Tories play
the racist
card
Once again senior figures in the Tory Party are looking to that trusty old stalwart racism to rekindle popular support, most clearly exemplified by Norman Tebbit
Tebbit and his band of chauvinistic rebels have gone on a binge, expressing the overt racism that always bubbles beneath the surface of Tory political practice.
Not only were the people of Hong Kong the victims of the Tory right's attempts to stir up racism - but all non-white people in Britain were spotlighted for abuse by Tebbit's infamous 'cricket test' remarks.
Whilst a worried press tried to convince the public that others in the Tory party did not agree with him, there was quite clearly not even a mild rebuke from the leadership.
Although some have drawn parallels with Enoch Powell's "rivers of blood' speech, also made when the Tories popularity was on the wane, today's developments are very different. Then, Ted Heath was seen to wag a finger and proclaim that way lies tyranny': now, from Thatcher there is merely a telling silence.
The fact is that what caused the slump in fortunes for the fascist right in the late 1970s was that Thatcher and the Tory Party stole their clothes when she proclaimed that the British subculture was being 'swamped", and insisted on the need for more immigration controls.
However the renaissance of racism in the Tebbit form has been a kiss of life to the remnants of the old fascist groupings; this has been particularly the case in East London. In the last few months racist attacks throughout the area have been increasing.
The British National Party (BNP) has felt able once again to hold meetings in predominantly black areas such as a school in
UPDATE ne.
In Waltham Forest uncil which includes constituency of Chingford) there have been racist marches
1e Labour council creating three holidays on non christian religious festivals. This was at first organised by individual racist parents, but it did not take long before Tebbit latched onto the march in order to give it his blessing.
The fascists have also picked up on marches/initiatives by unorganised racist parents elsewhere. They tried to become involved in a march in Tower Hamlets concerning the stabbing of a white pupil by a black pupil at school; and there has been increasing interference from so called 'choice groups' attempting to get white pupils to the schools of their "parents' choice. This has continued on from Dewsbury in Yorkshire with the misnamed 'Freedom Association' attempting to give a veneer of intellectual' cover to an emerg ing new ultra-right, while hysterical headlines in the Sun have helped agitate the backward white working class.
Tebbit's utterings, the fascist right gatherings, and Thatcher's calculated silence have resuscitated as always not only in an increase in passive racism but also active violent racism. CAPA, a legal advice and support group based in Tower Hamlets, had 482 reports of racially motivated attacks for the year ending March 1989. The number of cases of racial harrassment went up by over 20% in a similar period. Attacks in April showed a continued increase.
Labour's equivocal stance on
Funeral procession after racist murders in Walthamstow almost all recent issues of anti- passed but remain a paper policy racism has done nothing to halt the rising tide of racism (with the notable exception of the Campaign Group members who most recently took the principled step of abstaining on the Hong Kong Bill.) While a number of left MPs continue to be wide of the mark over the Rushdie affair, still pandering to fundamentalists by calling for a extension of the blasphemy laws, the Labour Party leadership's concessions to religious schools will do nothing but transfer power to fundamentalist leaders and fuel racism.
In addition the half-hearted multiculturalism of many coun cils means that resolutions are leaders feared at the hands of the Islamic Party in last month's council elections didn't happen.
Islamic Party candidates stood in four seats in Bolton, two in
Blackburn and one in Derby: all seats with between a third and three quarters of Muslim voters
In Blackburn an Islamic victory could have deprived Labour of its two seat council majority and by implication, Jack Straw of his marginal parliamentary seat in the next election). In Bolton, Islamic Party candidates fought Labour's housing chair in another key parliamentary marginal seat - a traditional testing since there is no effort to convince the public of such a stand. In Waltham Forest the council would not politically challenge the racist marches; it simply battened down its hatches and ig nored the problem, leaving the hard left to struggle against the racists' arguments and the threat of fascist violence.
It is clear today, in the 10th anniversary year of Newham Monitoring project, that the fight for clear anti-racism should be a priority for all socialists: organisations such as Anti-Fascist Action must be supported in their mobilisations to smash the fascist groupings.