Once more Enoch Powell is stepping up his racialist offensive. Following the Report of the Parliamentary Select Committee on the education of immigrant children, he said: 1 told you so ... I have been demanding accurate statistics for years." He alleged that there had been a deliberate conspiracy by the Department of Education to cover up the extent of the damage" being done to the education of white pupils sitting side by side with blacks, just as the politicians had turned a blind eye to the "funeral pyre" being made of Britain's traditions by the number of immigrants entering the country. He predicted once again that a third or more of the population of London will be coloured by 1980. This "nightmarish scene", he said, will lead to racial explosions - at least it will if Mr. Powell gets his way.
devotion to the environment and the plight of the poor, than from the deliberate search of the National Front for new inroads into local communities, new means to convey the old message of racist nationalism into the homes of the working class.
The winning of firm roots beyond England, the fascists will inevitably clash with the left forces entrenched there, The new-found confidence of the NF, as it counts its votes and membership figures, enables the organisation to consider mounting an offensive aguinst sections of the socialist left. Some moves in this direction have already been made. A dozen or so NF members picketed a meeting organised by the SouthEast London Institute for Workers Control in Lewisham early in July, and boasted to the local paper about fighting communism on its own ground."
The Front has materialised in certain colJeges, as the new academic year dawns, peddling a student-oriented paper entitled Spark. The task of the magazine and its supporters, working in a social milieu which A Parliamentary Select Committee Report published last week described the existing statistics on the number of black children in schools as 'useless". The Report points to the fact that mapy black children do not show up in the statistics, because the Department of Education uses a definition of "inamigrant' which excludes the children of parents who lave been in the country for more than ten years.
In light of the fact that numbers needing special aid are much greater than official figures suggested the Report recommends that a central fund should be set up, to which local education authorities could apply for resources to meet the special requirements of immigrants, both adults and children. Black children are at a big disadvantage in the white school, because they either speak little English or a particular dialect of English, and have different cultural backgrounds from white children. The Report argues for a major effort diverted towards English teaching, a re-examination of the practice of placing large numbers of black of the right. no demands on the social services, DISCRIMINATION age group was 22%. This type of activity, reflecting the general optimism and current expansion of the organisution, naturally inspires the various thug elements in and around the Front to engage in wilder adventures. Telephone threats to the Labour Parly Young Socialists in Gloucester, the beating up and near-blind. ing of a black student at Nottingham University by right wingers, an assault on a photographer who discovered a secret fascist meeting in the Caxton Hall, all point to u rising level of violent activity on the fringes This new atmosphere pervades other circles on the far-right. British Crusade, a duplicated rag dose do Colin Jordan's "British Movement' has announced the formation of a 'force of trained men' (modestly culling themselves "The Defence") to'carry out the duties that the police are unable to do due to their nonpolitical nature." Such quaint phenomena tion system proclaims 'equality of opportunity' regardless of race, colour or creed. If this slogun were to actually correspond to reality, then the present employment patterns of bluck workers would start to break down in a very short time For the black pupil to achieve 'equality of opportunity in the classroom, requires unequal expenditure, in terms of facilities and teaching time. Average educational expenditure рет head is already 15% more for the black than the white pupil. Yet one of the reasons why the capitalist class encouraged black migrant workers to come to Britain in the first place, was because the capitalist state would save money on workers whose dependants remained in the home country, and thus made in ability.
Discrimination by the capitalists against black school leavers sceking jobs is widespread. This was the conclusion of a recent survey, in which one employer was quoted as saying: "If two identical boys applied, one white, one coloured, we'd give it to the white one'. A recent survey of 200 West Indian boys in North London found that unemployment among the 16-24 These significant developments on the extreme right require a positive and determined response by every tendency on the left. Each National Front initiative, cach fascist mobilisation, must be replied to with the maximum strength which only united action can afford The recent complete routing of Colin Jordan's attempted rally at Liverpool's Pier Head reminds us of the first principle of anti-fascist struggle: no public platform for the extreme right-wing. For this principle to operate in the corning months, given the new direction of the NF, the issue of antifascist action mast be included in the plans of different socialist organisations for combatting 'Phase 3' of the 'freeze,' and other attacks on the working cluss. Otherwise, in a relatively short time, and without the left being adequately prepared, such action will be forced upon us as the fascists select their targets.
Why do so many black children finish up in ESN schools? In fact, any unruly or unresponsive child -black of white-ls Hikely to be referred by the teacher to an'educational psychologist for an 'intelligence" test to decide whether or not the child is fit to stay" in the normal school, Intelligence testing is notoriously biased in favoul of white children, who share the linguistic and cultural habits of those who draw up and administer the tests. But even were it possible to devise a 'colour-free test, the whole principk behind such intelligence testing, whether for black or white, is quite evil: it assumes that differences in performance and achievement are due to biologically delermined differences EXPECTATIONS Many could no doubt be saved from the ESN school by increased expenditure on the black child. But the educational performance of working class children in general is lower than middle class kids, not only because of unequal expenditure, but because of the expectations of the working class pupil. And black working class children expect to finish up in the very lowest job categories reserved for immigrant