With our limited resources we have helped give young peoOf course it would be much easier if the government or big 200 PEOPLE met at the 'Communities of Resistance' rally, called by the Rahman family Defence Committee in Manchester last Saturday.
There were speakers from many other campaigns, includ ing anti-deportations, legal frame-ups and racist murder. The rally basically represented the black agenda for anti-racism and anti-fascism.
Key speakers Anwar Ditta and Mohamed Idrish, from the successful campaigns in the 1980s, made it absolutely clear that success in avoiding deportation is entirely due to the strength of the campaigns; the legalistic details were the state's excuse for surrender.
There are several other cases - Cardiff 3, Guildford 4, Birmingham 6 - that prove this.
Bridget from the Campsfield campaign was also a speaker. None of the people recently allowed out on bail from the concentration camp would speak because of fear of re-arrest.
The common factor in every speech was that the state is thoroughly racist in its laws, its police, its judiciary and its prisons.
This alone shows the pointlessness of campaigns to change the law. Who will implement the new racial harassment law pioneered by ARA?
The only point where the rally was weak was in the dim view of the way forward. Some speakers called for a network of campaigns and in an embryonic form this now exists.
But it has to develop into an open, democratic, non-sectarian anti-racist and anti-fascist campaign, free of attachment to any political party, which recognises black autonomy and aims to link up with the labour movement.
The seeds for such a campaign were all in Manchester last Saturday.
SOCIALIST OUTLOOK No. 60, April 16 1994, Page 3