SOCIALIST
OUTLOOK
Changing our message to the oppressed
I found your article (Britain's Black voters: the challenge to Labour, Socialist Outlook, June 1990) particularly interesting as it is over Black issues that the left has found itself trapped between its traditional support for Blacks and its secularism (e.g. the French left and the 'chador' controversy). There were two issues raised which I would like to comment upon, the Black electorate and the debate over Muslim schools.
Your correspondent is quite right to point out the regressive platform of the Islamic Party of Great Britain, as well as to predict that the Black vote would slip away from Labour unless it develops policies that meet [their] needs'. I have for long felt that it breeds arrogance and is in itself a dangerous trend for any bourgeois political party to claim a natural electorate.
This attitude so evidently displayed by the Labour Party has made it in rhetoric alone a friend of Britain's Black population. The token gestures of having a few Black members of parliament and a polite mention in policy documents have not alleviated the political frustration of Black youth, Afro-Caribbean and Asian alike. Meanwhile the older generation in both communities have been loyal supporters of a Party which in spite of racist immigration and no coherent plan of action for the economically and educationally deprived inner-city youth, somehow exuded positive vibes and arguably at local level attempted to address our special needs.
One of the few positive aspects of the Satanic Verses controversy for me, was the politicisation of a large segment of Blacks, the Muslim youth, In the past the sheep-like had dutifully voted Labour with little regard to its past performance or promises for the future, However, a book, was the catalyst to lifting of the mental veil of religious dogma The worldwide Islamic revival and the failure of party political forces to meet their aspirations have led many to view their religion as the panacea for all ills.
It is in this context that the recent gains made by Islamic groups in Algeria's election
LETTERS must be viewed. The imposition of top-down bureaucratic socialism with secular agenda in a nation and among a community where religion is intertwined with daily life, is unworkable. Our response as revolutionary Marxists cannot be to wring our hands in despair and wail 'class consciousness' al them. We must adapt our ideology - not to backward historical concepts relating to the status of women and so on, but to recognise that by virtue of its christian european background, Marxism-Leninism and Trotskyism have an alien vocabulary to those from vastly different backgrounds.
Since 1979, the growing prosperity of many South Asians have led them to view the Conservative Party as their allies in spite of its ill-concealed racist policies and politicians. It seems that Mrs Thatcher can do no wrong by them, their move to affluent Tory suburbs has spared many of them of the brutaility of the Poll Tax. Their preference for private school education imbues their children with notions of individual gain and a rabid fear of socialism, whose image of high taxation and immense social upheaval creates their recurrent nightmares. Labour will lose its moral high ground as the Asians vote along class lines for the Tories or religious parties while Afro-Caribbean youth do not vote at all in defiance of a political system which views them as little more than social malcontents. Thus the left has no option but to rethink its time honoured ideals if we are to build a broad united front of the oppressed.
The most pressing issue today in the Muslim community is state-funded Muslim schools. The argument raised is that while the state funds Anglican, Catholic and Jewish schools it discriminates against their religion. It is increasingly anomalous that England has an established Church linked so closely with the state. The repeal of the blasphemy laws and the total separation of religion from education and the state must be our aim, (along with a national curriculum that is global in dimension, humane in perspective and genuinely non-racist as opposed to 'multicultural'). However in the short term we cannot ignore the force of religion with its positive and negative aspects,
In Latin America, where the left and plural democracy has been demoralised or decimated by imperialist backed regimes, the Church is a movement inspiring social justice and opposition to the ruling hierarchy; in Burma and Sri Lanka the Buddhist clergy have been ranged against the machinery of the state (albeit in Sri Lanka, the racial chauvinism of many monks is a powerful reactionary tool).
The left can be principled in its stand by advocating an end to all religious schools while supporting (the idea of) Muslim schools which have the advantage of being within the state system - and therefore are bound by a curriculum which aims to be non-sexist, nonhomophobic and non-racist, but which is diverse enough to reflect the heritage of all Britain's communities and prepare them for the new Europe. It is apparent already that if support and financial help are not forthcoming from the state sector, Muslims will establish independent schools and thereby entrench those institutions, making them as difficult to counteract and uproot as existing independent schools.
It is not historic compromise" that I advocate but adaptability and broad-mindedness while remaining true to our philosophical and political roots. If the left does some soul-scarching, we can realise the gains to be made in the 1990s when Thatcherism discredited could lead to exciting developments for the revolutionary left.
B. Skantha Kumar
London Fighting the poll tax in every area
So Geoff Martin thinks that Merton is "just not that sort of area".
That is, not the sort of area where an anti-poll tax movement, even if relatively small, can be built.
I can only assume from this that if Coun cillor Martin thinks this cannot be done in Merton, those of us just a little further south in Sutton, who have been built such a movement (even if relatively small) are completely wasting their time.
*..Organisations with campaigning experience" have never been particularly thick on the ground in Sutton either. What some of us in the Labour Party have showed, though, is that it is worth going to the trouble to create them - even in "those sorts of areas".
Roland Wood
Sutton
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