This speech was delivered by Kotsai Sigauke at the RCG’s National Meeting and dayschool ‘How do we fight back against racism and imperialism?’ on Sunday 20 October 2024.
As a communist organisation in Britain, Fight Racism! Fight Imperialism is not just the title of our newspaper; it captures the essence of our politics. Any communist movement that emerges from Britain must have the fight against racism and imperialism at the centre of its politics. The fight against racism cannot be separated from the fight against imperialism because racism is national oppression expressed within Britain’s borders. Following on from this, it is impossible to be anti-racist without being anti-imperialist. Anyone who believes otherwise is either misguided or, even worse, deliberately trying to mislead people into a fake, liberal ‘anti-racism’.
The racist riots
In August this year, we saw racist riots sweep through towns and cities across England. Racist mobs rampaged through towns and city centres: attacking anyone deemed foreign; looting businesses, particularly businesses owned by minorities; attacking Muslims; and attempting to murder asylum seekers by setting hotels housing them on fire. These were disgusting scenes that left the majority of the working class outraged.
Undoubtedly, this was fuelled by far-right ‘influencers’ and politicians such as Nigel Farage and Tommy Robinson, not only through misinformation but decades of racist rhetoric and incitement from mainstream politicians and the bourgeois British press. However, it’s important to note that these weren’t ‘fascist’ protests. They were outbursts of racism from the petit bourgeoisie and the lumpenproletariat. It’s very important that we do not conflate all racism with fascism.
At the same time, we saw large sections of the working class outright reject the disgusting scenes of racist violence that we saw. We saw Muslim youths in areas such as Bolton and Birmingham take to the streets and defend their communities from racist mobs. We saw thousands of working class people of all races take to the streets to confront racism and defend asylum seekers from attacks.
While such things are encouraging, there is a dangerous trend developing that is led by the fake ‘anti-racists’. This trend is represented by groups such as Stand up to Racism (SUTR), which is led by the Socialist Workers Party, and so-called ‘community leaders’ of ethnic minority groups. The dangers in this trend can be seen in the following things:
- They deliberately conflate fascism and racism.
- They deliberately separate racism from its material basis, imperialism.
- They point to far-right influencers and politicians such as Tommy Robinson and Nigel Farage and make them out to be the main cause of racism in Britain and the biggest threat to non-white communities.
- They deliberately divert attention away from state racism: the police; immigration detention centres; prisons; and immigration laws and so on.
- They imply that if we ‘drive fascists off the streets’ then racism in Britain will go away.
It’s a liberal conception of racism that makes out racism to be something caused by individuals or certain political groups having ‘bad ideas’, not something that has arisen from Britain’s imperialist nature.
Such framing is deeply dangerous. If the August riots, Reform UK and such are the signs that fascism is coming to Britain then unity with absolutely anyone can be justified. These three things come together to create not anti-racism, but an unprincipled alliance of political forces that hold rallies every once in a while.
On ‘Unity’
Of course, we are not against unity. An anti-racist movement that is capable of taking on the British state must be broad and involve unity between all types of groups and organisations. The question is, unity with who? Unity on what basis? What do the pushers of the trend I outlined above advocate for? Who do they advocate we have unity with?
On the first question, they of course advocate for an unprincipled unity with the Labour Party. This involves the Labour ‘left’ and the trade unions. For the last 10 years in Glasgow, SUTR have allowed the Confederation of Friends of Israel to march with them! So at ‘anti-racist’ demonstrations called by SUTR in Glasgow, we see a group supporting the genocidal, racist, settler colonial state of Israel marching as ‘anti-racists’! And of course, at SUTR demonstrations, we see the usual ‘left’ Labour MPs and trade unionists lecturing us on anti-racism.
This is simply ridiculous. The Labour Party has always been a racist, imperialist, anti-working class party. This can be understood by a quick glance looking at its history. To give just two examples, the last Labour government boasted of deporting someone every eight minutes and banned asylum seekers from working.
All of this is because the Labour Party has never represented the interests of masses of the working class but the interests of the labour aristocracy, a small, narrow and privileged section of the working class that has its privileges tied to the superprofits of British imperialism – finance professionals, unionised public sector workers and so on. So, it must necessarily be racist and defend Britain’s imperialist interests.
So now we end up in a situation where at ‘anti-racist’ demonstrations, we have all sorts of people platformed. People such as Diane Abbott, who supported Labour’s 2017 manifesto that advocated for more border guards, more racist police on the streets and personally supported NATO’s destruction of Libya, the most prosperous country in Africa. We see ‘anti-racist’ demonstrations endorsed by the PCS union, a union that represents border guards and screws! To say we must have unity with these forces for the sake of ‘anti-racism’ is, quite frankly, an insult to the intelligence of the working class.
This is why the points I mentioned earlier are so dangerous. Disconnecting anti-racism from anti-imperialism; conflating fascism and racism; and painting certain ‘fascist’ organisations and people as the main cause and effect of racism – all of this serves to distract from the underlying cause of racism and diverts attention from state racism for the sake of chasing around drunk racist thugs. This is not anti-racism, it’s a dead end.
In the end, this simply rehabilitates a Labour Party that is currently in government and enacting racist policies. It’s not Tommy Robinson who has the power to militarise Britain’s borders, it’s the Labour government; it’s not Nigel Farage who is currently boasting of plans to deport an eye-watering 14,000 people by the end of the year, it’s the Labour government; it’s not Reform UK who have the power to put more brutal, racist police on the streets or build more prisons, it’s the Labour government. All this is hidden by the ‘anti-racism’ of SUTR.
Looking at the past – opportunism
This is nothing new and we have seen this all before. In the late 1970s, the Anti-Nazi League was established by the British Left to ‘oppose the National Front’, a racist political party that had carried out attacks on black people and migrants. It was supported by a variety of ‘left’ organisations, trade unionists and Labour politicians. They came from the exact same trend we see represented by SUTR today. Conveniently, they were silent about the 1974-79 Labour Government that was implementing the racist 1971 Immigration Act passed by a Tory government and sent troops to occupy the north of Ireland. This diverted attention from the racism of the state by making the National Front out to be the main cause of racism in Britain and the biggest racist threat in Britain.
This was simply an unprincipled alliance between the British left, the trade unions and the Labour Party to launder the Labour government’s crimes, strangle the militant opposition to racism that was developing and make sure that the Labour government was re-elected. The trade unions themselves had a long history of discrimination, support for racist immigration controls in order to preserve their own privileges, and betraying strikes led by black and Asian workers; but of course, none of this mattered because ‘unity’ was needed to ‘drive the National Front off the streets’. There was no opposition to immigration controls, no opposition to Labour’s brutal war against the Irish people, and little to nothing said about police brutality against black people. Campaigning on such things would’ve hurt the Labour Party so none of these things mattered to them.
Ironically, the ANL failed at even their narrow goal of stopping the National Front. In 1978, the National Front, protected by 5,000 police, planned a march through Brick Lane, a Bengali area. Despite Bengali groups pleading with the ANL to help them defend Brick Lane, the ANL instead held an ‘anti-racist carnival’ in Brixton. So the Bengali community had no choice but to stand up to the National Front and the police to defend their area. Such cowardly actions by the ANL were done in the name of preserving unity with their Labour and trade union backers. It was a sick joke: while the Bengali community was forced to defend themselves from racist attacks, while South Asian women were being violated at Heathrow Airport during ‘virginity tests’, while black people were being brutalised and arrested by the police, while migrants were being thrown into prison and deported, the ANL were listening to Labour MPs and trade union speakers at ‘anti-racist’ festivals.
Let’s not be mistaken. This is not simply a matter of ‘bad ideas’ or ‘mistaken tactics’, this ‘anti-racist’ trend and the unprincipled ‘unity’ that stems from it comes from the class position of groups such as SUTR and ANL. They draw their membership and political support from the labour aristocracy; predominantly white collar and unionised workers whose relative privileges depend on the success of imperialism. They’re social democrats and therefore tied to the Labour Party. They will never seriously confront state racism, let alone imperialism. No anti-racist movement can be built on this basis.
Looking at the past – revolutionary politics
At the same time, while we can look to the past to understand the enemy, we can also look to the past to find genuine successes and learn from defeats. In the 1970s and 80s, we saw the real possibility of a vanguard developing within Britain and it was led by those sections of the working class who faced double oppression – first as workers and then as black people.
We saw Asian Youth Movements develop in response to the racial oppression by the British state and street violence from the National Front. They recognised that they not only needed to defend their communities from racist attacks, but that their primary enemy was capitalism, imperialism and the British state, that included the Labour Party that was in power from 1974-79. They also recognised that their interests were with oppressed people all around the world and so they showed solidarity with national liberation and socialist struggles within oppressed countries, from Ireland to South Africa to Palestine. Following on from this, they campaigned against Britain’s racist immigration laws because they recognised that all immigration laws under imperialism are inherently racist and a component of national oppression.
We can point to their victories as examples of how to fight state racism and, by extension, the British state. We can look at the Anwar Ditta Defence Committee, a campaign the RCG was also involved in, that fought to reunite Anwar Ditta with her three children who were separated by Britain’s cruel border policies. We can look at the Bradford 12 in 1981, a successful defence campaign that defended 12 young south Asian men who were arrested and charged by the British State with ‘conspiracy’ because they prepared to defend their communities from racist attacks. These campaigns were not only about individuals but they were fights in defence of communities under attack by the racist British state.
We also have to remember that the 1980s saw uprisings in cities all over England led by black youth who fought back against racist policing. For example, in St Pauls, 1980, the police were driven out for a whole four hours. In Brixton, 1981, the black community, sick after years of racist stop and search, harassment and brutality rose up and fought the police with bricks and bottles. The police were driven out of entire areas and kept out with barricades. The ruling class were terrified at the sight of the Metropolitan Police being humiliated by the righteous rage of the oppressed!
Despite the revolutionary situation developing in Britain and the possibility of a vanguard forming to smash the racist British state, ultimately these forces suffered defeat. If we’re going to develop a movement against racism today, we have to understand how and why these defeats happened.
There are two aspects to this, repression and co-optation. Repression was possible because the forces who stood up and fought were ultimately left isolated by the broader British ‘left’ and, as we’ll see later, sections of the ethnic communities that were ultimately bought off. This isolation allowed those who fought to the end to be arrested and jailed. As the case of the Bradford 12 and Anwar Ditta shows, it is possible to fight state repression, but it requires sustained organisation and solidarity from the wider community.
Co-optation was made possible through opportunism. Imperialism allows a section of the working class to be ‘bought off’ by the superprofits that come from the shameless exploitation and plunder of the so-called ‘underdeveloped’ world. The British state was able to extend this to buy off a layer of the most oppressed sections of the working class. With the Asian Youth Movements, this was done by offering them state funding, and opportunists within the movement fought to have the funding accepted. This made those organisations accountable to the state. And so, they went from militant campaigning on a principled anti-imperialist and socialist basis to running youth centres. These thoroughly co-opted movements then tied ‘anti-racism’ to the Labour Party. More broadly, this was replicated in all oppressed groups, creating a section of ‘community workers’ and people who work in the ‘race relations industry’. While ethnic communities continued to be criminalised and brutalised by the police, a section of ‘community leaders’ were developed to demobilise any militant resistance to the state. These community leaders of course, led middle class lifestyles and some were even able to become Labour MPs. This drive for state funding and resources led by ‘community leaders’ and the ‘race relations industry’ also undermined solidarity within the non-white working class, fragmenting it into different communities of national and ethnic groups competing to get their share.
It is these two aspects of breaking resistance to racism – repression and co-optation – that led to the defeat of anti-racist militant action in the 20th century. The co-optation of sections of oppressed communities leads to the radicals becoming isolated, allowing them to be easily repressed.
This was only one aspect in a long line of defeats that have set the working class struggle back; there’s also been the defeat of the miners strike in 1985, the collapse of the Soviet Union, and the capitulation of national liberation struggles around the world. Imperialism temporarily defeated the forces of revolution. This is why we have lived in a reactionary period for decades. A militant opposition to state racism and imperialism must be re-built effectively from scratch – this is why opportunistic forces such as SUTR hold such a strong grip on ‘anti-racism’ today.
Reaction and revolution – the forces of the future
It is pointless taking lessons from the past unless we use them to understand the future – what will it take to build an anti-racist movement in Britain? We know that ultimately it has to be a movement that will overthrow capitalism but where are the forces that will lead this movement? Who will fight against this movement? This is what we need to understand.
Firstly, we have to look at the forces of reaction:
- The fake ‘anti-racists’, represented by groups such as SUTR. As I have explained, this is a form of ‘anti-racism’ that is dangerous. It’s a trend that deliberately covers up the racism of the British state and the Labour Party. It’s a reactionary alliance of all sections of the labour aristocracy, even those sections complicit in carrying out the racist policies of the British state. While some individuals or groups may be misguided, may realise their errors and join a genuine anti-racist movement, the trend will always exist. And it will defend the British state more effectively than the British state itself because confronting the British state would destroy the basis of its privilege – imperialism.
- Secondly, the so-called ‘Labour left’, is tied closely to the fake ‘anti-racist’ trend. The Labour-left needs the fake ‘anti-racist’ trend to exist so it can show off its ‘anti-racist’ credentials to win votes from progressives and tie progressives to the Labour Party. However, as I’ve mentioned, the Labour Party has always been a racist, imperialist party. No militant anti-racism or anti-imperialism can be built in alliance with it because the Labour Party must defend racism and imperialism.
- There are the so-called ‘community leaders’ of the racialised working class. These are drawn from the middle class and petit-bourgeois sections of black, Asian and other minority ethnic communities. As I described earlier, this was a layer fostered to kill any militant anti-racism from within. They act as political middlemen between the oppressed and the state. Whenever there is an incident of police brutality or any other form of injustice, they are the first ones to the demonstrations urging ‘calm’ and ‘dignity’. They are the ones who make the isolation and repression of radicals possible by condemning the resistance of the oppressed. They are the ones who are always telling oppressed communities to ‘work with the police’ and urging for ‘reforms’. The reforms are usually more black police officers, more black screws, ‘black capitalism’ and ‘black faces in high places’. They do not put up any proper resistance to racism and certainly no resistance to imperialism – they want their ‘fair share’ of the imperialist pie.
These forces must be broken with. The dreams of reform they advocate for have been shown by history to be just that, dreams. As the uprisings in 2011 and the Black Lives Matter protests in 2020 showed, people want to find alternative ways to resist the racism that is still so prevalent in society. With that, we can see what the forces of the future are.
History has confirmed the leading role that the black working class will play in a militant struggle against state racism. This is because of the double oppression faced by black, south Asian and migrant communities, first as workers under capitalism and as non-white people in a racist society. We see migrant communities, forced to move into the imperialist heartlands, suffer from super exploitation as workers which is reinforced by oppression under Britain’s racist immigration laws. It is these communities with nothing to gain from British imperialism and a world to win from destroying it.
Additionally, there are poor and dispossessed white workers who have nothing to gain from British imperialism either. Whenever there is an uprising against police oppression led by black youth, there are sections of white youths who take to streets as well. It is the alliance of the most oppressed sections of the working class along with the sections of the white working class who see that they have everything to gain from making ‘common cause’ with the most oppressed that will be the leading force against the racist British state.
For too long the British ruling class has grown rich off the backs of oppressed people, first through exploiting oppressed people in their own countries and then through exploiting oppressed people when they migrate into Britain. This has resulted in decades of exploitation and racist violence that, while essential for the survival of British imperialism, has created the political forces that will be imperialism’s downfall. The British ruling class has created its own gravediggers. What is left is to organise. These political forces must unite with socialism and form the anti-racist, anti-imperialist, communist vanguard that will confront the racist British state and smash British imperialism from within its own borders. That is a unity worth fighting for!
