On 7 June, Nottingham RCG supported a demonstration called under the banner of Black Lives Matter. Around 4,000 people gathered at the Forest Recreation Ground for a rally, before more than 1,000 people spontaneously decided to march through the city. Nottingham RCG provided a sound system for the march, which was used as an open mic for speeches and chants throughout. Nottingham’s Council House and Central Police Station both received a visit as protestors denounced British state racism and expressed solidarity with the movement in the United States. Then the march proceeded through several working class neighbourhoods, where people leant out of windows, came out on the streets and honked their car horns in support, with some joining the march. We ended back at our original starting point, five hours after we began, where those present committed to returning next Sunday, 14 June at 12pm to continue building the movement we need to take on the racism of the British state.
Below we reproduce the speech by RCG supporter Despine, which was delivered to the rally of 4,000 people:
The British capitalist class and their sycophants have been quick to condemn the so-called ‘violence’ and ‘looting’ occurring in protests across the world. But was not Britain’s wealth built off looting the resources of colonised people all across the world? Was it not looting when Britain kidnapped millions of Africans, and used the profits to fund the industrial revolution? Is it not looting that today British companies own $1 trillion of energy and mineral resources across Africa, off which their owners get rich? Did not Britain visit unceasing violence and terror against the liberation struggles in Malaysia, Palestine and Ireland? There is no moral equivalence between the struggle of the oppressed against the forces which oppress them, and the racist, imperialist slaughter which Britain engages in on a daily basis.
Let me be absolutely clear on this: British imperialist capitalism is, and can only ever be, racist. In the words of Malcolm X, ‘You can’t have capitalism without racism’. Britain is a racist state. Of this there can be no doubt.
Imperialist capitalism requires racism in order to make poverty wages in underdeveloped nations seem reasonable, to justify Britain’s mass slaughter for oil. If we wish to end racism then we have to organise a mass struggle against the entire imperialist system.
This rotten, racist system cannot be reformed; the only just solution is to remove it all, root and stem. In a racist state like Britain, all the systems which administer state control are themselves administrators of racism. There is no reform, no modification, no additional ‘implicit bias’ training which could ever transform the police into something other than the racist enforcers of a brutally racist system. The task, therefore, is to end Britain’s imperialist plunder and the racist violence which comes with it. Fight Racism! Fight Imperialism!
Photo gallery
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