"There ain't no black in the union jack'
SHAHID TILLEY Paul Giroy, There ain't no: black in the union jack, Huthiun, £7.95 IN THIS BOOK Paul Gilroy amalyses Britain in the pas two decades through the prism of race and racism. On the way, he explores the 'crisis in Marxiem" which is highlighted by, and possibly produced by, the rise of 'new social movements
Jerrisoning the dominant view of racism which constructs black people in a problem/victim" couplet, or carriers of a discrete and fixed cultural hagage, he constricts a more political definition of 'race /racism as a process intrinsically linked with post-war political and cconomic crisis. 'Race" is broughr in from the margins where it is presently thought by sections of the left to be "bad ideology" and explored in its relationship to the rise of the new right and the authoritarian stato. The nonen of race and "black criminality is analysed as a key component of the drift towards authoritarian scarism. Race underpins much of the "common sense around which industrial and national decline is understood not only by the establishment but also popularly.
The fusion of nation/race popularised by the ideologues. of the new right has beconic su dominant thar Labour's trew realists jcalously want: to reclaim the popular patriotic llag. Kinnock, and theoreticians such as BP Thompson and Raymond Williams are casting around for a 'left' and 'fairer"
patriotism thar will appeal to all that is just and good in the
English/British tradition. But for black prople and Trish the relationship berween the union jack, racism and imperialism is too closc for comfort. And.
as recently in France, the cained language of patriotismi is bound to fail paving the way for a further shift to the 38 : right,
Gilroy relies on this analysis of nation and rare to explain the success of the of the Anti-Nazi League (ANT) in denting the electoral support of the National Front by labelling the latter as Nazis against whom Britain fought the war. All good Britons could not be Nazis. The danger of such arguments in playing upon nationalist resonances was that the discussion of race was pulled away form the centre. Ir alsu: rendered anti racism walncrahle to fascists such as Tyndal to announce their apposition to Nazism and their affirmation of patriotism. Gilroy contrasts the strengths of Rock Against Racism — deemed to be a more appropriate response to racism in its down-up development and its distance from the opportunistic language of patriotism. Tr also allied with and enconraged genuincly anti-nationalist movements/ youth cultures to develop (punk music, lor instance).
The book also critically regards the anti-racist efforts of the Greater London Council (from 1981 to 1985): Its "cqual opportunity' programmes developed in relation to administration and only applied successfully within bureaucracies were hastily generalised by their foisting onto the wider community with insufficient preparation or any understanding of the complexity of the world ourside county hall. Propaganda which defined racism ax power plus discriminacion not only alienared many black people but also white Londoners — the vast majority of whom did not have any power.
This book's central weakness is its striking "strategic silence on the labour and trade union movements. There is no discussion of the potential to be gained from socialist militants working within them. What in rcaliry has been their failure to cogently oppose the forces of the radical right after the collapse of the relative consensus politics of the post-war period is diagnosed as intrinsic to the Tahour movement. The bureaucratic and corporatist Barure of the labour movement are seen not as the facets that need to be challenged but held to be so deeply embedded that any opposition is deerned to be hopeless task.
This coupled with Gilroy's conception of the let as 'reducnionist or 'economistic"
belies the work of significant socialist currents within both the labour and trade union movements who have refused to privilege shop floor" struggles at the expense of others such as anti-racism, women's equality and peace.
In face the formation ul both the ast and RAk was initially secured be socialists active cither in the trade unions or political parties. The ANL was a comparatively successful project in its attempt to challenge the rise of the National Front. Formed as a united-frunt againsr fascism ir was a broad based alliance operating under the banner of they shall not
Anti-fascist demos forced voluntary organanations, churches. Tabour parties and unions to the left in challenging the state over the political presence of fascists marching on the streets. In contrast, the Communist Party's more ann-racist and popular-front orientated Campaign one raue die human race. which focused on the divisiveness and racist idcology of fascism was a failure.
Cairoy also fails to provide a sufficient explanation for the failure of anti racist and black autonomous politics to cohere lito mass movements over the past decade. In fact their slide into fragmentation maust be understood within the context. öf intra-class divisions, the rightward shift in British politics and the failure to build a socialist bridgehead within the labour and trade union movements on the question of race. The bitter harvest of this has been the rush into thie restrictive politics of "cqual opportunity"
within, and of, local government services; the employment of a professional layer of "ethnic specialists"
whose aim is to culturally sensitise the Increasingly coercive wolfare state in its relationship to black clients;
tie consolidation of black churches or groups offen SOCIALIST OUTLOOK ne 2 July/August 19H7