MORALISING AND lecturing is not NMP's style. Their anti-racism forms the nuts and bolts of campaigning. They work directly with the victíms of racism. They work directly with a community constantly facing police harassment and malpractice.
As Unmesh explained, their whole experience has shown that one of the biggest issues the anti-racist movement has to tackle is that black YOUVE dis criminalised for fighting back against racism Since its inception in 1980, NMP has used the issues raised by its casework to actively campaign among both the black community and white working class youth inschools and youth centres.
Asad used the example of the forthcoming 'March for Justice' to show their approach to can pan called from mass local The was meetings following police violence and harassment against two local shopkeepers, Mr Deane and his son.
Following the racist murder of Tamil refugee Panchadcharam Sahitharan at the new year, NMP linked up the families and heir campaigns. The Deanes at tended the ahitharan Memo rial Committee, proposing they become volved in the 'March for Justice'.
Labour, Unmesh and Asad argued, still play the num Kame 'Once you acbehind he Bill then the rest folsame in France blood on the streets ist Party, and it's the same with the Social Democrats in Germany.
"There is not a problem with refugees, but there is an enormous problem with impertalist foreign policy that forces people to flee their homes and coun tries, from wars, famine, povJoth the anti-racist move ment and the left need to turn this argument around, turn it from a racist argument on numbers, to an assault on imperialist foreign policy.
Central to this is the whole question of putting the black experience at the heart of the antiracist/anti-fascist struggle. This is about white activists learning the history of blaci struggle, working alongside black activists to do so. Ií you cannot have a strike without sure. how can you nave cul racism without black people.
people fighting back - not to substitute for them.
In the fight against the National Front through the 1970s self-organised black groups were not around in the way that they are today. The white left needs to accep t this self-organisation in practice - and not fall in the trap of abstract propagandism.
To push this point Unmesh recounted a recent example seen in Tower sixty. Bengali youth were standing outside hall, waiting for a meeting work out how to fight the growing cases of racist police harassment in the borough. Only yards we fight back! stood a group of white antifascists. These sort of barriers need to be broken down.
In contrast to this, Unmesh gave an account of forging black and white unity in action Newham Monitoring Project is seen by many activists as a model of how to DESAI from the Newham Monitoring the Sahitharan Memorial Committee, an action committee was set up to fight the developers. Unmesh is convinced that the left needs to catch up with the importance of community politics - espe cially in areas where you do not just see the unemployed, but also the never-employed.
Fighting fascists in the 1990s will mean trade unions and socialists implanting themselvesconduct anti-racist campaigning. UNMESH Project and ASAD REHMAN, Secretary of talked to Socialist Outlook about both their work and ideas about campaigning in the while maintaining their organisational independence - if community defence. That means building a mass antiracist/anti-fascist movement from bexpresto no to local amational expression to paigns, but with the 'sharp political edge' necessary to combat the political and ideological offensive from the right.