They shall not pass

By New Worker correspondent

 
On 4 October 1936 the working people of East London, inspired by communists and other left-wing movements, clashed with Sir Oswald Mosley's Blackshirts in Cable Street, Stepney.  They were able to halt and force back the fascists. Pogroms in Europe had forced many Jews to flee to London. The fascist legions which had previously been supported by the Daily Mail with headlines such as 'Hurrah for the Blackshirts' were opposed by the Daily Worker with calls for people to come out onto the streets to block the Mosleyites.
Those events of the past century may be remembered as today's right-wing extremists again play the race card to stir up hatred and fear.  In violent protests they abused minorities damaging their property and provoking confrontations with the police.  As was the case in the 1930s local people have turned out, supported by trade unions, left and centre political parties and organisations such as Say No to Racism, to send a clear message of opposition to fascism. Anti-fascist rallies have been held in many large British cities. People gathered in parts of London, Birmingham, Sheffield, Southampton, Newcastle, Liverpool, Bristol and many other places up and down the country.
Mark Rowley, the Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police Service said "we put thousands of officers on the street and I think that the show of unity from communities, together defeated the challenges we have seen”.
Three young girls were killed in a horrific stabbing in Southport.  A 17 year old teenager has been charged with their murder. The fascists saw this as an ideal opportunity to begin their campaign of attacks by spreading lies on social media that a Muslim immigrant was involved. In fact the accused is a British born Christian. The ultra-right are motivated by race hatred. They are generally poorly educated people who consider other races to be inferior. At various times and places they must always have someone to hate, either people with a different skin colour or culture, gays or those they consider to be political opponents such as communists or socialists. Behind them are the men in smart suits who are the real promoters of fascism.
Capitalism is in crisis which is reflected by increasing authoritarian and reactionary trends.  Racism and fascism are actively fostered by the ruling class and its supporters when capitalism and imperialism are in trouble. Their strategy aims to divide the working class, to curtail long term rights and at all cost to prevent socialism.  The common characteristics of fascism outlined by R Palme-Dutt in his work Fascism and Social Revolution were as follows: 

1. To maintain capitalism in the face of revolution
2. Increase capitalist dictatorship
3. The destruction of working class movements 
4. To suppress parliamentary democracy
5. The extension of state monopolistic organisation of finance, industry and commerce
6. A closer concentration of each imperialist group into a single economic-political unit
7. The resolution of conflict by means of war

Racist ideology insists that that some races, their own, are born superior and others inferior.  Racism may take the form of discrimination, segregation, prejudice or genocide. It may be imposed by apartheid but is not confined just to the question of colour as shown by Zionism and Nazism. The ideology was adopted by the capitalist class to justify colonialism. Indigenous peoples were portrayed as lower order human beings in a physical, cultural and moral sense.  It is an established and deliberate practice of imperialism to promote conflict between different ethnic groups and to then divide and rule for their own selfish interest. 
The New Communist Party of Britain has repeatedly warned of the dangers of advancing fascism both at home and overseas. In its ultimate form it represents the direct rule of the most reactionary and ruthless sections of the ruling class. Western, so called Democracies, have powerful military industrial complexes who control policy, making a parliamentary road to socialism all but impossible.  Involvement of the private sector in state administration is having the effect of marginalising the domestic process.  As the capitalist crisis deepens and Imperialism becomes more desperate fascists have been allowed to play a major role in Ukraine.  In Britain sinister forces lurk in the wings as the public start to lose faith in the parliamentary process. 
In order to distract attention from an appallingly bad record of governance and economic incompetence successive power holders in Britain, with the full support of the mass media, use the issue of immigration to transfer blame to others. Irrational hatred and fear have been created.  Against a background of never-ending austerity, spreading poverty, failing public services and crumbling infrastructure the extreme right-wing has attempted to harness the discontent to support their hideous agenda. Social issues such as housing shortages have exacerbated tensions, all of which has led to a witch hunt by people seeking someone to blame, other than the government whose fault it is. Unthinkingly a few have been drawn into organised, violent thuggery. 

Drive the racists off the streets

Reports that former English Defence League leader Tommy Robinson has applied to join UKIP is causing ripples amongst what’s left of that Eurosceptic party. Even Nigel Farage seems dismayed at the prospect of someone once seen as the leader of a bunch of racist thugs joining the party he once led.

Robinson, whose real name is Stephen Yaxley-Lennon, thinks “the British working class will be electrified” if he joins UKIP. But Robinson is a vain man with an inflated view of his own importance and UKIP counts for little these days.

Sir Oswald Mosley, the leader of the British Union of Fascists in the 1930s, much later said that his subsequent heirs were “dwarves standing on the shoulders of giants” who were presumably Benito Mussolini and Adolf Hitler. Mosley seldom got anything right after he left the second pre-war Labour Government but he was, on this occasion, spot on.

Robinson’s followers largely consist of the ageing racists in the two rival “football lads” movements that having been marching through unwelcoming streets to hurl abuse at Muslims, and everyone else they hate, during the summer break in the football season. These drunken thugs are not Hitler’s legions nor Mosley’s Blackshirts. They cause misery through the trouble they stir wherever they go and their antics can incite random violence against ethnic minorities. But Robinson is not the Duce and the rabble who follow him are not going to March on London anytime now.

The ‘Football Lads’ are very loosely organised former football hooligans and veteran neo-Nazis. Their main agenda is to engage in street fighting and they will pick on any likely target. When they fail to find one, they fight each other. This has totally sabotaged efforts by their leaders to claim they are not racist.

They pose no threat to the state but they do terrorise minority communities, and give police and local authorities justification for rigid social control measures that affect all political activists.

We shouldn’t, of course, ignore the growth of right-wing extremism. The Ukraine government is controlled by fascist movements that extol war-time Nazi collaborators, and the success of the mis-named Swedish Democrat party in the country’s recent general election and the growth of other far-right parties across the rest of the European Union has sent alarm bells across the continent.

Whilst the Blairite and Zionist fifth column within the labour movement carry on with their bogus ‘anti-Semitism’ campaign there is a crying need for a new mass movement to drive the racists off the streets.

Communists must support all the existing anti-racist and anti-fascist movements, as well as taking up John McDonnell’s call for the relaunch of the Anti-Nazi League in response to Islamophobia and the recent upsurge in hate crimes across the country.

Jeremy Corbyn’s number two said: “It’s time for an Anti-Nazi League-type cultural and political campaign to resist” because “we can no longer ignore the rise of far-right politics in our society.”

The ruling class is not inherently racist, but it has always used racism to divide and weaken the working class. When any worker suffers abuse or discrimination because of their race, religion, gender, sexuality or for any other reason, the class as a whole is weakened, and it is the responsibility of the whole class to combat racism and all other divisions of the class.

This is why the New Communist Party does not support separate organisation for workers of different colour, religion or gender. The class must stand united on the basis that an injury to one is an injury to all.