La section of the working class which is impoverished and unorganised. The failure of the unions to organised the unemployment is a major factor here.
But there are growing numbers of young working class people who have had limited, if any, involvement with the organised labour movement.
Culture
As we explain on page 6, in Millwall a culture of racism has grown up locally. However this is a specific case of a more general phenomenon, a local white working class with high unemployment, living cheek-byjowel with the affluent office blocks created by the 1980s speculative boom. It is here that the fascists can grow and win Millwall, it is obvious that a demonstration to the BNP headquarters will become the focus for militant anti-racists.
The presence of TUC general secretary John Monks on the ARA platform is to be welcomed; but it will not stop many sections of the black youth and anti-racist movement going to south London for the Unity march.
The ARA risks inflicting unnecessary political damage support for racist ideas.
This puts the debate over anti-racist and anti-fascist activity in a new perspective.
Socialist Outlook has argued consistently that state racism, through immigration laws and racist policing, is the biggest threat to the black community.
Small-time
The fascists in Britain are small potatoes compared with movements like the Front National in France. It is a mistake for the left to throw everything into anti-fascist activity.
But anti-fascism and anti-racism need not be artificially counterposed. There is obviously a need now to remobilise against the fascists.
That is not just a matter to be argued out in the labour movement, but crucially concerns the struggle for self-organisation and self-defence in the black community itself.
The fight to organise the youth on an anti-racist and antifascist basis is a crucial one to isolate and defeat the fascists.
In the end however a key responsibility for the BNP victory and the renewed fascist danger stems from the failures of the FIGHTING FASCISM labour and trade union leaderships.
It is their failure to fight for a programme of radical social change which opens up a space for reactionary ideas and currents. Without the building of a socialist alternative the fascist menace will not be defeated.
on itself and its reputation by refusing to face the facts: it could find itself out-gunned, out-mobilised by its apparent creation of disunity.
The needs of the movement are for one giant demonstration of defiance against the fascists and racists. ARA cannot pretend to be the sole legitimate anti-racist or antifascist movement. It should think against before it shoots itself in the foot.