IT WAS A triumph for the Anti Nazi League and its leaders, the Socialist Workers Party.
The huge turnout - claimed as 150,000 by Socialist Worker - to the May 28 ANL Carnival was achieved in the teeth of opposition and obstruction from much of the official labour and union bureaucracy.
It reflects the strength of anti-fascism and anti-racism among wide layers of white youth, though in contrast with last year's festival called by the Anti Racist Alliance it also shows much more limited support for the ANL among organisations of the black communities.
However the ANL's power to mobilise in such numbers also carries a responsibility to develop this movement and go forward: as the SWP would be the first to say on any other issue, carnivals alone are not enough to defeat fascism - or the racism on which it feeds.
Unfortunately it seems that the response to the May 28 success will be for the SWP and ANL to stand even more resolutely against unity with other anti-racist organisations.
Independent
Many who attended the Carnival were independent of any political current, but would be prepared to join other local and national mobilisations against racism as well as opposing fascist violence.
This is why it is so disappointing to see that the ANL's energies are almost entirely consumed with building itself, with little if any effort to support anti-racist mobilisations such as the campaign to close the Campsfield detention centre which houses victims of the Tory Asylum Act.
Of the tens of thousands of anti-racists at the ANL's bank holiday Carnival, only those who took leaflets from Socialist Outlook or Campsfield campaigners were told of the national demonstration the following weekend.
If the ANL is to realise the potential it displayed, and not squander its support, it must lend practical support to struggles against state racism and racism at work, raising more developed political discussion on the roots of racism, as well as hitting the relatively easy target of opposing openly fascist minorities like the BNP.
As Socialist Outlook's back page argued at the Carnival, the task ahead is to cut off the fascists at the roots - by uniting all those willing to fight against racism.
SOCIALIST OUTLOOK No. 64, 11 June 1994, Page 4