How to beat the racists

A programme to beat the racists

The Alliance for Workers’ Liberty fights for the following programme among socialists and activists in the trade unions, the Labour Party and the Socialist Alliances. We advocate they fight against capitalism and for a workers’ government. Only by providing positive working-class solutions to the racism and poverty which capitalism breeds can the labour movement unite workers regardless of race and stop the fascists’ attempts to scapegoat black people, asylum-seekers and others. Socialists must be part of the basic organisations of the working class, the trade unions, and help turn them...

Cut the roots of racism: fight for a workers' government!

“It’s been quite fun to watch Government ministers and the Tories play the race card. It legitimises us.” British National Party leader Nick Griffin “The emancipation of the working class is the emancipation of all human beings without distinction of race or sex.” Karl Marx In the 2001 General Election, the fascist British National Party more than tripled its average share of the vote. It won almost 12,000 votes across the two constituencies of Oldham, including 16.4 percent in Oldham West, the highest ever percentage vote for a fascist party in a British parliamentary election. Although the...

Scapegoating refugees: Labour's new racism

Anti-asylum bigotry is now the main cutting edge of British racism. The myth of masses of “bogus" asylum seekers descending on “soft touch" Britain and “pushing their way to the front of the queue, to get preferential treatment", has been peddled by every tabloid, and every pub bigot. The main perpetrators — the people who make this racism seem reasonable and respectable — are the leaders of the mainstream political parties. New Labour and the Tory Party have attempted to out-do each other in a battle to devise ever more draconian policy proposals, and ever more vicious targeting of some of...

Immigration: their lies and our replies

1. Britain is a "soft touch" for asylum seekers But who could reasonably think that asylum seekers living on 70% of income support, paid in vouchers, while being forcibly “dispersed” to areas where few people speak your language, housed in accommodation no-one else will touch and being prevented from working, means Britain is a “soft touch"? Britain is regarded as a mean and inhospitable place by many of the world's most vulnerable people. And that is a national disgrace. 2. Britain is being “flooded" by asylum seekers and immigrants Asylum seekers — refugees, in non-jargon language — are, in...

Police injustice UK

By Alan McArthur Police lawyers have been strong-arming cinemas to stop them showing Injustice, a powerful new documentary on deaths in police custody which exposes corruption and cover-up at every level of the criminal justice system. The film names officers responsible for deaths in custody and calls for them to be tried for murder. It follows the families of the dead through their attempts to establish the truth, documenting how, time and again, they meet a wall of official secrecy. Police lawyers have been scaring cinemas into cancelling showings of Injustice by threatening to sue for...

Mumia Abu Jamal

Mumia Abu-Jamal is a former Black Panther and an award-winning journalist. Mumia has been on death row since 1982, after he was wrongfully sentenced for the shooting of a police officer. New evidence, including the recantation of a key eyewitness as well as new ballistic and forensic evidence, points to his innocence. For the last 19 years, Mumia has been locked up 23 hours a day, denied contact visits with his family, had his confidential legal mail illegally opened by prison authorities, and been put into punitive detention for writing his book, Live From Death Row. His case is currently on...

Solidarity with the Roma

By Cathy Nugent During 2000, hysterical media debate about asylum seekers targetted gypsies, specifically Roma people from eastern Europe. The Roma people share the same roots, but are made up of many culturally diverse groups world wide. Not all gypsies are Roma. Roma asylum seekers in Britain are generally fleeing from persecution in the Balkans and eastern Europe. The persecution of Roma is centuries long and acute. For example, Roma were kept as slaves in the Balkans right up to the 19th century. And the Nazis built on Europe-wide “pass laws" (compulsory ethnic registration) for gypsies...

The police after Macpherson

By Sacha Ismail Anyone who has reported a robbery to the police knows how ridiculous the claim that they exist to stop crime is. The police do not exist to deal with the social problems bred by capitalist society, but to defend capitalism itself. That means that they are also defenders of the racism which the system breeds. It is no accident that so many police officers are themselves virulent and active racists, or that the police force has a serious problem with “institutional racism". Contrary to what senior police officers have repeatedly claimed, police racism is not just a reflection of...

Workers can unite, do unite

By Jim Denham Even in the midst of bitter industrial struggles, it is not uncommon to hear white trade unionists expressing racist views. In the 1970s the National Front could boast a number of shop stewards among its membership — including in the British Leyland Longbridge plant, then the largest and arguably best organised factory in Britain. Nevertheless, trade unions are vitally important in the fight against racism and fascism. Trade union campaigns and industrial struggles that emphasise the common class interests of all workers can at least begin to break down prejudice. The great...

What is fascism?

In order to beat the fascists we need to understand what they are — what fascism has been, and what it is now. Daniel Murphy outlines the arguments. The first fascist regime came to power in Italy in October 1922 under Benito Mussolini. A more virulent form followed in Germany — Adolf Hitler’s National Socialists (Nazis for short). Hitler ruled from 1933 until the defeat of Germany at the end of the World War Two. The Nazis were extreme nationalists, racists and anti-semites. They were to be responsible for the murder of many millions of Jews, gypsies and socialists who were gassed in the...

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