history of activism in the area.  At the 2005 general election the BNP won 17% of the vote and came within 27 votes of coming second. Exploiting the housing and jobs issue, they spread falsehoods that inner London Boroughs were paying for ‘Africans’ to move to Barking and go to the top of the queue for Social housing.

 The local Blairite Labour MP Margaret Hodge seem to give credence to this by talking about ethnic minority residents moving into the borough and the lack of availability of Council housing in the same breath as though one causes the other. She also said “British families had a legitimate sense of entitlement” to get housing ahead of the new comers. Even Alan Johnson the New Labour home Secretary said her words had added “Grist to the mill” for the BNP. The GMB union called for Hodge to stand down.

The BNP exploited Hodges statements and built their support further winning 12 councillors. The local showing in the European elections of 2009 suggested that the BNP were possibly on course to become the largest party in the Council and win the Barking seat at the following years General Election and simultaneous local election. A year before the general election Nick Griffin picked this seat as his best chance of getting into Parliament. All BNP activists in the south of England were directed towards helping this flagship campaign. The Campaign was also very much built around Griffin personally.

Despite Hodge’s dreadful politics it was obvious to many on the left that smashing the BNP in a pitch electoral battle would require getting working class people to vote Labour in spite of Hodge. It would also require both Labour and the Anti Fascists actually talking about building more housing and fighting for more jobs.

Hope Not Hate moved its offices to the borough and mobilised people from around London and beyond using You tube videos and social media to mobilise people into canvassing and distributing literature week in week out. The unions and union branches also mobilised people to commit to go canvassing and campaigning, with Labour, with Hope Not Hate or with UAF which also were involved. This campaign revitalised the local Labour party doubling its membership and working closely with HNH and affiliated unions.

In the end all 12 BNP councillors were swept away and the BNP receded to 14% of the vote in the general election. The labour vote increased by 5% bucking the national trend at an election were Labour did very badly. Labour won every council seat.

There were other smaller Barkings. In Stoke, Burnley, Keighley and elsewhere in the period 2009 and 2010. Oftern with similar relationships between Hope not Hate and grassroots people in the local labour movement and Labour Party. Taking on local issues the BNP were exploiting and using canvassing as a key weapon. UAF often played a more important role in these electoral campaigns but by and large still following the "Don't Vote Nazi" model.  

Its arguable that in the Barking campaign we see a precursor of the Labour election campaign in 2017 were Momentum and local labour activists ran campaigns often in spite of the hostility of some Local Labour MPS that mobilised a wide layer of people and focussed on canvasing and convincing people on policy rather than voter ID and triangulation. Perhaps as well in the top down NGO model of organising we see in Hope Not Hate we also see the model for the increasingly undemocratic trend in Momentum.

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Berthold Brecht wrote of the defeat of Hitler

“don’t rejoice too soon at your escape, The womb he crawled from is still going strong.”

The BNP maybe virtually dead but the inequality, poverty, hoplessness and Racism they built on are still there. The right wing press that peddles anti migrant and anti-Muslim nonsense haven’t stopped pumping out the same filth. The same politicians whose response to the rise of the BNP was to rhetorically ape them and thus give credence to their racism are still ruling us today. Parties like the BNP are gaining strength all over Europe.

It is not inconceivable that the new found unity of the Far right shown by the Free Tommy demo’s could lead to an organisation on the ground that starts filling the space the BNP once filled, This time we might not be so lucky in terms of the ineptness of their leadership or the factionalism in their ranks.

The British left and Labour movement played its part in speeding the demise of the BNP but it also made many errors along the way. We must learn the lessons of these for future fights against the Fascism. The lesson that for anti-fascism to be effective needs to be based on working class self-organisation and the Labour movement. To rectify inevitable errors and to allow for the greatest unity it needs to be democratic and honest with itself.

It needs to be able to fearlessly criticise and agitate against the  material conditions which fascism can breed. It’s vital it works with the Labour party and local activists and not be sectarian in its approach. But it also needs to call out racism when it sees it even amongst our allies in the Labour movement.

In an international situation of a rising far right around the world and in the reactionary and racist climate unleashed by Brexit we cannot afford not to learn from our past.

Defend Free Movement

Rachel Reeves, my MP, has issued a report via the Fabians and several follow up articles advocating labour adopts a position against free movement.
Here is my letter to her opposing this.

Hi Rachel



I read your piece in the New Statesman about ending free movement post Brexit.



http://www.newstatesman.com/politics/economy/2016/09/rachel-reeves-mp-ending-free-movement-should-be-red-line-labour-post-brexit


As a shop steward at ****** in East Leeds and coming from Hull I also got an inkling a couple of days before the vote that Brexit was going to win. People I had helped convince vote Labour in 2015 at work and my family at home were nearly all voting out. Immigration was the number one reason. But I also represent polish workers who feel very anxious that this vote was directed at them..

I do think Jeremy Corbyn was one of the few politicians on the remain side to recognise the issue of wages and the EUs impact on working class people. I feel if the entire labour party could have got behind that we would have had a better chance.


However I think it will be the entirely wrong course to advocate the end of free movement.

Firstly in a situation of murders and attacks on the street of migrants and the far right growing across Europe, we have a duty as internationalists, socialists, progressives to stand against that. I think adopting an anti-immigration stance will undermine that and give credence to UKIP and the Tories lies.

Secondly free movement is a positive right. Our citizens enjoy it in Europe and it contributes much to our society. Ending it for people coming to Britain means ending it for people going from Britain. Also why should big business have the right to move money, goods and capital and people not have the same rights?

Thirdly You admit that the evidence is that EU migration might have a slight drag effect on wages but nothing compared to the depression of wages caused by the governments public sector pay freeze and the growth of casualization, zero hours contracts and the weakness of union’s. So ending free movement will not materially change workers conditions much if at all. If we know that to be the case we need to be honest about the true causes of growing inequality not give credence to the right wings blaming of foreigners for these massive structural issues.

Strengthening and extending collective bargaining, a real living wage properly enforced and banning Zero Hour contracts would have a massive material impact on millions of lives. We should focus on this.

Bringing back the migrant impact fund will also help.


Finally in electoral terms its not ground we are ever going to win on. Presumably you are not advocating ending immigration full stop or sending people already here home? The problem is there will always be right wing papers and right wing politicians willing to countenance this. Our anti-immigrant stance like the much derided Ed Stone will rightly never be credible because people know we don’t actually believe in it and think we should be an open welcoming country. Better to win people to our positive politics then offer a pale version of the rights rhetoric that’s not convincing.



Winning back lost working class voters in some areas is going to be hard and needs further discussion but I don’t think this route is the way will do this.


Yours

Dave K

Blurred Lines- There are better songs to sing then this

Leeds Univerity Union and several other student unions has banned the song Blurred Lines by Robin Thicke being played on their premises. This is because a lot of people think the Blurred Lines Thicke is singing about is between consentual sex and rape. Thicke denies this is what its about and I have heard other interpretations. But on the whole there's no denying the songs lyrics and video are sexist.

Even if this song was more unambigously problematic I would be against supporting bans on music, films etc even if done with the best of intentions. We live in a world full of the worst most horrific injustices and crimes including rape and domestic violence. This is often reflected and re-inforced in the cultural commodities thrown at us daily.

Our role as socialists and feminists is to attack these horrors directly, point out their root causes and propose the way to make an new world out of the old. We cannot nor should we seek to hold back the tide of crap through bans. It will not work, it could work against us, and their is a real danger of being seen as Mary Whitehouse's of the left rather then fighters for human emancipation.

Whitehouse became the butt of jokes and sexist abuse partly because of her bizarre obsessions with blashpemy, her homophobia and victorian attitude towards sex but her insistance on bans meant that when in the main she objected to violent pornography and the kind of crap misogynist sit-coms the 70s seem to be full off her concerns where equally written off even when some of her criticisms in hindsight seem fair enough.

Rather then the bans, would not it be better to talk about the music we listen too or hear,  produce and promote alternative music that fights back against this shit. It can be turned round. Country music was turned into a genre defined by female singer song writers singing about their experiences rather then the dinosaur attitudes of Nashville by artists like Kitty Wells, Lorretta Lynn, Dolly Parton and K.D. Laing. Punk was transformed by the "riot girl" bands. Even in pop artists are fighting back. Check out the Micklemore song Same Love supporting gay marriage thats in the top 5 right now. Our answer to Robin Thicke and all those like him should not be to be to ban the song  but to tell people there are better songs to sing then this.

Reasons to be Cheerfull

What with all the Thatcher worship, demonisation of benefit claimants and talk of nuclear armageddon its easy to get despondent. 

Here are 4 reasons to be cheerful

1- Its sunny!

2- Despite or because of the the Maggie coverage and the exploitation of the Philpott case the Tories opinion polls have fallen further and across all the major polling bodies.They are now on 28% of the vote.
http://labourlist.org/2013/04/labours-poll-lead-at-14-points-as-tories-hit-poll-low-with-three-different-pollsters/

3- we are beginning to win over the Bedroom Tax both in terms of public opinion and in the pressure we are putting on Local authorities not to enforce it by re-classifying rooms as study rooms etc or evict people who cant pay is starting to tell. Large scale re-classifications and pledges against evictions by Councils and housing association are spreading.
http://www.politicshome.com/uk/article/75877/comres_sunday_people_poll_british_public_opinion_hardening_against_the_bedroom_tax.html

4- Black Sabbath are reuniting. 
http://www.nme.com/news/black-sabbath/69610

Taking stock in the fight against austerity- part 1

This is the first part of a long look at where our movement stands in britain now. The first part looks at the general situation, the Revolutionary Left and Anti Cuts activism. The second part is going to look at the Unions, Labour Party and the wider working class. 

Since the collapse of Lehman brother's in September 2008 we have seen a unprecedented economic crisis. In Britain this as manifested itself in a shallow but destructive recession in 2009 a brief dead cat bounce from Autumn 2009-Autumn 2010 and then since then we have had on average Zero growth and seem to be heading into our third technical recession.

For the vast majority wages have fallen in real terms as rents, bills and basic costs rise far above stagnant incomes. The Resolution Foundation predicts with the continuation of austerity policies the income of the poorest workers could fall up to a 5th or 4th in real terms by the early 2020s. Unlike in previous recessions inequality is actually increasing. The rich are doing very well out of this recession with incomes of the richest 1 percent rising at unprecedented rates.

Although the position in Britain is inextricably linked to and closely aligned with the economic situation in Europe there is also the major effect of the response of the coalition government to the crisis. The Coalition government has now been in power for over 2 and a half years. The left and the labour movement needs to take stock of its response to this government and austerity and the state of its own forces. 


The politics of Austerity.

The aim of the coalition is said to be the reduction of the deficit. At this they have been wholly unsuccessful and their austerity policies and the lack of growth make the situation even worse. However austerity actually has other aims that the government is less loathe to shout about.

1- An economic policy to restore profitability to British business and the capitalist class in the long term. This plan includes explicit direct measures by reducing taxes on businesses and the rich and by gutting health and safety and other regulations. However there is a less indirect attempt to suppress wages and increase productivity. The public sector pay squeeze and limit on benefit up-rating unofficially effects the pay settlements in the private sector depressing wages below the inflation rate. The work fare scheme, the benefit cuts and general harshness of the benefit regime also pushes people in to the labour market on the employers terms.

2- An ideological and political project to undermine the pillars of the labour movement, the post war social democratic settlement and in particular the public services. This has been the conservative project from the days of Edward Heath but the economic crisis, coalition and the rhetoric of austerity allows this to be pursued with vigour at a time when the support for such neo liberal agenda is very weak. This is the reasoning behind the dismemberment of the NHS, Michael Gove’s education policy, the attacks on benefits, social housing etc. The massive sackings in the public sector also weakens the unions in their areas of greatest organisational strength.

These policies are all political risks but only in so much as the Labour and the left effectively mobilises against them and wins over millions of people.  This is so far where on the whole we have failed and we need to analyse why this is and our possible prospects for success.


The Revolutionary Left.

The revolutionary left in Britain went into the crisis in a weak state. The fall of the Berlin wall nearly 20 years earlier had ushered in a period of capitalist expansion and self confidence. All of the left wing groups in Britain that called themselves revolutionary went into decline in terms of membership, energy and influence within the working class and labour movement. The anti Globalisation movement of the turn of the millennium and the anti war movement did provide an influx of younger recruits to some left groups and provided new areas to intervene into but these gains were limited. It is fair to state however that the Socialist Party, AWL and some other groups where in a better state to intervene in 2008 then they had been since the early 1990s but this again is a very limited achievement. 

In most of the western world there had been successful or semi successful unity initiatives and re-groupments in the revolutionary left during the decade preceding the crisis. This did not happen in Britain despite several attempts to achieve unity. The most substantial being the Socialist Alliance form 2000-2004 and the SSP in Scotland. Both of these projects ended in disarray and in the case of SSP and Tommy Sheridan the fall out has severely damaged the far left politically and organisationally.

As the crisis began there were expectations that revolutionary groups would be able to grow substantially. At first this seemed to be the case for certain groups. The SP grew in size and influence, the AWL grew by a third in 2010-2011. The largest group the SWP was politically and organisationally in a bad state following their expulsion from the Respect Party. Their former leadership left the SWP after a acrimonious and disorientating faction fight and founded another group Counter-fire.

Even before the Coalition Government came to power the revolutionary left had thrown itself into the emerging anti cuts committees and to this day often provide the bodies that allow anti cuts activities to be organised. However the failure of the anti cuts movement to take off so far into a mass movement such as the Anti poll tax movement or even the early days of the stop the war movement has dashed hopes and led to a certain level of demoralisation.

One notable area where the far left did help initiate a mass revolt against cuts was in the student movement where the walkouts and marches against the scraping of EMA and the tuition fees rise initiated by the far left were beyond the organisers expectations. Even after the government pushed through these policies it left a whole layers of activists who won positions on student unions and on individual campuses are continuing to carry on the fight against cuts sometimes successfully.

A chief area of failure was in relation to the public sector pension strikes. It should have been obvious from the beginning that the leadership of the unions strategy was to go for big one day strikes and settle with the government after winning minor concessions. The revolutionary left with some implantation within unions should have prioritised rank and file organising and tried to argue for control of the strike by membership at a local level via joint strike committees and local protests. However the two groups with much weight in the unions involved, the Socialist Party and the Socialist Workers Party directed their propaganda to supporting the leaderships strategy whilst making abstract demands for a general strike. A revolutionary left that had been used to organising demonstrations and meetings with little or no support from the union leadership seemed to lose the ability to do this and instead followed the sluggish timetable of strikes and demo’s coming out of the TUC and unions but trying to be the loadest cheerleaders on those demo’s and shouting for a General Strike they knew they would not get.

The self inflicted defeat of the unions led to a period of despondency and stagnation amongst revolutionary left and in the case of the SWP probably fed into the disarray they now are in. Some groups like Socialist Appeal have decided that in this period it is better just to build their own organisation and not intervene in the anti cuts movement.

However there is no need to fatalistically assume the lack of trade union fight back condemns the far left to stagnation. This can be most plainly seen by what happened in the 1980s. Throughout the decade, the Labour Party and the Trade Unions had been on the receiving end of decisive defeats yet the revolutionary left probably reach its post war zenith in terms of membership in the latter part of the 1980s after the defeats in the miners strike, Wapping and Labours defeats at the 1983 and 1987 elections.  The far left were then decisive in defeating poll tax.

Now we are facing massive attacks on the unemployed and working poor. So far the revolutionary left has not mobilised over the “bedroom tax”, the reduction in Council tax Benefit and the 1% benefit up-rating bill in the way it did over the Tuition fees rise and the public sector pension fight. This is a damning indictment of the revolutionary left and reflects its lack of implantation within the class that it cannot see this is by far the most fundamental and destructive attack on the working class so far this crisis.  



The prospects of advancement of the revolutionary left depends on five things.
1, We need to emd the arid sectarianism and duplication of effort caused by our disunity. Genuine left unity on the basis of democracy and built through struggle would draw a whole periphery of people in who refuse to join or have fallen out of left groups. The imminent break up of the SWP and the general sentiment for unity amongst much of the left makes this a viable option but it still remains difficult to achieve.
2,  Politically the domination of sloganeering rather then genuine analysis and debate is a key problem. When the mechanistic schema of this or that trotskyist group parts company with reality it leads to despondency and disorientation that could be avoided with honest accounting and clear eyed analysis.
3, The revolutionary left does have some implantation in the unions. We need to use this to do all we can to build the rank and file. Obviously we cannot substitute for militant workers but we can use our strength in unions to run bulletins, build rank and files where they exist and making the case for members having active control of disputes.
4, Fundamentally the chief problem with the revolutionary left is its lack of implantation within the working class. There is no easy way round this but involvement in local tenants campaigns, estate sales, trying to organise the unorganised all would help this. 
5, The far left is meant to be full of idealistic radicals who want to change the world. So why do we so often seem like dour train spotters. fly posting, political graffiti, gigs, mass trespassing, red hiking groups, film showings would be a start to build the kind of political scene that draws people in. 


The Activist Groups

There is a large activist milieu that involves people coming from all kinds of different political traditions and places.  It includes Trade unionists, Social democrats, unaligned socialists, Greens, Labour lefties, Anarchists, Libertarians etc. The one thing they share is that they are organising outside of (though often alongside) revolutionary groups, the trade unions and the Labour Party.

As this group is so diffuse its difficult to tell whether it is attracting people or not. I think its likely that most people on the green and anarchist side where attracted into this scene in the period 1998-2008 through the anti globalisation and climate camp movement and since then there seems to be few new people from that scene. However there also seems to be a influx of older social democrats, socialists, labour lefties who have got active again since the crisis hit.

I think we have seen two distinct type of organisations campaigning against the cuts develop. I call these the spectacular and the substantial.
Two spectacular organisations are UK Uncut and Occupy. They are both spectacular in the sense they want to create spectacles in the situationist sense. They are also spectacular because they are the rock stars of anti cuts movements. Receiving far more press attention then the other campaigns, groups or marches combined. However they are also less substantial then they appear.

UK uncut has done many actions against tax dodging  companies, got in the headlines for doing this and is one of the success stories of the anti cuts movement. Even Ed Miliband said he sympathised with UK Uncut.  However it sees it self and is best understood as a umbrella group and a type of protest carried out by militants who on the main spend most of their time involved in other more traditional campaigns.  Its great fun to get involved with, makes good points and draws people in. In that sense it has become a key part of the anti cuts movement whilst not claiming any kind of leadership or ownership of the movement.

The other major spectacular group Occupy may share some activists and press with UK Uncut but actually it is fundamentally different. Where as UK Uncut went out of its way to link up with other groups and is aware that its just one part of a wider movement, Occupy often sees itself as the movement against cuts/austerity/ capitalism itself. Whilst the press the original London camp gained initially did have some effect in the anti cuts fight on the whole Occupy has been self destructive and has damaged decent militants and taken some of them down dangerous paths. It needn’t always have been that way. In many countries Occupy type protests linked up with trade unionists and other activists, in Britain however it went wrong on day one. The failure to occupy the space outside the stock exchange led to it re-grouping on the Steps of St Paul’s Cathedral. If this was seen as a temporary stop before launching themselves against other capitalist or government institutions as a political protest this would have been fine. Instead the decision was made to stay and create this as a “space”. The meaning of the protest was subverted as it became about a tussle within the Church of England and the decision not to make demands of the government meant that the spokespeople for the camp wasted the exposure they got in the worlds media. From then on the situation degenerated. Cranks, Anti Semites and the apolitical started to descend on the camp and the leadership seemed to some believe their own self regarding propaganda and lost their message. The camp turned inwards and because obsessed with the importance of the “space” created which was after all just a pavement. Similar camps set up in different cities followed the same path. Soon all the best activists drifted away and  finally in the cold midwinter the camps died with a wimper, the entire movement lasted less then a year. Nothing remains but quite a lot of bitterness and a huge wasted opportunity.    

In most towns and cities there is a anti cuts group often formed initially by the trades council. These have always remained a key part of Anti Cuts activism and a central hub in each area this is why these groups are the substantial part of the movement. However in general they have not taken off in the way that would have been hoped. From the beginning they tended to be a sometimes uneasy alliance between the revolutionary left and local union leadership. Independent community activists often felt squeezed out. If the group survived the left wing groups tussling to get it aligned with Right To Work, Youth Fight for Jobs, People Charter or Coalition of Resistance etc (see below) another hurdle they often had to deal with was remaining relevant during the pension dispute. Often the groups just became auxiliaries during the strikes and run up to strikes, which meant there time table was set by the trade union leadership and few decisions were taken in the anti cuts group. Since the collapse of the pension dispute ant cuts groups often found themselves at a bit of a loss. However they remain centrally important and there is some signs of them sparking back in to life. Imagination and linking up with the NHS and tenant campaigns would seem to be the best way forward and the best way to get activists from and organic links with communities affected by cuts.

The most impressive and substantial activist group against the cuts is probably the various NHS groups often organised under the umbrella of Keep Our NHS public. Although the revolutionary left is involved its not dominant and it seems to have brought into activity a whole group of talented older people who may have dropped out of activity for several years. This is a developing arena of struggle but one possible pitfall is the labour party or union leadership trying to take control.

Finally a major obstacle for all the anti cuts groups of different stripes is the lack of a centralised united organisation that van help co-ordinate and call actions. Every city is seeming left to organise alone. The blame for this must surely lie with the Socialist Party, Socialist Worker Party and Counterfire. All three of them have there own undemocratic anti cuts front group that claims to speak for the movement. They all claim to be for unity of anti cuts groups but will not give up their own control. As a result It now looks like the Trade Union bureaucracy and the Communist Party in alliance with Counterfire have stepped in and are creating a Peoples Assembly Against Austerity. The problem with this is it supporters include people who have implemented and accepted cuts like the greens. The gravitational weight of an organisation with the support from the trade unions that the Peoples Assembly has makes it unlikely that a more radical genuine anti cuts national organisation can cohere.

The Labour War in Western Cape

For the last few months thousands of farm workers in South Africa's Western Cape region have been on strike.
Western Cape is one of the most profitable agricultural regions in the world with its wines, grapes and apples filling supermarket shelves in Britain and around the world as part of £850 Million export industry. However the around 500,000 mainly black agricultural workers remain working in dreadful conditions and for very low pay. The mimum wage is the equivalent of just under £5 a day and most workers do not get much more then that and many less.

The workers often are poorly housed on the farms themseves as tenants. Human Rights Watch listed serious problems such as exposure to pesticides and lack of access to clean water. Sick pay is often not paid and farmers managers have moved against union organisation.

Since november a rolling wave of strikes has spread demanding a minimum wage of the equivalent of £10.65 a day. Roads have been blocked, Hundreds of strikers have been arrested and three strikers have died. So far most of the Farms have refused to meet this demand and refuse to collectively bargain and in a latest move hundreds of stikers have been sacked and evicted from their tenancies on the big estates.

Nosey Pieterse an activist with the BAWUSA union said ""I do not know how many have been sacked but in one instance, truckloads of workers were dismissed. In Wolseley, trucks drove into townships and dumped the clothes of farmworkers that had been left behind on the farm,"

The Strikers are not only figting the estate owners, they are fighting the ANC led governement that has refused to raise the minimum wage or even properly enforce existing minimum wage and tencancy rights. This should once again show those on the left in Briatin who belive South African governement is in someway progressive that the leadership of the ANC and the South African Communist Party have become brutal agents of capital.

The strikers are also fighting the multinational retailers that have benefited massively from the poor wages in Western Cape to maximise profits on wine and fruit.    

BAWUSA and several other unions are involved in these strikes and they have put out a general call for a boycott of South African wine and fruit to put pressure on this largely export led industry. Nosey Pieterse says "The government should be forcing the farmers to the table but it is not," said Nosey Pieterse, secretary general of the Black Workers' Agricultural Sector Union, (Bawusa). "Our only weapon left is for the foreign retailers to pledge that unless the conditions are addressed, they will no longer import South African products."

To support the striking South African workers we can and should picket the big supermarkets in solidarity with South  African workers and to help ensure strikers demands are met and sacked strikers re-instated.

Murder and Nothing Else But Murder

At least 112 workers were killed in the fire on the 24th of November at the Tazreen Fashions garment factory in Dhaka, Bangladesh. They and dozens of others every years killed in garment factory fires were murdered both by a venal system but also by culpable individuals.

The mainly women workers in the factory were caught when a fire broke out on the ground floor of the factory. The Director of Fire Operations Major Mohammed Mabub said:
“The factory had three staircases, and all of them were down through the ground floor. So the workers could not come out when the fire engulfed the building.”
“Had there been at least one emergency exit through outside the factory, the casualties would have been much lower,”. 

Some workers jumped to their deaths out of window's to avoid the flames and smoke. Rescue workers have found many un-reconisable bodies so the workers families will not even have the closure of being able to bury their dead relatives.

This is merely the latest of many factory fires in the mainly export orientated garment sector in Bangladesh. At least 3.5 million workers across over 4000 factories work in the Garment Trade. 85% of these workers are women and often work up to 14-16 hour days. These garments are mainly sold to retailers in the west including companies such as Walmart (Asda), Primark, Tesco and  the Arcadia group.  

The owners of this factory and the thousands others like it in Bangladesh and the ruling class politicans of Bangladesh are guilty of murder in the name of profits. They have tolerated wilful violations of poorly enforced safety and health and conditions in the factories of Dhakha. They have not acted after previous incidents and need to be held to account for these deaths and the everyday conditions that can prove to be a slower more insidous death for malnourished overworked workers. 

The major western brands often state they inspect the factories and are intrested in improving the conditions. However these inspections are often announced allowing cosmetic changes to be made and corruption is not unknown to say the least. The prices demanded by the powerful western brands are deliberatley held down and are holding the workers in Bangladesh in misery. If a T Shirt cost £3 in British shops, you can imagine how little of that must be spent on workers wages, safety and wellbeing after the retailers, shippers, and suppliers take their cut of profits.    

Sam Mayer from Labour Behind The Labour said in a interview on the BBC World Service "after every fire we hear from the brands how sorry they are, but action is not taken.....They should be paying the price for the garment that alows factories to be decent".  

The board of Tesco, Walmart, Primark and Arcadia are well aware of the conditions within the factories and the deaths in Factory fires in the Garment industry in Bangladesh and other countries like Pakistan. They say they have acted to improve conditions but still these utterly avoidable deaths happen. As long as they extract vast profits from an industry in Bangladesh were sweatshops, long hours, pitiful pay and dreadful safety is the prevailing conditions they have blood on there hands.

In bangladesh itself unions like thre National Garment Workers Federation is organising mainy women workers for better pay and conditions and has led strikes. Only a strong workers movement there can improve these conditions. We must give pratical solidarity to these workers and aid their fight. 

However in countries like Britain we have a duty to hold the blood drenched directors of our majur retailers as complicit by failing to act wen people are being murdered in the name of profit. Our best tool is organising shopworkers and distribution workers here to fight for their own pay and conditions but also fighting with their brother and sister workers throughout the distribution chain  and building a movement that makes these executives fear the one weapon we have- solidarity

Fundamentally the economic system that rules our planet is guilty of the avoidable deaths of countless thousands of workers across the world. The only humane  and sane stance amongst such atrocity is the overthrow of the murderous rule of profit and the institution of the international rule of the working class.  
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