Unite to campaign against racist laws
The launch of the Campaign to Defend Asylum seekers is whole-heartedly welcomed by Socialist Outlook as it should be by all socialists and anti-racists.
It is clear that the fight against racism and in defence of asylum seekers needed to be stepped up in response not only to the racist propaganda of recent months, but to the real assaults on the human rights of refugees that are accompanying them.
The demands of the campaign set out these key issues
Asylum seekers must have the right to work
Asylum seekers must have the right to income support
Abolish Detention centres
Defend the 1951 Geneva Convention on human Rights
Scrap the Voucher system
No to dispersal
Full legal rights and representation
Scrap the Asylum and Immigration Act
Given the scale of the offensive, and the currently divided state of the anti-racist movement, the launch of specific campaign was correct. It should be easier for existing organisations to work under a common umbrella in response to a renewed attack. Existing organisations have their own priorities - and are often over stretched in carrying them out.
New energy was needed - from people who are committed to anti-racism but have not made it a particular priority - especially from the trade union movement. Others needed to be won to anti-racist arguments which answer the filth peddled in the media.
All of this leads to the conclusion that to set up a new initiative to Defend asylum seekers is part of a long tradition of united front campaigns to respond to specific attacks that this paper has always supported.
Many of the meetings and other activities which have happened over the last few weeks have begun to answer that challenge. From the packed meeting of 1200 in the Camden Centre in Central London, to smaller meetings in local community centres speakers from a range of refugee groups have given moving illustrations of the types of conditions from which people are trying to escape. Time and again the British arms trade has been indicted as a major contributor to the number of asylum seekers world wide. The right to economic migration has also been defended - and rightly challenging the notion that death through starvation is acceptable while death through torture isn't. All of this has been very positive, but a number of difficulties remain.
At the centre of this campaign is the Socialist Worker's Party, the biggest organisation on the far left in Britain - and therefore one with a particular responsibility. It is positive that SWP moved to instigate the campaign and that they have made it clear that they see it as an ongoing project.
In many parts of the country the SWP has no particular record of anti-racist campaigning - yet they insisted on having speakers on platforms in the name of their organisation while no other left organisation was offered similar facilities.
This type of behaviour is not the way to build a united front; placing preconditions and ultimatums on other forces will prevent the campaign winning the breadth of support its demands actually have.
Then there is the question of organising local activity. In many places there was no attempt to build on successful public meetings by setting up a local campaign in which all activists could come together and decide on the best ways of gathering support - whether for the petition, the demonstration or any other issue. Instead where public activity has been organised in many places it has happened through SWP structures.
The key decision so far - other than the creation of the campaign itself - was the calling of the June 24 demonstration. That decision was essentially made by the SWP - against the advice of some anti-racists who were discussed with who rightly thought that a slower build up was likely to produce better results.
In the event the turn creditable - though doubtless influenced by the deaths in Dover in the days before. But with longer lead in time it would have been possible to build support beyond the far left who dominated the occasion. National demonstrations are usually seen as the culmination of a campaign rather than something to be organised in less than a month.
Many in the anti-racist movement fear that what is on offer is a repeat of the Anti-Nazi League - a great idea but one which has never had a structure in which non-SWP members could influence decisions or activity.
Essentially such democracy is not a luxury - it is a precondition for involving broad layers of activists. Within the anti-racist movement this is an issue of particular importance given the long legacy of top down structures .
During the Greater London Assembly elections and since in its work in the London Socialist Alliance, the SWP began to work more constructively with the rest of the left..
That break was also deepened by the positive responses and challenges it received from others involved. It also seems that the same dynamic has affected their attitude to work in some trade unions.
If the campaign to defend asylum seekers is to carry out the job it so desperately needed to do , then that too needs to be built on an inclusive and democratic basis.
The lives and human rights of asylum seekers are at stake - the left and anti-racist movement needs to find new ways of working to defeat this racist tide.