TWO racist stabbings - one fatal - in the last fortnight have been met by silence by the Tory media. Their refusal to tell the truth about the rise of racism is a part of the attempt by the ruling rich to turn attention away from the real problems in society: racism, poverty, inequality and despair.
Charles Oppong was stabbed on Tottenham High Road in Haringey by two racists last Sunday, piercing his liver and putting him on a life-support machine. In what looks like a copy of the killing of Steven Lawrence, Oppong was at a bus stop on his way to work.
The Sunday before, in Brighton, Ali Ibrahim, a refugee from political persecution in Sudan, was approached by a white man and woman who racically abused him and his two friends. The man then stabbed Ali to death.
These two parts of the country have also seen a rise in racism and activity by the fascist British National Party.
The BNP now have a regular paper sale in Haringey. They reportedly have a drinking spot behind Tottenham's police station. The local community has responded to the rise in assaults with a 100-strong picket and by launching the Haringey Racist Attacks Monitoring Project.
Brighton is the home of BNP leader John Tyndall. Over the last four years racist assaults in the town have doubled in number. While the sizeable Sudanese community there faces mounting racism, the police at first failed to even admit Ali's murder was racially motivated.
The call of the Trades Union Congress for a national demonstration aginst racism on 19 March could not have come at a more welcome time.
It is exactly the kind of united mobilisation we needed on 16 October, when two separate demonstrations took place.
Now there is time for us to build mobilising committees in every town and city to ensure that the energy behind the 16 October demonstration is linked to the authority of the organised labour movement.
Central to all this, however, will be the organisations of the black community. In London's East End we have seen the positive. development of Youth Connections, which has brought into activity hundreds of black youth.
Black-led organisations like Newham Monitoring Project and many others give a new quality to the anti-racist movement - the victims of racism mobilise and fight for themselves and show the way forward for the whole struggle.
Local Trades Councils, anti-racists and black organisations can start now to prepare the biggest anti-racist mobilisation since the 1970s. The 4 & 5 December conference of Youth Against Racism in Europe can start the ball rolling, breathing new life into the Unity committees it led in the run-up to 16 October.
Above all, socialists must stress the need for unity in preparing 19 March. While loeal black youth and the far left drew a few hundreds to oppose the BNP's paper sale in the East End of London, the labour movement has the power to fill not only Brick Lane but the streets of the whole area with working people and their families.
Over the next months, we can get hundreds of thousands more people active against racism and fascism. But even that will give us just a flavour of the anti-racist movement to come.
This twenty-minule video, from the Rahman Family Detence Campaign, shows the history and racism of immigration controts and the struggle being waged by the family against deportation.
Send a £10 cheque payable to The Rahman Family Defence Campaign' to 16 Wood Street Bolton BLI IDY. The Campaign is happy to provide speakers for showings of the video.