comrade to his feet. It would have been more realistic for the TUC to have been depicted putting the boot in and if the fallen worker was a black, putting both boots in.
To put it bluntly, the trade-union leadership as a whole, not just the worthies of the TUC, is one of the main props of racism in this country. This has been recently highlighted by the fact that the Immigration Act was allowed to become law with no real opposition from the unions. Thus in the case of the Industrial Relations Act the unions did at least organise meetings, rallies, massive demonstrations, etc., though even in this case the only meaningful weapon at the disposal of the trade union movement-the General Strike -was not used. In the case of the Immigration Act, opposition didn't even get this far and was confined to mere words. Even in their demagogy the T.U. leaders were pathetic. Their basic assumption was that the Immigration Act was nowhere near as important" as the Industrial Relations Act. Moreover we are here talking about an Act whose main aim is not simply to terrorise black workers as an end in itself (although it will undoubtedly accomplish this with its provisions: for their first five years in this country blacks will only be able to change their jobs with government permission; they will have to re-apply to the government every year merely to stay here and that, in any case, they can be deported if their deportation is conducive to public good "). In spite of all this the main aim of the Act is to attack the whole of the working class by attempting to create a pool of low-paid potential black scabs whenever strikes occur. Hence the Immigration Act (IA) is of equal "importance' as the I.R. Act. Racism and the Trade-Union Leadership Though its response to the lA is perhaps the most blatant example of the 'concern" shared by the T.U. leaders for the black workers, yet it is not the only one. The TU bureaucracies are every day either passively tolerating or actively promoting racism. One instance of this is their refusal to even mention, leave alone fight, the massive wage differentials which exist between black and white workers. Thus in 1966, taking income per head as the measure, the average for Asians was 13% less than the overall population and that for West Indians 30% below. Again in its much-vaunted campaign against unemployment, the TUC makes no mention of the way in which blacks are doubly exploited in this respect, as blacks and as workers. If Vic Feather wants to forget about this he should keep away from Bradford, where blacks represent 1/10th of the potential labour force and constitute ¼ of the unemployed.
However, one of the more disgraceful aspects of the TU leaderships is the way they tolerate and promote racism within the TU movement itself:
a) The most obvious example of this is the Courtalds strike of black workers in 1965 in Preston, Lancashire Here the total workforce was 2,400. Two workshops consisted entirely of black workers, 120 West Indians and 610 Asians.
The management and the union officials (T&GWU) agreed jointly to impose on these two black departments 1½ times extra work for a certain bonus. The black workers refused, organised a sit-in and converted it into a strike.
The white workers did not come out in support. The TGWU declared the strike to be unofficial. Further they stigmatised it as a 'racial" strike because, they said, only black workers were involved. The local Trades Council secretary declared; "If they don't like it here, there are plenty of trains, boats and planes to take them back."
Since they were completely isolated the workers returned to work after three weeks. The management then forced all the workers, including those who had not struck, to do the extra work for their bonus.
b) Another example relates to the Qualitex factory in Purnley. Here the management trained 8 Pakistanis to te crimping machines. The workers in the all-white mping department refused to let the Pakistanis work re. A Mr. Ronald Tee, a crimper and a local branch mittee member of the Preparatories Workers Union There are 4000 employees at the Mill, 70 of whom e Paristanis. Many of us feel that is quite enough. We on't want our departments flooded with them." At this stage the dividing line between tolerating racism and encouraging it becomes somewhat narrow.
c) Perhaps the most classic example of racism is shown by the remark of a union official concerning a strike by blacks in protest against bad working conditions; "They do not understand that we do not go on strike. There is •Itural problem of getting them to understand our Now we can see what Jack Jones meant when he said at a Conference on racial discrimination: "We believe in the brotherhood of Man."4 What he really meant to say. perhaps, was that he believed in the brotherhood of white men.
Racism Structurally Part of the Working Class To understand how racism is consolidated in the working class, it is necessary to examine not only the role of the trade-union bureaucrats, but also that of the two parties which have a certain degree of influence in the working clas class: the Labour Party and the Communist Party. The former still dominates the ideas of millions of workers and the latter has an organisational and an ideological hold over a few thousands of advanced workers, represented in every major industry in the country and fairly dominant in the West of Scotland. The role of these parties taken together with the role of the trade-union bureaucracies explains why racism is structurally part of the Labour movement.
Of course the precise way the structural relationship of the Labour Party, Communist Party and T.U. leadership to the working class, operates, differs in each case. In particular the LP and the CP are political parties (albeit social-democratic and Stalinist). The trade-unions, on the other hand, are the basic organisations of the workers, created to defend living standards and to lead the daily economic struggles of the class, even if with treacherous bureaucratic leaderships and lack of internal democracy. The importance of these differences is that the LP and the CP determine the consciousness of the class, they don't merely reflect it. Thus the Labour Party is one of the factors determining the extent of racism in the working class. Given the historic function of social-democracy in Britain-i.e. to preserve the capitalist system in Britain and to sell this idea to the workers it dominates-its role in encouraging racism cannot, therefore, be seen in terms of a sell-out". The TU's on the other hand, being defensive organisations, are objective necessities for the class. Here though sellouts' occur they are obviously not an inevitable result of T.U. organisation as such. They occur because of the politically corrupt nature of the bureaucratic leaderships of the trade-unions, and it is these bureaucracies which where the TU leadership both tolerates and encourages racism within the TU movement itself.
While the CP, the LP and the TU leaderships might have different structural relationships with the class, yet the main purpose of this article is to show that racism does in the organisations of the class itself.
Racism and the Labour Party The first point to make here is that-contrary to the progressively weaker assertions of the Labour "left'-the support of racism by the Labour Party is nothing new.
It is not a question of the LP betraying a Socialist past.
It has never had a socialist past. Thus the pre-war LP was one of the staunchest supporters of the British Empireand it later granted 'independence to India only under imperialism could convert its colonial relationship with the sub-continent into that of neo-colonialism. Again, it was Wilson who sent troops into the Irish colony.
Again many examples can be given of the way the LP workers.e.ga) Role of the LP is clearly seen in respect to its part in the recent history of so-called "immigration control".
Here the only difference between the LP and the Tories has not been over their support for control-only over its timing and over which party happened to be in office at the time. Thus when the first controls were brought in (1962) the Labour Party was in the political wilderness and Gaitskell spoke out in it became apparent Labour had a chance of regaining power, it stated in its election Manifesto: "Labour be limited. Until a satisfactory agreement covering this can be negotiated with the Commonwealth, a Labour government will retain immigration control.
to bring in its own racist legislation. Most obvious 1968—whose purpose was not to keep out all Kenyans, not to keep out those who had come from England to plunder Kenya. Its purpose was to keep out black again are one of the factors determining the consciousness of the class. This is particularly the case as regards racism, not exist in the abstract, but is very concretely manifested the pressure of the mass movement and then only so that has actively encouraged racism between black and white Parliament against them (though of course this was even then the limit of its opposition). However by 1964 when accepts the number of immigrants entering the U.K. must b) Again, when LP came to power it was quite prepared example of this is the notorious Kenyan Asians Act" of Kenyans and, more particularly, those of Asian parentage who had opted to reain their British citizenship when Kenya became 'independent' in 1963.
Now the reason why the LP supports and initiates such racist legislation is not so much that psychologically its leadership is racist (although this is probably also true). Rather it is that asa Party it is committed to maintaining capitalism-and what capitalism needs now in its crisis is a reduced work force and a racially antagonistic work force which is unable to unite against the bosses. c) Given this basic assumption, the LP's support for racism can only be understood in class terms and not in terms of individual psychology. Yet it is one of the signs of the total bankruptcy of the LP that even within its own ranks it is racist-and even acknowledges itself to be racist. Perhaps the most startling example of this occurred in July of this year. Here the Bradford City LP refused to let a Pakistani member of the LP stand for the local Council. The National LP admitted that this was on manifestly racist grounds, but as Harry Nicholas, the party General Secretary stated, he did not propose to do anything about it as "There is a whole group involved"!€ In other words Labour can't attack racism as this woul mean attacking itself. Another example occurred in July 1968 when Clifford Kenyan, the Labour MP for Chorley sent a letter to a Jamaican family, whose neighbours had been complaining about "late' parties, threatening them with a House of Commons investigation(!) and telling them 'you may be required to return to the land from which you came*?. Once again, the LP did nothing about this. Indeed it could hardly do anything, as the day Kenyan wrote this letter Roy Jenkins, who was then Home Secretary, was refusing to allow Stokely Carmichael back into England because of his support for Black Power. Racism and the Communist Party In respect to racism, as in respect to everything else, the CP attempts between reformist and blatently counterrevolutionary postures. Thus two examples can be given of the CP leadership's reformist posture. a) The Morning Star (Oct. 5th 1971) proclaimed that the *Community Relations Council should be in the forefront of the fight against the Immigration Bill'. Now the Community Relations Council was set up by the (Labour) government under its Race Relations Act 1968. The Race Relations Act was on the one hand a sop to liberal opinion. On the other hand it was actually a way of clobbering blacks even harder. Thus the criminal provisions of the Act against 'inciting racial hatred' has never been used against the Powellites and fascists-instead the only people who have been convicted under this provision have been black militants for fighting against racism and in particular against the racist police. Therefore what the CP want is that the institutions of the bourgeois state be used to fight (or rather lead the fight!) against racism. Whereas in fact it is precisely the Capitalist State which needs racism to divide the working class. b) Another aspect of the CP's reformism was its so-called anti-Immigration Bill demo held last month in London.
The first point to note about this national mobilisation called by an organisation which claims about 30,000 members, is that it attracted something like 60 people.
The only conclusions to be drawn from this is that either the CP leadership is not really concerned with racism and its rally was a deliberate sham or else today it is so organisationally (as well as ideologically) bankrupt that it is only capable of mobilising 0.002% of its membership and 0.0% of its sympathisers. In fact these conclusions are not mutually exclusive and both are correct. Again, the reformism of the CP was shown by the solution it offered as a "cure' to racism-merely a Labour Government Well, comrades of the CP, if you don't agree with The Red Mole on this point just read Lenin ("The Labour Party is not a political workers party but a thoroughly bourgeois party".) Moreover the only way we can begin to destroy racism is to destroy the bourgeoisie-i.e. to destroy capitalisr However, the CP is not merely a reformist outfit. It is also explicitly counter-revolutionary (as opposed to the implicit counter-revolution of its reformism). Again many examples can be given of this:
a) The Australian CP in practice supports the white only' immigration policy of this and previous Australian governments. The British CP leaders have never uttered one word of criticism of this.
b) Again the British CP is actually prepared to organise and participate in joint demonstrations with the National Front-i.e. with self-acknowledged racists and fascists. This occurred in the CP's anti-Common Market rally where CP members and fascists marched side by side. Indeed the Morning Star published a photo of the rally on its front page with the fascists' Union Jacks figuring prominentlyand with one of the more prominent banners blaming Heath for "corrupting our children' by first letting in "wogs and now "wops'. The Morning Star made no comment on any of this-and indeed praised in general terms the attendance of so many organisations on the demo!
all fascist organisations, actually joins with them on an anti-Common Market domo is in part a reflection of CP's own national chauv inism-the same chauvinism on which racism is founded. Thus the CP leadership is against the Common Market on the grounds that it will undermine the influence of 'our" Parliament-in other words what the CP wants is that only British capitalists should have controi of British Capital. You cannot defend the interests of the British working class by choosing between two sets of capitalists. You can do so only by stressing the unity of the British and European workers against capitalist Europe and pose the question of a workers' Europe, ie. a Red Europe. Since the CP does not believe in proletarian internationalism it chooses this particular phase of the decline of capitalism to pander to the worst aspects of British chauvinism. Now the CP has not only decided to support one lot of capitalists-it has also decided to support the lot which is based exclusively on all the rotten, chauvinistic, jingoist racism with which the capitalists here so engulfed the working class, i.e. it has decided to support the little Englanders". This is why it is quite natural for the Stalinists to march with the fascists and the racists. c) One of the features of Stalinism is the way it conceals counter-revolutionary practice behind revolutionary rhetoric. As regards racism this is seen very clearly in the CP's much vaunted campaign here in respect to Angela Davis. At first sight this seems to be based on revolutionary internationalism-in fact it is just the opposite. Thus at its best it is a pretty liberal effort -the main emphasis being on bail for Angela Davis (why not her immediate release?) and a mass petition in the States (petitions being a typical CP manoeuvre precisely to avoid revolutionary politicis, as in themselves they neither commit anyone to do anything or raise anyone's consciousness). However, at its worst the whole Angela Davis Campaign as run by the CP in Britain is a piece of sheer opportunism, cynically calculated to direct attention away from racist attacks on blacks here. In the last issue of The Red Mole it was shown how the bourgeois press was only too willing to give coverage to racist frameups and murders in the States-Angela Davis, Johnathan Jackson, Rap Brown, etc. precisely because these are happening 3000 miles away. It gives hardly any coverage to similar events here-indeed its publicity of what is going on in the USA is precisly to distract attention away from here. Moreover the CP uses exactly the same tactic. In particular at a time it is devoting a large amount of energy to the Angela Davis Campaign it hardly ever mentions the current frame-up of the Mangrove Nine here. Indeed it plays down the frame-up. This was clearly seen at the large Angela Davis meeting, the CP held in London, which attracted over 3000 people and which occurred the week the Mangrove trial began. Some of the more noticeable features of this meeting were (a) No-one from the Mangrove was on the platform (b) the CP only eventually allowed a comrade to speak under pressure-and then he was slow hand-clapped (c) When the Black Panther paper describing the frame-up was passed to the Chairman, he said he didn't know what it was referring to (d) A C1000 was collected at the meeting- and of course the Stalinists were not prepared to offer any of this to the Mangrove Nine who desperately need it (e) Again no attempt was made to mobilise the 3,000 present in support of the Mangrove 9-through a demo outside court, etc. Of course, revolutionary internationalists working in England, the only meaningful support we can give to Angela Davis is to help link up her struggle with the struggle of black militants and against racism here. This means giving full support to the Mangrove 9. It is just this link which the CP will not make-because to make it would put it in a position of having to fight racism here. THE CHANGE IN THE BOURGEOISIE'S NEED FOR A CHAUVINISTIC LABOUR MOVEMENT Lenin wrote extensively of the effect British imperialism i.e. Britain's vast colonial possessions and monopolist position in world markets, had on the consciousness of the working class. In particular he emphasised how the bourgeoisie, through imperialism, had materially "bought-off" sections of the working class, in particular the craft unions and the labour aristocracy'-i.e. it bought off these sections by giving them a share in the loot stolen from the colonial proletariat. As a consequence of this, the Labour Aristocracy identified its own interests with those of the bourgeoisie as opposed to the interests of the proletarians of the colonial countries.
However, international capitalism is today by no means at the same stage as it was 50 years ago. Thus Lenin wrote at a time of the rise of imperialism, when the bourgeoisie needed to propogate a chauvinist ideology to justify its imperialist plundering. It was then quite correct to speak of a labour aristocracy which had a definite material base for chauvinism in the loots of imperialism. Today we are in a period of decline and crisis of imperialism. It is no longer better off materially than the rest of labour nationally and internationally. For instance, it is no longer timely to refer to the T.U. bureaucracy as a labour aristocracy in that its reactionary position is not so much determined by their relatively better material standards (which, because of the decline in British imperialism, is often marginal) instead it is determined by their whole status as bureaucrats and by the LP.
Today we are in a situation where the British bourgeoisie, in its decline, uses racist ideology not so much to justify plundering of colonial lands-though this of course is still though a threatened bourgeoisie uses racism to divide the working class here so as to prevent it fighting back against the bourgeoisie's own survival. This means it is no longer enough for the bourgeoisie that a part of the working class is chauvinistically antagonistic to the colonial proletariatinstead it has to ensure that the whole of the working class is racially divided here.
This is why the main purpose of this article is to see how, just as the bourgeoisie now needs to intensify racism, so also this intensification does not take place in an abstract way. One concrete way is through explicitly racist propaganda. Another way is through racist education. However, working class itself. Thus the question of how racism is becomes of crucial importance in a period of imperialist decline.
IMPLICATIONS OF THE STRUCTURAL RACISM IN THE LABOUR MOVEMENT Once it is understood that racism is structurally in-built in the labour movement then certain other conclusions follow! a) It shows the organisational hold racism has on the working class. Thus in discussing racism in the class with black and white workers have come out together or that, this, revolutionaries are apt to quote individual instances of racism by workers-e.g. attacks on Pakistanis, dockers marching in favour of Powell, etc. However this method of argument is meaningless. It is not a psychological subjectively racist or not-examples can always be given either way for this. Rather the real poiltical problem is that the working class holds allegiance to organisations whose role as organisations (and in the case of the TU's the leadership of such organisations) is precisely to promote racism within the class and thus mobilise it against itself. b) From the point of view of black people, this structural racism of the working class is the reverse side of the coin hand the State attacks blacks both materially -excessive 9, murder of a black by Leeds police, etc. On the other movement and indeed is frequently attacked by that movement. c) This again explains why blacks have formed their own and the Black Panthers. It is ridiculous and non-Marxist The working class already is divided. The problem is precisely how to get unity-and the basic prerequisite for such unity is for blacks to assert themselves. Again it is no use advising blacks to fight racism by joining their local union (which is the advice given by Mike Caffor in his IS pamphlet on racism) without at least recognising that racism has to be fought within the unions as well.
class also makes it easy to understand why opposition to the Immigration Act was so token.
Immigration Act helps-paradoxically-to refute the argument of black organisations such as the BUFP that fascism already exists here. Now what fascism means is democracy-which means the destruction not only of all parliamentary form of government itself. It is an extraparliamentary counter-revolutionary movement. This is time to speak of a labour aristocracy which is quantitatively their strong ideological and organisational ties to the CP and one use, particularly in respect to Ireland. More particularly it in its weakened state. Indeed racism is now necessary for the main way is structurally through the organisations of the structurally incorporated in the labour movement-and how the racism of the class is determined by its own organisationsclass conscious workers, revolutionaries are usually met with the objection that eg. there have been many strikes where e.g. there is no racial friction in a particular factory. Against question of whether some particular groups of workers are of the daily attack on them by capitalism. Thus on the one unemployment, bad housing, etc.-and physically-Mangrove hand blacks can expect to receive no help from the labour organisations-such as the Black Unity and Freedom Party for the Socialist Labour League9-to declare that such organisations are dividing the working class and are 'class enemies". against oppression. d) This structural implantation of racism within the working Moreover the acceptance by the labour movement of the 4 Ibid.
the complete destruction by the bourgeoisie of bourgeois organisations of the working class but also of the bourgeois what occurred with the Nazis in a period of capitalist crisis, when capitalism needed to re-assert itself. None of this though has happened here. Indeed one of the factors that revolutionaries have to take into account today, is that notwithstanding the present crisis of capitalism, bourgeois democracy is still strong precisely because the working class is still imbued with parliamentary illusions. In other words, one of the features of present day British politics is that the bourgeoisie don't have to resort to fascism to bring in its anti-working class measures such as the Immigration Act and the Industrial Relations Act.
The fatal mistake the German Stalinists made in the 1930's was to regard fascism as having come into existence three years before the Nazis in fact came to power. In these years the Stalinists refused to work in a united front with the social democratic Trade Unions-denouncing them as social fascists. Consequently when the Nazis did seize ower the working class was totally split and divided Now of course the BUFP has neither the political strengti nor the overall political perspectives of the Stalinists. However it will make big political mistakes in its own development unless it realises that the passing of the Immigration Act and Industrial Relations Act does not mean fascism is here-and unless it does not underestimate the hold parliamentary democracy has on the class. BLACK OPPRESSION AND IRISH OPPRESSION The final point to notice is the way the labour movement has played on almost analogous reactionary role as regards the question of Irish independence from British imperialism as it has in respect to the oppression of black workers. Indeed the chauvinism of the labour movement in respect to Ireland is much akin to the situation when Lenin was writing 60 years ago about the need for English socialists to campaign in favour of Irish independence. Marx, Engels and Lenin all saw that there is no chance of British workers making the revolution here unless they are prepared to break with their own bourgeoisie and support the struggle of Irish workers for self-determination. This is precisely why the IMG as Trotskyists, as Marxist-Leninists, gives unconditional support to the IRA as it leads a struggle against British imperialism in Ireland. This is in spite of the fact that as marxists we have many criticisms of both the sections of the IRA. This is exactly the same as our unconditional support for all black organisations struggling -S. Cohen 1 Became law on 28th October -with no mention from the bourgeois or revolutionary press. 2 Quoted in The Position of Black People in Britain, published by Students Union at the School of African and Oriental Studies. 3 Quoted on p.9 of The Trade Union Movement & Discrimination by the Runnymede Trust 5 Many more examples can be found in The Position of Black People in Britain. 6 The Guardian, July 18, 1971. 7 The Daily Telegraph, July 10, 1971 8 The Red Mole,No. 32 9 Workers Press, November 6, 1971.
The Red Mole 29th November 1971 Page 7
----- pull-quotes -----
T.U.C.'s Acceptance of the Immigration Act Above the Great Russell Street entrance to the TUC headquaters in London is a larger-than-life statue of a worker, representing the TUC, helping a fallen
Labour Movement. The fact that the CP leadership instead of trying to smash