Dispatches, Channel 4, 27 October: Going to the Dogs Reviewed by Phil Hearse and Helen Shaw WHAT REALLY lies behind the election of BNP councillor Derek Beackon in Millwall? Channel Four's 27 October 'Dispatches' programme, Going to the Dogs? attempted to answer this question.
While the programme left out crucial facts, the underlying material basis for racism on the Isle of Dogs and in many other working class communities was highlighted.
This points to problems whose solutions lie way beyond the *scope of anything which could be done council, whichever party had control.
The key question is housing. Acting on statutory duties, the council prioritises housing homeless people above rehousing long-time residents living in crowded and run-down accommodation.
In practice this often means - quite rightly - priority to homeless Bangladeshi families.
Not that the Liberal Democrats do this willingly; a Liberal councillor explained how they had tried to give priority to 'long-time residents' or *those whose parents come from the island' - ie white people.
BNP voters knew very well why they voted for the fascists. Not because of their ideology, but because of the 'rights for whites' slogan; because their perception is that Bangladeshi families are getting new housing, while they have waited for many years to be rehoused.
In addition, a conscious policy of rehousing Bangladeshis from all over the borough on the Isle of Dogs seems to be in operation.
As the yuppie boom of the 1980s crashed many flats in Docklands remained unoccupied. A small number of these have been sold to Tower Hamlets. Large extended Bangladeshi families have been housed in some of these.
Resentment over housing doesn't explain everything. The culture of racism in a small, run-down, white working class community also has to be explained. It is an area where the fascists have long been active.
Neither do big social problems in the white working class directly explain why social services have to pay for taxis to take some Bangladeshi kids to school, so afraid are they of racial attacks.
Hostility to the Labour Party is widespread. While Tower Hamlets is Liberal-controlled, its unique devolved structure means that many decisions are taken at neighbourhood level, with control being in the hands of local Labour councillors.
In other words, Labour councillors administer Liberal council policies which are themselves constrained by Tory spending cuts.
Labour councillors on the programme were strong in their opposition to racism, but very short on answers to the real problems of working class people in the borough.
What was left out is the fact that there are 1000 empty flats in Docklands, owned by the building societies and big financial institutions. Lacking yuppie buyers, they stand unused. And of course workers can't afford them.
Many of the gleaming office blocks are also empty: they too should be converted to housing, but that too poses sciousness. the question of ownership and control.
But of course how to get the homeless and poorlyhoused working class people into these flats is a problem beyond the control of any local authority. That is a problem not only at the level of government, but at the level of power. of struggle.
Newly-emerging political forces in the community pose both a promise and a threat. The politicisation of Bangladeshi youth, evident in Youth Connections, is an im- movement. mense promise for the future. But groups of white residents organising against both the BNP and Labour showed the potential, not only in Tower Hamlets, for a reactionary threat emerging, in some ways more dangerous than the BNP.
A BNP voter explained openly that his was a 'protest' vote. Despite that, in the long term the programme showed clearly that the material basis for growing fascism cannot be combated solely by raising cies. anti-fascist and anti-racist conThe community and local workers organisations have to be united in struggle around demands relating to their material problems.
That is the difficulty in the situation. It is not just a matter peared.
Canary Wharf: ordinary people gathered none of the benefits the Tories lavished on Docklands of directly party-political organisation, but of a movement The two occasions in the 1980s when such a movement existed, apart from the miners strike, were in the rate-capping fight and the anti-poll tax Now that local government and housing are going to bear the brunt of Clarke's budgets cuts, the real resources to address local social problems are being further devastated.
This casts a spotlight on what role can be played by Labour councillors. There are no solutions at the level of Tower Hamlets. It is an illusion to believe that a Labour council, in itself, will solve anything - no matter how left wing its poliLabour councillors can help generate and build a movement of resistance - to the government and the fascists. But the material basis for 'municipal socialism', substantial local reforms in the interests of the working class, has disapFIGHTING RACISM