Building a genuine united front against fascism
The 1990s have been the decade of fascist revival on the continent of Europe. We had a brief period in which a fascist party, the Alliance Nazionale, was part of a coalition government in Italy. In France, the electoral strength of Le Pen’s Front Nationale has grown by leaps and bounds throughout the decade.
After reunification the Republicana Party in Germany became a significant force. There were mob attacks on hostels for asylum seekers with fatalities in some cases. Republicana collapsed, but organised racist and fascist violence has continued to grow and whole swathes of Germany are no-go areas for all the communities threatened by the nazis.
In Belgium the Vlams Blok became the stongest party in the local authority in Antwerp and has held on to that. Probably over half the police force are Vlams Blok supporters in that city.
In Austria there is a groundswell of support for the fascist Freedom Party and it is one of the strongest parties in Vienna. There is a real possibility that its leader Jorge Haider could win or come second in the next presidential elections.
In Eastern European countries, gangs of skinheads patrol the streets in search of Gypsies. Jews and other migrants are fair game.
In the early 90s Zirinovsky, whose hero is Hitler, commanded massive support in Russia.
Fortunately in Britain the fascists have nowhere near the strength that we are seeing in these examples. However, there is no room for complacency. Right now in Bradford the BNP are circulating leaflets which attack people who are in this room.
To confront such a threat we need a massive united movement committed to effective action. This idea of unity in action against racism and fascism is one which Reuben consistently fought for.
So it is timely that I should make the theme of this talk, the united front.
I want to rehearse the classic idea of the united front against fascism and then subject to criticism and update it in the light of ideas of the Black and Women’s movements.
United front
The term "united front" became currency in left-wing politics in the 1920s and 30s. However, under different names it had been the principal form of working class organisation in the 19th and early 20th Century.
That is organisation which attempts to unite all the working class in common struggle and embrace a variety of political currents within that unity. In this country, the Chartist movement would be a clear example of this. This was Marx and Engels’ conception when they wrote the Communist Manifesto:
"The Communists do not form a separate party opposed to other working-class parties. They have no interest separate and apart from those of the proletariat as a whole."
In 1948 Marx believed that as Communist ideas were inherently superior and correct, that they would win in the battle of ideas within a broad workers movement. He had yet to discover the strength of his proposition "the prevailing ideology is the ideology of the ruling class".
Thus the First International, the International Working Men’s Association, was essentially a united front body in which Marxism, Bakuninism, Proudhonism, all kinds of Reformism and utopianism, co-existed in conflict until, the tensions between them finally blew it apart.
Even after this experience, the Second International had largely the same character. The sections of the Second International, were essentially united front political parties.
Sometimes tendencies organised themselves into sub-parties within the united front, but – as in Russia with the Bolsheviks and the Mensheviks – they remained within the framework of the Second International for a long time.
It was only with the outbreak of the First World War, when social democrats supported their imperial powers against one another, that it was seen as necessary for Communists and Social Democrats to form separate parties.
And it was precisely this which led to the necessity of articulating the explicit idea of the United Front, because the Communist International quickly realised that, in most circumstances, the Communist Parties could not unite the working class in struggle.
They had to fight for unity in action with social democrats and other proletarian forces.
The Communist Party and the rise of the Nazis
Whatever ideas the Communist Parties had developed about the United Front, particularly the lessons from the victory of fascism in Italy, had been completely lost when faced with the rise of the Nazis in Germany.
Stalin and the German Communist Party had developed the idea that fascism was just another form of bourgeois rule. We communists should not take sides between one form of dictatorship of the bourgeoisie and another. They were all as bad as one another – Fascists, Liberals, Social Democrats.
Indeed the Social Democrats were the worst because they incorporated the proletariat into their own exploitation. They were ‘Social Fascists’.
You knew where you were with a Nazi. If they were in power this would polarise class forces and prepare the way for revolution.
This framework was carried through to the letter by the German Communist Party, leading to one of the greatest tragedies in human history.
Trotsky
A minority of Marxists saw the disastrous consequences of this policy. Two of the most prominent were Leon Trotsky and Georgi Dimitrov, but they both dealt with it in different ways.
Trotsky and his comrades wrote pamphlet after pamphlet, article after article, speech after speech, advocating the policy of the ‘United Front Against Fascism.’
Yes, fascism was a form of bourgeois rule but it was a particular form which had, for Trotsky, two crucial features. First, it was committed to violently annihilating its enemies – on the streets when out of power and once in power – destroying all working class organisations.
The second was the method of building a mass movement amongst the petit-bourgeoisie who felt crushed between the forces of capitalism and the workers movement. The small matter of anti-semitism wasn’t a crucial part of Trotsky’s understanding at this time. I will return to this later.
Trotsky therefore argued that it did matter what form of bourgeois rule took. With the fascists in power, fighting back would be virtually impossible. We would be in prison, or dead: there would be no working class parties or unions.
Saying that fascism was worse did not mean taking sides with one section of the bourgeoisie against another. None of them could be trusted not to turn to the Nazis if the chips were down.
No, it was independent united working class action which Trotsky advocated. Between them the German Communist and Social Democratic Parties commanded the support of millions and millions. Between them they could crush the Nazis before they became real threat: "crush them in the egg", he said – on the streets, in the ballot box, in the war of propaganda – everywhere.
Even when the Nazis had grown very strong by 1933, this was still possible. A united working class movement could bring most of the petit-bourgeoisie behind it, taking it away from the fascists.
Dimitrov
Georgi Dimitrov, leader of the Bulgarian Communist Party, also understood the threat posed by fascism. He managed to write about it without attacking Stalin or the leadership of the German Communist Party. Much of what he wrote followed the same contours as Trotsky, except he slipped in the idea of making alliances with the liberal bourgeoisie against the fascists.
This became the touchstone to the policy of the Popular Front which Stalin and the third international turned to after 1935. In this perspective the working class should sacrifice its political and organisational independence to making deals with the capitalists.
This policy would eventually prove to disarm the working class as the Nazis occupied one state after another across Europe – with the acquiescence of the national bourgeoisie and the national armies which put up a token resistance.
Racism and self organisation
The big gap in the Trotsky’s understanding of fascism was the central role played by racism, anti-semitism in the case of the German Nazis, and also sexuality, and the family.
Mussolini may be an exception, but certainly for Hitler and the Nazis and for modern fascist movements, being a particular form of bourgeois rule is just not what fascism is about.
The motivation from top to bottom of fascist movements is about the domination of White Aryans over everyone else.
Much of what the Nazis did in power was not expedient from a capitalist point of view. On balance however, it served the bourgeoisie well enough, but they wouldn’t have chosen it had it not established a momentum in its mass movement.
Fascism cannot be eradicated without defeating the racism that underlies it.
Fascism appeals to the bully and the coward. It plays to people’s sense of powerlessness and alienation in our society by saying, "you can become powerful relative to that group – be they Jews, Black people, Gypsies, or homosexuals. You can smash those up, and we will give you a new identity as part of the master race, no longer the little alienated one."
How are we to break this? Self-organisation of the communities under attack is a key to this. If those Jews, Black people, Gypsies, Gays and women stand up with pride as communities, this challenges the bullies and the cowards.
Women as a group, are on this list for a different reason. Nazis never planned to wipe out women. They were attacked to put them in their place in relation to the reproduction of the Aryan race. The sexual politics of fascism would make a good memorial lecture in a future year.
I am of course, not saying that self organisation alone is enough. What I am saying is that it has to be a central and leading element of any successful united front movement.
Cable Street
In 1936 Mosley and his British Union of Fascists decided to march through the East of London. It was the Jewish Workers who got together and raised the slogan ‘they shall not pass’.
Many of them were in the Communist Party, many in the Labour Party, but the party leaderships were not keen to do anything. They were forced into it by the determined campaign waged by the Jewish East End Workers.
Neither was the official Jewish Leadership interested. The Jewish Board of Deputies and the Jewish Chronicle told Jews to stay at home.
On the day, a quarter of a million turned out to stop Mosley. And who were they? Just Jewish Workers? No, workers from all over London, especially Irish workers.
And just workers? No. My paternal Grandfather, a small business man who voted Tory all his life, ignored his leadership, the Jewish Board of Deputies, and followed the working class and turned out to fight on the streets.
Working class unity and working class community self defence won the day, bringing other classes in behind it. This was the united front in action.
Welling and the united front from above and below
The classic Trotskyist writings on the united front refer to the need for a united front from above and below.
We need to bring together progressive and militant forces amongst the labour movement and the communities under attack. But we also need to make demands on the trades union bureaucrats, labour leaders and the traditional conservative leaderships of communities.
Why? Some people say to expose them. But I would argue, much more importantly, to bring a far greater number of people into effective action who would be prepared to take act if the traditional leaderships were supporting it.
Some movements sound like classic united fronts but in fact are not. They insist on "Black leadership" and have a "labour movement orientation". But if their orientation is primarily towards the trade union, labour and community bureaucracies they will, in practice, only be a united front from above whose policies will be dictated by the needs of those traditional leaderships.
Aesop’s fable
A cattle dealer once drove some bulls to the slaughter-house. And the butcher came nigh with his sharp knife. "Let us close ranks and jack up this executioner on our horns", suggested one of the bulls.
"If you please, in what way is the butcher any worse then the dealer who drove us hither with his cudgel?" replied the bulls, who had received their political education in Manuilsky’s institute.
"But we shall be able to attend to the dealer as well afterwards!"
"Nothing doing" replied the bulls, firm in their principles, to the counsellor. "You are trying to shield our enemies from the left; you are a social-butcher yourself".
And they refused to close ranks.
This was illustrated starkly in 1993. A Unity demonstration was called to march on the BNP headquarters in Welling, in the aftermath of the Steven Lawrence murder. There was a call for the TUC to support this.
However, another "Black-led" organisation called an alternative action in Downing Street, which got the support of the TUC, Labour Party and traditional community organisations.
As a result a 50,000-strong demonstration was brutally stopped from going to Welling by the police while a 6,000-strong rally took place in Downing Street. The first was a united front from below, the second a united front from above.
If there had been one united front action, from above and below, it would have been seen by everyone as an undivided call to effective action and we may have seen 200,000 marching on the BNP HQ in Welling.
Faced with a united front from above and below, the police might have decided that discretion was the better part of valour and let us through and that might have finished off the HQ two years earlier than actually happened.