Not a book to read, but to raid for information. Embedded in the considerable detail amassed in this academic study of the British Union of Fascists of 1932-40 are several key pointers to the practical lessons which anti-fascists today must learn about their opponents on the extreme right. However it requires effort to extract them, since the only concern of the author is to vindicate the "institutional pluralism" of British society, which rescued our "civil democracy from Mosleyite agitation. Amid the current widespread chatter about the Tories "drifting towards a corporate state", this book may remind readers of the actual relationship between fascist movements and the capitalist state. Benewick traces the development of the main precursor of the BUF, the "British Fascisti", founded in 1923. They briefly hidnapped Harry Pollitt in 1925 and sought semi-military mobilisations "against communism", to protect the state even under the detested Macdonald Labour Government. The specific issue which split and destroyed their organisation was the question of cooperation with the government-approved Organisation for the Maintenance of Supplies to defeat the 1926 General Strike (i.e. the need for continuing separate defence mechanisms for capitalism).
FIRST LESSON The first lesson from these pages of history is that fascism is an attempt to build a mass movement that will destroy working-class organisation and ultimately subjugate the class through a new "corporate" state-structure - a phenomenon quite distinct from repressive tendencies on the part of an established capitalist state 5 March 1973 Dear Red Mole, Bob Purdie started off on a false premise in the debate on Ireland. He started off by saying that the IMG had a lot in common with the Militant. mis aratude was that the Militant was sincere, and that disagreement was only about strategy and tactics. But is the Militant sincere? At the meeting all they showed was an arrogant display of British chauvinism and racialtreating them in a friendly and comradely spirit. Haddon of the Militant didn't say that his Protestant neighbour who was shot by Republicans had been found with another Protestant, both armed, in the Catholic Unity Flats. What does Haddon expect Irish workers to do? Turn the other cheek? Or say. *Father forgive them for they know not what they do? No wonder Irish workers didn't want Haddon in their neighbourhood either, and kicked him out! Why didn't Haddon explain all this to the meeting? It was very dishonest of him not to tell the audience. Ernie Roberts was not a neutral chairman. Why did the IMG not expose the partiality of the chairman? His union, the AUEW, has taken no action against the fascist politics of many of its members in Belfast. Taffe said on the platform that the Militant support the right of Irish workers to defend their own neighTaffe in 1970 attacked the Provisionals in Ballymacarratt and Ardoyne for defending their neighbourhoods, Even the British Army admitted at that time that Catholics were under attack.
The Militant is really trying to cover up for the British loyalists, under the pretence of standing for working ciass unity, in tact uncy really condemn Irish workers for defending themselves. But it is a fact that the Provisional IRA has so far proved the most reliable weapon of the workers in Northern Ireland. All the Militant talk about a trade union defence force is simply pie in the sky. The northern Ireland workers are divided by British imperialism.
The trade unions are completely divided. Many of them reek of British chauvinism. Let the Militant answer this - how can there by any kind of working class unity without unity in action against British imperialism?
A recent issue of the Militant had a main article headed "Terrorism Leads to Repression'. What a liberal, cowardly, pacifist headline! At least one of their Irish members refused to sell that issue. The Militant line goes all the way with the attempt by fascist organisations such as the UDA and UVF to portray themselves as working-class.
Why did the IMG not attack the Militant for supporting the Northern Ireland Labour Party? This party supports the domination of northern Ireland by British imperialism, it is a typical chauvinist labour"
party. At the same time as Militant was telling Irish The Fascist Movement in Britain, by Robert Benewick (Allen Lane/Penguin Press £1-60p) / Richard Neubauer using its traditional forces.
Secondly the book shows the understanding of the BUF that the organised working-class, as their principal physical obstacle to success, required special attention in agitational work. In mid-1936, a rally was attempted at Tonypandy involving distribution of a pamphlet called The Miners Only Hope and in the autumn of the same year the BUF were sued for libel by the executive of the AEU over a booklet Fascism and the Trade Unions, which demagogically attacked the privileges of union bureaucrats. Part of the fascist propaganda for a corporate state system included a "Charter of Labour" concerning working conditions and employee benefits. That these efforts attracted little success owed much to the higher political awareness of sections of the working-class than 1s often to be found today. The growing tradeunion work of various modern fascist groupings demands serious attention, in the light of this history.
FASCIST IDEOLOGY On the question of fascist ideology, Benewick refers to the BUF's emphasis on harnessing the nationalist traditions of British imperialism, but without relating this to the economic deworkers to join the NILP, one of the NILP leaders, David Bleakley, was in the Stormont government that brought in internment. How does Militant explain that away?
Taffe boasted that the Militant have good relations with some Officials in Belfast. Well, that's nothing to boast about. Both organisations make concessions to Officials left the Irish workers disarmed when the Orangemen -launched their pogrom in 1969.
One Militant supporter sneered at the IMG from the floor for being "Provo-Trots'. Perhaps the British chauvinists in Marx's day sneered at Marx for being a "Fenian lover. Anyway. how does laatle as a Trotskyist explain his praise for the Officials after their newspaper the United Irishman launched a vicious slander against 'carpet-bagging Trotskyists"? The Officials in Britain and Derry had a thousand times more honour than Taalle when they refused to sell that issue of their own newspaper.
It is all very well to have a debate in London in front bourgeois too, important as it is. But the matter should be taken further. We suggest that the IMG invites the Militant to a second round of the debate to be held in Ballymurphy. Belfast, where the audience would be 100% workers. We dare Taffe and Haddon to repeat their remarks there! Let us see whether the Militant has the guts to repeat their lies and distortions in a debate in Belfast where it really counts, and where the workers are in action! A venue could be arranged.
If it was not for groups like the IMG and the PD, the ideas not only of Marxism but of any kind of socialism would have been completely discredited among Belfast workers. The Militant and the other British chauvinist groups who are trying to pick up crumbs from the table in Ireland do their best to disgrace the And they dare to hide behind James Connolly!
Engels must have had the Militant in mind when he wrote that after the domination of Ireland by the British aristocracy and the British bourgeoisie, there were some smash made unionists who ex Doctca to sec terioration of that imperialism. He also fails to link this development to the BUF's vicious anti-semitism, which he documents competently, though merely commenting that "the enemies of fascism made strange bedfellows ... it blamed pacifists, liberals, Jews, Communists, internationalists, capitalists, financiers, the British press and unscrupulous propagandists." The author fails to see that racism, as a doctrine for a national entity struggling to control the economic markets of other races and nations, frequently finds its target in a people fashioned by a tragic history as a universal symbol of (rival) commerce, pre-dating the advent of capitalism. Hence the confusion of hostile images entertained by the fascist advocates of British nationalism; a mixture of older antisemitic themes with the particular bogeys of contemporary capitalism - bolshevism and international finance. Such quaint amalgamations litter the pages of NF literature in Britain today just as they motivated the Mosleyites in the 30's.
Alas the real causes of the BUF's lack of success as a movement are under-estimated badly in this book, the space being turned over to a consideration of the subsequent Public Order Act, 1936. A better account of the anti-fascist mobilisations of the working-class in the streets is recorded in the stalinist Phil Piratin's book Our Flag Stays Red, published in 1948. If nothing else however, the liberal Benewick has unearthed fragments of the story of fascism in Britain which the revolutionary of 1973 should bear in mind as he witnesses the evolution of the extreme right-wing in our own time.
the domination of Ireland by British workers! (letter to Kautsky, 12 September 1882).
The Militant have proved themselves in Ireland to stand four-square in the old chauvinist tradition of the British left. Long ago Engels pointed out: "Anglo-Saxon sectarianism prevails in the labour movement too. The Social-Democratic Federation, just like the German Socialist Workers' Party, has managed to transform our theory into the rigid dogma of an orthodox sect; it is narrow-mindedly exclusive and thanks to Hyndman has a thoroughly rotten tradition in international politics .. (letter to Sorge, 10 November 1894). The same imperialistic spirit dominated the overwhelming majority of the British left at the outset of the First-World War, and the CPB carried out the same social-imperialist policy throughout World War Two. You belong to a fine tradition, Mr. Taaffe!
It is clear that the Militant will not offer any resistance to the rising tide of chauvinism among British workers which is being deliberately stirred up by the capitalists. Bernadette Devlin was nearly beaten up by London dockers when she went to offer them her support over the jailing of the Pentonville Five. Does the Militant deny that very many British workers are more in solidarity with their own imperialists than with Irish workers in Belfast? What is the Militant doing to combat this?
Has the Militant made one serious effort to persuade London dockers to defend Irish workers in Belfast who have been put in concentration camps, tortured, thrown out of helicopters and murdered! Taalle complained in the Militant that the Belfast dockers, who once had a record for militancy, were the last to come out in the recent dock strike. No wonder. According to people like Taffe, Irish workers should come out to support British workers, but not the other way round.
This type of scabbing politics made it necessary for Connolly and Larkin to break away from the British labour movement and set up separate Irish organisaLoS.
There is nothing Marxist about the Militant. Marx always used to test the socialism of British lettists by their attitude to Ireland. Over a hundred years ago Marx wrote: "Every industrial and commercial centre in England now possesses a working-class divided into two hostile camps, English proletarians and Irish proletarians The ordinary English worker hates the Irish worker as a competitor who lowers his standard of life. In relation to the Irish workers he feels himself a member of the ruling nation and so turns himself into a tool of the aristocrats and capitalists of his country against trend, mus strengtnening ten commanol over himself. He cherishes religious, social and national prejudices against the Irish worker. His attitude towards him is much the same as that of the "poor whites' to the "niggers" in the former slave states WHAT IS TO BE SUNG Songs of Revolutionary Struggle (available from P. Cooper c/o 182 Pentonville Road, London N.l. - 15p)
In countries with a long-standing revolutionary tradition like France, one of the ways in which the continuity and development of the struggle is emphasised is through the mass singing of international revolutionary songs, particularly on demonstrations and rallies. This really adds to their unity and militancy. In England, by contrast, there is neither a real revolutionary tradition, nor a mass singing tradition, which makes demonstrations into rather depressing tramps round London, punctuated by sporadic slogan-shouting.
This songbook tries to go some way towards helping to overcome this problem, with a wide if limited selection of songs from Europe, the United States, Ireland and England. These songs reflect mainly the class struggles in these countries in the period from the 1890s to the Spanish Civil War, although the Irish songs are those of the national liberation struggle from the 1798 uprising to the present day. What characterises these songs is that they are revolutionary songs, unlike most English working class songs (despite their more "proletarian" subject matter). "The Dirty Blackleg Miner", for example, is basically just a trade union song. Even 'The Red Flag' was written by an Irishman, Jim Connell. As for the songs that do exist on the revolutionary left, they largely reflect its historical isolation in their sectarian nature, are not songs of struggle, and have wisely been omitted from this selection. What this songbook lacks, however, are any more recent songs. It is not enough to revive old traditions. We need new songs which take up the issues and struggles which have come to the forefront in the last few years; songs of women's liberation, about the NLF, about the Freeing of the Five, etc. Still, these are more likely to be forthcoming once the beginnings of a revolutionary singing tradition are established, for which the appearance of this songbook should be especially valuable.
of the U.S.A. The Irishman pays him back with interest in his own money. He sees in the English worker at once the accomplice and the stupid tool of "This antagonism is artificially kept alive and intensi fied by the press, the pulpit, the comic papers, in short by all the means at the disposal of the ruling classes. This antagonism is the secret of the impotence of the English working class, despite its organisation. It is the secret by which the capitalist class maintains its power. And that class is fully aware of it. *... it is the task of the International everywhere to put the conflict between England and Ireland in the foreground, and everywhere to side openly with Ireland. And it is the special task of the Central Council in London to awaken a consciousness in the English workers that for them the national emancipa tion of Ireland is no question of abstract justice or humanitarian sentiment but the first condition of their own social emancipation. ' (Marx to Meyer and Vogt, 9 April 1870). Everything Marx said here applies word for word to the war in Northern Ireland today. Does the Militant deny it? They cannot. Not only do they betray the Irish workers with their toadying to imperialism, they also betray the real interests of the British workers including the Protestant workers in the North. How shamefully they compare with Marx! When they accuse Irish workers of sectarianism, they should look to themselves. Anglo-Saxon sectarianism! It is the Militant who are full of the spirit of chauvinism. Lenin spent years fighting this kind of social-imperial ism. On his death-bed he made it clear that an abstract presentation of the question of nationalism in general is of no use at all. A distinction must necessarily be made between the nationalism of an oppressor nation and that of an oppressed nation...
(The Question of Nationalities or "Autonomization", December 1922).
Under a smoke-screen of words and phrases about socialism and internationalism, the Militant is giving the British army and the Orange fascists a clean bill of health in the ranks of British workers. Their aim is to blunt any revolutionary awakening. We think that British socialists who are trying to become revolutionaries should ruthlessly expose them, instead of singing the Internationale with them. It is an insult to Irish workers and to the Internationale to regard these people as internationalists.
T. Haig R. Ascal In the last issue we promised a full report of the IMG-Militant debate on Ireland: Since then, we have received this letter. Although we do not agree with every dot and comma, in general it sums up our view of the Militant's position on Ireland.
The streets of French cities in recent weekshave