JEAN MARIE Le Pen, French fascist leader, is coming to Britain, invited by the far right grouplet Western Goals' Le Pen. whose ideas are now shared by a third of French accorains to recent polls, looks likely to win the seat for Nice in regional elections in March.
The French fascists have been taking advantage of cross-party support for immigration trols to popularise their ideas. It • no great surprise that such ideas Find sympathy among rightwing parties, with leading figures such as Valery Giscard d'Estaing declaring his support for coalition with the Front.
But now the racists' ideas are wins away at the markins of the left and the greens. Over 20% of green supporters and one in six communists ap parently agree with the ideas defended by Jean Marie Le Pen'.
As for the Socialist party, president Edith Cresson declared on juv 8 that her government was ready to begin a policy of mass expulsions 'sending people back to their countries as soon as the law has established that they have no right to be here da tactic has been to distribute ake identity cards on the streets, with a notice on the back declaring 'If you don't want to stay inactive in the face of the legal invasion of our country organised by the socialists, contact the Front National!
But not every political current has been seduced by Le Pen's propaganda. A coalition of anti-racist groups including ganise for a mass demonstrafion in Paris for 'Equal Rights for All'.
The demonstration, backed by a number of immigrant and political groups, is to call for a real right to asylum, to housing and social security, and an ent to racist abuses of the law. It will pose a right to citizenship and a right to vote as an alterative to the current expulsions and hounding of immigrants.
Efforts are now being made o launch a broad coalition ir Britain to oppose Le Pen's visit. A number of Euro-MPs, antigaining a new respectablity in US politics. Though the fascists have no mass party in the USA, their ideas are being increasingly espoused by the Republican right, much as they were in Thatcher's Tory party.
A coaltion of forces opposed not just to the imagery of nazism, but the racist ideas underlying it, needs to be built to destroy this respectabiity once and for all. in Louisiana, antifascists in the Louisiana Coalition Against Racism and Nazism' have tried to expose the lies used in A broad alliance, involving anti-racists, trade unionists and others is what is necessary to prevent the slide of US politics towards the racist But the lack of a global alternative.
offering answers to the economic crisis. poverty and unemployment that provide a breeding ground for Unt the USA has a party based on its union movement that can represent workers' interests, the job of fighting racism wil be an uphill battle. racist groups and the National Union of Students have issued an initial appeal.
Le Pen has been invited for a meeting of the croup of the European Right' - the fascist group in the European Parliament - between the ith and 6th of December. Similar plans for a mass demonstration were made when Le Pen was invited to a fringe meeting at the 1987 Tory conference. The result was that he didn't show up.
It is vital that the labour Le Pen and his ideas are not Secome one Contact: Ad-Hoc Committee to Stop Le Per's Visit, PO Box 273, Forest Gate, London E7. Tel: 071 277 0817