National Front boss Martin Webster chats with his natural allies The immediate prospects for British capitalism are very bleak. At the same time the fighting mood of the working class in the face of spiralling inflation and the Tories' pay laws places massive problems before the Government andthe employers. The possibilities for buying time or taking some of the pressure off through a deal with the trade union leaders' are virtually have given organisations like the National Front Almost the only immediate option for the Tory government is to launch an all-out attack on the working class and build up the power of the state now, before it can grow into a dangerous force machine in order to push through a solution of the problems of capitalism at the expense of the working class. But the government must first acquire for itself some form of mass support for the coming struggle, The Tories lack this at present. The recent electoral successes by both the Liberals and the National Front show that the Tory government representative of big capital-has lost the support of many small capitalists and members of the petty bourgeoisie.
One means of winning back the support of such groups, and at the same time sowing divisions within the working class, will be the use of racism who have confections with certain Tary anti-trade by the ruling class. Recent actions and statements by the Tory government and the agents of the capitalist state the retrospective" interpretation of the Immigration Act, the witch-hunt for "Illegal' immigrants (complete with fanfare from the capitalist press), the stapping up of police attacks against blacks, the Pakistan Act -makes it clear that such a move is well under way.
It is in such an atmosphere that fascist groupings can begin to gather support. By playing on racist ideas and laying all the problems felt by the middle layers and the working class at the door of the black people in this country, they can gather around them an initial striking force, They will put forward apperently radical' policies and adopt militant methods in order to pose as a real alternative to the increasingly bank rupt courses of the major political parties.
They are, however, nothing more than the spearhead of the ruling class offensive. Their real role Red Week/y 28 September 1973 Page 4 will be to fight arm-in-arm with the police and other agents of the capitalist state to decisively weaken the organisations of the working class and completely destroy the ability of the working class to resist the imposition of a capitalist solution to the economic crisis.
The recent spate of racist laws and court rulings a major weapon which they intend to exploit to the fullest in the next few months. It is urgent that the National Front is stopped in its tracks with mass influence.
The need for this is already recognised by a section of the trade union movement. The following motion was recently adopted by the London Cab Drivers in the Transport and General Woriters" Union, and has since been endorsed by Region 1 of the T&G, and the T&G National Executive That the Cab Trade Comminen view the large increase in votes for the Nationel Front forty in the robint GLC and Borough elections with alarm, We out on the TGWU, TUE and Labour Party to mount a compeign exposing the National Front as a fascist arganisation unionists in Parliament, pointing out the disastrous effects that fascier and racialism hed in the 1930s in Europe, which could be repeated in this country now It is important that this awareness is translated into action against the fascist groups. The National Front will be holding their Annual General Maeting on 13 October, This will be an important meeting for them, designed to boost the morale of the members and draw publicity to their cause, It must be an equally important meeting for the working class movement: an Occasion to show united opposition to all forms of racism and fascism, and to expose the hollow claims of the National Front to speak for the victims of British capitalism. A mass picket of the conferenco must be mounted with the broadest partiopation of the trade union and labour movement. The real alternative to the capitalist crisis is not the National Front and its racist demagogy but the power of the organised working class. in the struggle against fascism. Leon Trotsky the co-leader of the Russian revolution along with Lenin, devoted a major portion of his writings to the struggle against fascismn in Germany and in Spain.
The experience of the Socialist Workers Party in combating fascism in the US is also well worth reviewing. The SWP's most extensive activity in this area took place in 1939 and 1946: it also organised a campaign against George Lincoln Rockwell's Nazi gsoup in 1960, The 1939 anti-fascist campaien of the SWP was carried out in close collaboration with Trotsky, who was living in Mexico at that time. Al though small fascist groups existed in the US throughout the 1930s, the continued deepen ing of the social crisis and the growth of fascism in Europe, especially with Franco's victory in Spain, resulted in a rapid expansion of these groups in 1939, THE RADIO PRIEST' By the middle of 1939 there were nearly 800 fascist or near-fascist organsations in the US The most significant of these was the movement orginised by Father Charles Coughlin. the Kadio Priest. Coughlin's weekly magazine, Social Justice, claimed a circulation of bundreds of thousanda. His spooches were carried regularly over 48 radio stations, teaching an audience of millions.
Coughlin mixed the crudest anti-Semitism race-hailing, anti-coramunism, and anti-trade unionism with radical-sounding rhetoric, promiseng peace, socit justice, and even revolation. His mosement attracted tens of thousands of unemployed workers and young people driven to despair by the depression and the coming war Like fascist demagogues the world over. Coughiin attempted to divert the bitterness and anger of the masses away from capitalism, which was responsible for their situation, towards scapegoats such as radicals. Jews, and the union movement But the Coughlinites didn t scop with hare campaigns. Emulating Hitler', Brown Shirts, they went out into the streets, beating Jews and attacking meetings and headquarters of working ciass organisations While Coughlin was openly aided by the apparatus of the Catholic Church, which refused to disavow his activities, fascism began to assume a more pecularly American form as well, In Jersey City, Mayor Frank Hague pained nationwide botoriety through his use of the police and non-uniformed gangs of chugs Hague was a machine politician who decided he could build his political future on attacks against the union movement and radicals, Union picket lines were altacked, as were meetings of socialists and even of the American Civil Liberties Union. This was the alternative the capitalist class in the US hold in reserve in the event that it became unable to stem the rising labour radicalisation of the 1930s through other means CLASS-COLLABORATION But the Communist Party and the Socialist Party were unable to explain this simple truth to the working class. They were both supporting Franklin Roosevelt, and they counselled workers to rely on the government to fight the fascist menace, both at home and abroad. This policy of class collaboratiun, instead of the sclf-reliance of the working class, was opposed by the SWP.
When the Germau-American Band called for a mess rally at New York's Madison Square Garden in February 1939, the SWP took the initiative in rousing the workers in their own defence. The Socialist Party of Noman Thomas and the Communist Party not only refused to jou with the Swe in a boiled front action against the tascists; they even relused lo print a word about the demonstration, Three of New York's maior Jewish newspapers joined with Mayor Fiorello LaCiuardia's deputy. Newhold Morris, to urge people to hoycott the anti-fascist demonstration However. through a forturate coineidence. the attempts to sabotage the demonstration failed, and the lascists were not allowed to meet unopposed, The Daily News, a reactionary daily with a circulation in the millions, took the oppoctunity of the demonstration called by the SWl to tuke its distance from Coughlin. It reprinted the leaflet for the anti-fascist tally, and gave it additional coverage, Filly thousand people turned out at the demonstration, refusing to disband in the face of repeated police attacks The 24 February, 1939, issue of the Socialist Arreai (the paper of the 5WP at thet time! reported that 'as the militants dishanded. An armed squad of the Chilean fascists, Th along aboul midnight, the Tuesday edition of the Daid Worker appeared on the street. Unbelievable us it sounds, while the Stalinist sheet had a report of what went on inside the Garden at the Nazi meeting, a did not even menzion the fact zhar there hed been tear of thousands of workers mothered near the Garden in a storick, anti-No si protest meeting!! (Emphasis in original).
THE CP "EXPLAINS The anti-fascist domonstration had been too hig for the CT to get away with ignoring it, however. In the 3 March, 1939, Daily Worker V.J. Jerome finally tried to explain the CP: refusal to act against the fascists. He asked: to what would have been the result of an attempt to "stop the meeting" after the progressive LaGuaniin Administration bad granted persission for it to be beld? One could certainly have differed with the LaGuardia Administration for granting permisston... But certainly the Communists could not undertake to toccibly prevent such a meeting once the City Administration bad allowed it. "In the given circumstances, such a course would have played directly into the hands of The Nazi conspirators theselses: it would have incited a direct collision not only with the Bund but with the city administration and the police who were prescor to enforce the decision of the city administration The essence of this argument is that at 1s - necessary to rely upon the capitalist government to fight fascism. The CP opposed the independent mobilisation of the masses against the fascist menace becruse they feared that such mobilisacions would cudanger its alliance with the progressive capitalist politicians. That the fascist threat was real was shown hoth by the fact thar 18,000-20,000 people turned out for the Nazi meeting, and by the massive response to the SW's call for action. The workers saw the damper and wete ready to fight against it What they needed was leadership.
UNITED FRONT The SWP had no illusions of being able to take on the fascist organisations on its owo; it was a very small group, It was necessary to unite the working class organisations, regardless of their dEferences on other matters, in a common struggle to root out the fascist menace, A anized frow was needed.
This task was made very diflicult by the reLusal of the CP and Socialist Party to join in contmon action against the lascists. These were the largest left-wing organisations in the country The CP had tens of thousands of members, it circulated a daily newspaper
m deepens it spawns fascist groupings like the National Front here in Britain. The workers' movement has a n. The lessons of this must be learnt by the left today. In this article from the American revolutionary paper important experience of the American workers" movement during the 30's. ayed an important part, alongside the military, in overthrowing the Allende regime and unleashing a wave of terror agaiust the workers' organisations. throughout the country, and it held leader-
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long history of fighting fas "The Militant" we look at ti