FOR SALE TO AN ENGLISH FAMILY THE
RACIST THREAT IN BRITAIN by ANDREW JENKINS At the beginning of this year, there was a great deal of official self-congratulation over the satisfactory state of race relations in Britain. Both Alex Lyon, the minisfer responsible for immigration and race relations, and a representative of the Pakistani Embassy announced that apart from a few loose ends that remained to be tied up (like the entry of the East African Asians who hold British passports and of the dependents of those immigrants who had arrived before 1973), Britain was well on the way to becoming a successful multiracial society. This mood was so pervasive that even Siva Sivanundan, a radical commentator on race questions, wrote that British capitalism was renouncing the use of racism and was embarked on a course of integrating the black middle class. An apparently acid test came when the racist demagogue Enoch Powell made a major speech accusing officials of producing fraudulently low figures on black immigration: the speech was greeted with near total apathy. Six months later, however, Alex Lyon had been sacked, two fascist candidates had been elected to local councils, the Tory press had lionized a National Socialist who had displayed a sign stating his refusal to sell his house to blacks, three black students had been murdered, and more than a thousand attacks on immigrants had been registered:
Shift in immigration policy It was not surprising that there was such a growth in racist activity. British capitalism's need to decisively change its pattern of immigration and its immigration laws had become pressing. Since the early 1950s, British capitalism had recruited black workers from the Commonwealth. These immigrants settled in the country and came to legally possess full civil rights. This put the immigrants in Britain in a far stronger position than those in other countries of West Europe, who generally entered on labor contracts for limited periods of time. Beginning in 1962, the ruling class started to limit the right of black Commonwealth citizens to enter the coun These moves were accelerated as the long capitalist boom came to its end and as British copitalism relinquished its imperial policy for one based on the EEC. One of the more embarrassing links with the old empire was the existence of several hundred thousand black people who held passports proclaiming that they were citizens of the United Kingdom and the Colonies and who thus had a right to enter Britain. The first attempt to qualify that right was carried out in 1968 by James Callaghan, then Labour Home Secretary, An Act was possed that stipulated that only those British passport holders who hod a connection with the United Kingdom by virtue of their own birth (or that of their father's or grandfather's) had an automatic right to enter the country. Full British citizenship hod become a function of color. The 1971 Immigration Act passed under the Tories ensured that future immigrants would not be allowed to settle but would come over on limited duration labor contracts and would be under police supervision and subject to savage deportation clauses. The effect of these laws was not merely to control immigration but to put pressure on those black workers already in the country. The final step needed to complete this process is the passage of a new British Nationality Act (Labour Home Secretary Roy Jenkins has recently announced that this is in preparation) that would make a clear distinction between a British passport holder and U.K. citizenship, so that only the latter would automatically have the right to enter the country. Another step aimed at finally ending the old pattern of Immigration will be to limit the right of existing immigrants to bring in their dependents, mainly from the Indian subcontinent. Part and parcel of this final pulling up of the draw-bridge on black immigration was the encouragement of racist moods among the white working class. Inciting the racist wave Part of the reason for the susceptibility of the working class to the racist offensive has been the extremely chauvinist strand within left Labourist ideology. The Labour lefts have waged a consistent campaign for import controls to "protect British jobs." This campaign allowed fascists to intervene in the trode unions and to point out that another logical way to protect British jobs was to get rid of the immigrants. Unfortunately, a section of the trade union bureaucracy has followed this path.
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BRITAIN The TUC Catering and Hotel Committee called on the Labour government to reduce the number of work vouchers for immigrants, a request that was soon granted. In February 1976 it was revealed that the Department of Employment, then run by the left-winger Michael Foot, had issued a memorandum stating that work permits would not be renewed for foreign workers if British nationals were available for work. It was also mode clear that these sackings would not be subject to appeal against unfair dismissal. Perhaps the worst example of this trend occurred in early June, at the height of the racist hysteria, when the TUC Hotel and Catering Committee went to the Home Office to ask for tighter controls to flush out "illegal" immigrants. The Committee demanded that the Immigration Act should be amended to force potential employers to check whether a foreign national seeking work had or needed to have a work permit." The final aspect that led to the upsurge of racism relates to the overall relationship of class forces in Britain. The Labour government has registered considerable success in forcing down the standard of living of the working class and in allowing profit levels to rise by means of the first phase of the "Social Contract. " Social expenditure has been restrained, which has meant a deterioration in educational, health, and housing provision at the same time as unemployment has been allowed to rise. In a situation in which the working class has suffered defeats, albeit not decisive ones, at the hands of the Labour government in alliance with virtually all of the trade-union bureaucracy, including the traditional lefts such as Jack Jones and Hugh Scanlon, it is not surprising that racist moods are erupting within the working class. In the absence of a fight back against the capitalist offensive, the white workers had become susceptible to racist agitation that made the blacks the scapegoats for the dole queues and the crumbling welfare state. The Tory party and the Tory press incited racist feelings among the working class with the aim of dividing it along lines of race in order to weaken opposition to further attempts to attack the standard of living of the workers and help prepare the ground for a Tory electoral victory if the Labour government outlived its usefulness. A recent study by Donley Studler found that the Tories gained an extra 6.7 percent of the votes in the 1970 election due to their harder stance against immigration, while a Community Relations Commission Report in October 1975 showed that Labour had been put into power in both February and October 1974 because the black vote just tipped the balance. There are limits to the extent to which the ruling class as a whole (as distinct from the particular interests of the Tory party) wishes to raise the degree of rocism in British society. Whereas the capitalists are happy to see a divided working class, at this stage they are not anxious to see an organized racist movement. The emergence of a fascist nucleus that is relatively large (for Britain) makes this problem more acute. If a racist movement did get out of hand, there would be an explosive response from the black workers. The strategy of the 18 capitalist class has been to operate within a framework of integration/selective repression. The racist 1968 Immigration Act was balanced by the 1968 Race Relations Act, which outlawed racial discrimination to a limited extent. The present project of passing a new British Notionality Act occurs of the same time as the passage through Parliament of a new and more stringent Race Relations Bill. Over the past period, however, the emphasis has swung toward selective repression. The police have been periodically unleashed to search for willegal" immigrants and have also engaged in systematic harassment of unemployed West Indian youth, At times, this has escalated into near or outright battles. The first indication that the surface calm did not reveal the real state of race relations in Britain came when Callaghan succeeded Wilson as leader of the Labour Party and Alex Lyon was sacked, Lyon was not a left-winger but rather belonged to the old Gaitskellite tradition, which was liberal on the issue of immigration and sentimental about the empire. Lyon has made it abundantly clear that he favors stopping further immigration but is anxious to wind up as quickly and humanely as possible the commitments to the 40,000 East African Asians and the some 100,000 wives and children of those who had entered Britain from the Asian subconfinent before 1973. From 1968 to 1970 the average yearly entry of black immigrants was 63,000. The Tories reduced this to 45, 000 between 1970 and 1972; in 1973, after the 1971 Act went into effect, the figure had Fallen to 34,000. By speeding up procedure and increasing quotas, Lyon raised the entry figure to 50, 000. A poll conducted by the Labour party among rank-and-File trade unionists indicated that immigration was regarded as the second most important issue, after inflation and unemployment, The dismissal of Lyon was regarded by the leaders of the immigrant communities as a sop to the racists and in line with Callaghan's reputation as a hard-liner on immigration. Lyon himself commented, "I have paid the price of trying to get justice for the blacks in this country. Jim has never had much time for those who espoused that cause." Lyon also made the point that the civil servants, who were under pressure from racist forces, had frustrated his aftempts to introduce reforms. He further argued that money had to be spent to combat the disadvantages suffered by inner-city blacks in order to avoid the development of an American situation.
The offensive begins In early May the news media splashed a story that two homeless Asian Families who had been expelled from Malawi had been put up in a luxury hotel by a Sussex local council at a cost of E600 a week. An orgy of racist headlines resulted on the themes that a new mass
"invasion" of Asians from Malawi was about to take place and that immigrants were scroungers who wanted to enter Britain to live off social security provided by the British taxpayer. There was an explosion of racist feeling. The Tory High Sheriff of Sussex called for the
establishment of a transit camp in the county for homeless Asian immigrants: "Let us make it as uncomfortable as possible." The accommodation provided, he said, should be "primitive. SOUTHALA YOUN MOVESS -MENT Powell entered the prejudice sweepstakes and was now able to gain a ready audience. He revealed that there was a secret Foreign Office report, which had got into his possession by some mysterious means, that showed that there was a massive traffic in "illegal" immigrants and that the number of dependents waiting to come in from the Indian subcontinent was limitless. He blamed the blacks for crime, civil unrest, and daily assaults on the police. He said he worried about guns and explosives being "injected" into the "picture. " The "thing" would go on until "Belfast today might seem an enviable place." Powell's answer to this apocalyptic threat was to stop all further immigration. All sections of the Tory party, "lefts" os well as right-wingers, joined in demanding stricter examination of immigrants before they were allowed to enter the country and restrictions on the entry rights of dependents. And Labour MPs were not left out. Bob Mellish, Labour Chief Whip under Wilson, called for a total ban on immigration: "This country has done all it should have done. Its record is one of great honour and integrity but I say 'enough is enough. 1" Callaghan's reply to the offensive of Powell was to hint that immigration control would be tightened. But the real action was on the streets. On May 22, two black students were stabbed to death in East London. By June 3 the Pakistani Embassy issued a statement that attacks on immigrants and their property had become "not uncommon. " Late on Friday, June 4, Gurdip Singh Chaggar was stabbed to death in Southall, an area of London containing many Asians, Thousands of Asians took to the streets to demonstrate against the murder. Organizations like the Southall Asian Youth Movement and the Asian Socialist Forum began to provide a lead for the Southall Asians and argued for militant self-defense of the community, as against the passivity of the "respectable" black leaders. Self-defense groups sprang up in a number of areas including Blackburn and the East End of London. On Sunday, June 7, a large demonstration of Asians went down to Southall police station and forced the police to release Asian youth who had been arrested earlier in the day. Praful Patel, a conservative Indian leader, commented, "Asian leaders are being rejected by the young militants.... If we are not seen to be doing something, the little respect we still have will be lost." An Asian Action Committee was set up by the community notables, which asked Callaghan to denounce the killing and to meet with them. Four days later, the convenor of the Committee, Shigbat Kadri, was quoted as saying, "To our utter shock and horror, we have not even received a reply." Eventually Callaghan did see the leaders. He gave a pledge that he would continue, as before, his opposition to racism but concentrated on telling the leaders that black vigilante groups would be dealt with severely. Floods of reports of racist assaults were received by Indian, Pakistani, and Bangladesh officials. In Barking 8 Asians were surrounded by 150 whites. The police intervened and arrested nine people, seven of whom were Asians. The new factor in the situation was the willingness of the black workers to take action on the streets. This had been seen over a period of months, as thousands of blacks had taken part in antifascist demonstrations. In Bradford on April 23, thousands of black youth had turned out and thoroughly frightened National Front demonstrators as well as the police who were escorting them on a march through a black area of the town. Bricks were thrown and police cars were overturned. After the Southall murder, the West Indian Standing Conference decided that community defense groups should be set up to "ward off attempts on the lives of black people." In Blackburn, where racist assaults were faking place at the rate of three or four a day, the Indian Workers Association was considering the defense perimeter that might have to be established around the immigrant area. The readiness of the blacks to defend themselves cooled the ardor of the "respectable" racists of the ruling class, as they began to see that the price they might have to pay for stirring the racist pot could be the loss of control of many city centers. The fascists have been able to gain extensively from the racist upsurge. At the beginning of this year they had been in some disarray. The largest of the fascist organizations, the National Front (NF), had split, a minority leaving to form the National party (NP). The National party denounced the Front as being an undemocratic organization controlled by Hitlerites, while the NF denounced the NP as consisting of an alliance between agents of the Tory party and neo-Marxists. Both organizations are in fact fascist but deny the fact for cosmetic reasons, since fascism has non-patriotic connotations in Britain. Both groupings did well in the May local electiors, polling a total of nearly 90,000 votes, together with some smaller organizations. In Blackburn, a town with a large immigrant community and a declining textile industry, the National party
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BRITAIN won two seats in what had previcusly been safe Labour wards. These victories were helped by the Tory party's not fielding candidates or a full slate of candidates in these wards. The average vote won by all fascist candidates in Blackburn was ground 37 percent. A spokesperson for the Labour group commented that they were worried by the fascist victories, but not more so than they would be if Communists had won. The fascist victories made Blackburn one of the worst areas for racist assaults the following month. On May 22, an antifascist demonstration had to be protected by police with drawn batons from attack by hysterical bystanders. In Bradford, another textile town, the National Front polled well in the working class wards, particularly the ward where the Mayor stood. Significantly, the ward where the black youth had attacked the fascist demonstration went agairst the national pattern and was a Labour gain from the Tories. In Leicester the NF won 18.56 percent of the vote compared with 35.3 percent for Labour and did particularly well in Labour-controlled council estate wards against established right-wing Labour figures such as the previous Lord Mayor and another ex-Lord Mayor who had, when in office, placed advertisements in East African papers advising Asians not to come to Leicester. In one ward the NF come within sixty-three votes of winning the seat. The Leicester Labour leader, the Rev, Ken Middleton, hoped that it was a "passing phase, a moment of aberration" and argued against those local Labour party members who were taking part in ontifascist activity. But where Leicester antifascists had been actively campaigning there was a noticeable decline in the NF vote. Unfortunately, electoral support for the NF has not proved to be just a passing phase. In a London borough by-election held in a solid Labour area on July 1 Labour got 43.5% of the vote, the NP 26%, the NF 18.5%, and the Tories 12%. The combined fascist vote was thus greater than that for Labour. Response of the workers movement At this stage, there is no possibility of the capitalist class seriously backing the fascists, but there has been a clear demonstration that racism can be used to divide the working class and was one of the factors enabling the Tories to win seats in the local elections in May. The response of the Labour movement to the racist upsurge has been either inadequate or pernicious. The Labour government has announced that it will consider opening a register of dependents of immigrants who have already come into the country. This will inevitably lead to a tightening up of controls. A number of local Labour leaders have demanded a ban on immigration. The Labour Party Organizing Committee, however, hos called for an antiracist campaign, but it is difficult to establish what, if anything, is being done. The only clear call was to argue that Labour party members should not join in counterdemonstrations against the NF and other racist groups. Otherwise the Labour and trade- union lefts have maintained a stiff-lipped silence on the issue. The Communist party has been involved in organizing conferences and marches against racism, but its political line has been bad. It has avoided taking a clear attitude of opposition to all immigration legislation. Its central slogan has been "One Race - the Human Race, " which is intended to electrify such crucial layers as progressive clergy and mild liberals. The central thrust of the CP has been for strengthening the new Race Relafions Bill so that the state will be forced to outlaw racism. And this in spite of the fact that race relations legislation is inherently limited, as has been shown by the actions of Robert Relf. Relf, a self-confessed admirer of Hitler, was put into prison in early May for contempt of court after refusing to take down a sign outside his house which read, "For sale to an English family, " in contravention of the Race Relations Act. Relf commented, "We have come to a sorry pass where an Englishman has been gooled for putting Britain first. " The Tory press built Reif up into a folk hero. A rash of similar signs were put up and collection sheets were passed around many factories. Six weeks later an embarrassed government managed to engineer the release of Relf, who was greered by a triumphant fascist. welcoming committee. Relf has now joined the NF and will be going on a speaking tour. At about the same time as Relf was being released, the police arrested an antifascist in Rotherham for painting the slogan "Black and white unite and fight" - and the charge was brought under the Race Relations Act. The use of racism by the British ruling class cannot be seen as merely on isolated incident. Although it does have its limits, as mentioned above, this weapon has proved too useful not to be used ogain. Even if the racists win their battle to prevent any further black immigration, they can then start their clamor to begin the repatriation of blacks. It has become a major priority for revolutionaries to begin the process of building al long-term antiracist campaign among the working class. It is necessary to win advanced sections of the workers to the ideas of black self-defense as a first step to the self-defense of the entire workers movement. All immigration controls must be opposed. In order to explain this to workers who believe that the crisis of social expenditure and unemployment are caused by immigration, it is crucial, within the context of supporting all immediate struggles against the employers offensive, to pose an action program for a working-class solution to the crisis. The racists inside the labor movement have to be kicked out and the fascists driven off the streets. There is a lesson of the past few months which, if learned, may enable the British left to come out of this period stronger than when it entered it. The immense trodeunion strength of the working closs in Britain cannot compensate for its low political level. The struggle to build a mass left current that can defeat the present offensive of the employers requires a consistent fight against weaknesses of the working class such as sexism, anti-Irish chauvinism and, above all, racism. O
On August 25, with the vacation period not yet over, Jacques Chirac publicly abandoned his post as French Prime Minister, which automatically entailed the resignation of the government. President of the Republic Valery Giscard d'Estaing named another government. Apart from the facts that the technocrat Raymond Barre, who is politically unaffiliated, took the place of Chirac, a member of the Gaullist Union des Démocrates pour la République (UDR - Union of Democrats for the Republic), that three or four ministers were replaced, and that several others switched posts, it could seem as though nothing important had happened. Nevertheless, this shake-up of ministers has generated considerable emation in the political world of the French bourgeoisie. It was learned from the parties concerned themselves that Chiras had wanted to resign as early as July 26 and that he had remained at his post at Giscard's request. The causes of the governmental changes reveal the depth of the crisis brewing in France. In taking his leave Chirac declared that he was doing so because he no longer possessed "the necessary means with which to effectively fulfill" his functions, which is another way of saying that Giscard had not provided him with these "means." For his part, Giscard, after recalling that according to the constitution he is number one in the country and the prime minister is subordinate to him (which was not contested by Chirac in any case), added that the former minister had not assembled a coherent team around himself and that during the recent session of parliament the parties had "exercised excessive influence on governmental action, " thus accusing Chirac of having dragged his feet when it was necessary to line up the UDR group, which hod rebelled against a bill Giscard strongly supported. Above all, Giscard explained that there had been a disagreement between him and Chiroc, the premier desiring to proceed to early parliamentary elections this autumn, while Giscard advocated waiting until the regularly scheduled elections of 1978. The real explanation for the change in goverment lies in this disagreement and the factors that gave rise to it. Problems of the Bonapartist regime To understand the deeper significance of the government change, it must first be recalled that the Fifth Republic has a Bonapartist constitution tailored to fit De Gaulle. It is not true, as was claimed by P. Viansson-Ponté writing in the August 26 Le Monde, that with the departure of Chiroc "it is the breakup of the regime. perhaps the end of the Fifth Republic... and the advent of the Sixth Republic." No one has yet offered a definition of this Sixth Republic; in any case, it will be born not of a simple change in government, but rather of a gigantic social and political crisis with great political confrontations (which may be placed on the agenda sooner than is generally thought). In the meantime, the Bonapartist regime has outlived De Gaulle. It was, as we wrote at the time, "a Bonapartism without a Bonaparte." But someone had to occupy the place of the Bonaparte, left vacant by the departure of De Gaulle. There were some deputy Bonapartes and even deputy
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