FRFI 163 October / November 2001
In the early hours of Sunday 5 August, Kurdish asylum seeker Firsat Yildiz, who had been in Glasgow for less than a fortnight, was stabbed to death in an unprovoked attack as he returned from the city centre to his home in Sighthill with a 16-year-old companion. Later that day, 1,000 asylum seekers held a spontaneous protest march from the impoverished estate to George Square in Glasgow city centre. On Monday there was another demonstration during which asylum seekers staged a sit-down protest at the Council Chambers to demand protection from daily racist attacks in Sighthill. Despite the media spotlight, an Iranian man was stabbed the following night.
Comrades from the Revolutionary Communist Group joined the demonstrations. Speaking to asylum seekers at Sighthill housing estate we found a community of people living in fear for their lives. Every asylum seeker we met from the city centre to the morbid grey tower blocks of Sighthill told us how they had been attacked by local Scottish youths as they crossed the motorway footbridge to get home in the evenings. One Iraqi Kurd pulled up his sleeve to reveal two deep knife gashes, received separately in the past four months. ‘I told the police, but they don’t do anything. They don’t care’, he told us.
A Turkish Kurdish family told us how local youths even assault their young children, throwing stones at them, and a friend of Firsat Yildiz told us that since the murder he has been so depressed and panicky that his flat has become a prison cell.
All of the asylum seekers said they wanted action, they wanted help to organise to defend themselves from the racists who are given immunity by local police. Many of the Scottish residents we met also expressed disgust about the daily harassment and attacks.
The British state fears the unity of the most oppressed sections of society with the most politically conscious, that is, the unity of black, working class and asylum seekers with communists and other revolutionaries. This unity transforms the oppressed from passive victims into a force presenting a fundamental challenge to the capitalist system. It places the most oppressed section of society at the forefront of the working class struggle. This potentially revolutionary process is opposed by numerous opportunist forces, as well as by the state, because while they claim to care about the victimisation of the most oppressed (in this case asylum seekers) they are not prepared to confront the system which creates these injustices: capitalism. The system supplies them with their comfort and privilege. These opportunist elements include the reformist social democratic left and those professionals and community organisers who have built a career out of the misery of the poor, or hope to do so.
Because the Revolutionary Communist Group does understand the importance of uniting in a real grass roots struggle against racism and poverty, we agreed to call a demonstration with the asylum seekers in Sighthill for the following Saturday 8 September. Instead of marching to the Council Chambers, the demonstration would go to the headquarters of the regional police force, Strathclyde Police, to protest against police inaction. Our press statement read:
‘“The racist attackers are waiting for us almost every night when we cross the footbridge over the motorway at Fountain Road” says a Kurdish asylum seeker from Sighthill. “We are demanding that police are put on the footbridge and around the housing estate in the evenings so that we can get home without being attacked.” If this demand is not met, the demonstration will discuss how asylum seekers can organise to ensure their own safety.’
The demonstration was legal and the demands were democratic, including a demand for investment in facilities in the area to improve the lives of both Scottish residents and asylum seekers. An open invitation was sent out to other groups to join with us and spread the base of support far and wide.
Immediately we experienced efforts from both the state and so-called progressives to undermine both the actual demonstration and the unity of forces which was necessary to make it successful. On receipt of the notification form, the police threatened to place restrictions and then to ban the demonstration. Aamer Anwar, the lawyer of the Chhokar family, whose son was murdered by racists, told our comrades that the people of Sighthill wanted things to ‘wind down’. Using the very language which justifies racist attacks, he accused us of being ‘outsiders’, who would stir things up. We heard the same line from local tabloid journalists, who have previously been responsible for inciting hostility against the asylum seekers with their sensationalist stories about favourable treatment. However, we were repeatedly assured by the Kurdish community leader, Ali Temel, who works with the Scottish Socialist Party, that the asylum seekers wanted the demonstration and would turn up in their hundreds to protest.
On Saturday 8 September our comrades turned up to the assembly point, to be told by the only two police officers there that the demonstration had been cancelled. They even named the organiser and his address claiming that he had phoned that morning to cancel, clearly ignorant of that fact that he was standing in front of them – and no such decision had been taken. We were informed that Ali Temel had told the community the evening before that the demonstration was cancelled. While police insisted on turning away those who did turn out to protest, small groups of racists with dogs and loyalist tattoos were starting to surround us, laying a trap. Between chatting to the racist youths, the two police officers warned our comrades: ‘You’d better watch your backs. You might get ambushed and we can’t guarantee your safety.’
Fears about the unity of communists, anti-racist activists and asylum seekers, many of whom are from politically active organisations in their home countries, set the wheels of opportunism in motion to undermine the demonstration. It is a distressing fact, however, that these attacks will continue – the asylum seekers have been betrayed by those who claim to represent and protect them. The fight will continue because it must!
Sighthill, a den of racism and poverty
The grim towering blocks of Sighthill first rose above the tenement slums of Glasgow in 1967. Despite the brutality of their design, moving into the estate which sat on the other side of the city motorway was a step up from the slums and Glaswegians queued for a flat. The economic artery in the area was the railway industry which employed local people. But by 1985 the last railway works had shut down and unemployment soared as high as 30%, most of which was long-term. Sighthill became yet another sink estate, riddled with drugs, crime and unemployment, neglected by the council and left to rot in poverty. Today Sighthill is the poorest constituency in Scotland with the highest unemployment rate among males and the second most unhealthy area in Britain, with deaths from lung cancer being twice the national average. Yet former Labour Lord Provost Michael Kelly described the people of Sighthill as ‘ignorant whingers’ who refused all jobs offered to them.
Having left Scottish residents to simmer in poverty and deprivation, the local council volunteered in April 2000 to house up to 2,000 asylum seekers fleeing persecution and poverty at home. With a five-year fund from the United Nations of £120 million, the council began to tear out the boards from the empty Sighthill flats which locals had refused to take. While having the simplest repairs usually took the council months, these flats were decorated and given sparse furnishings and the asylum seekers were bussed in. Before they arrived, the local youths used to fight each other in gangs, now they have a common and more defenceless enemy.
A United Nations report described the murder as ‘sadly predictable’ and criticised the media and politicians in Britain for creating a climate of hostility which leads to racist violence. Racists have been able to exploit the neglect which working class areas like Sighthill have experienced from Labour councils and governments over the decades. The British National Party held two meetings in Sighthill before the general election, but they found themselves redundant; the racist tabloid press had got there first stirring up hostility and encouraging attacks.
The media
When the asylum seekers arrived in Glasgow in April 2000, the Daily Record sent its reporters into Sighthill to seek comment from the locals. Its centre pages gave great prominence to the refurbishing of flats for the new families and deliberately set out to encourage locals to feel disadvantaged and angry at the ‘special treatment’ of refugees. This was clearly the Record’s agenda. It had previously incited violence against refugees when its billboards outside shops had screamed ‘Cheeky Beggars Booted Out’, in reference to Romanians being deported for begging in Bishopriggs.
The Daily Record, which backs the Labour government, is the highest circulation newspaper in Scotland and it’s editor, Peter Cox, is an ex-editor of The Sun. Within two days of the murder of Firsat Yildiz, the Record was reprinting the propaganda of the Turkish Embassy, a fascist country which has murdered and tortured thousands of Kurdish and Turkish people. According to them, Firsat was a bogus asylum seeker after all and this became front page news. After the murder, the Daily Record continued to attack and criminalise asylum seekers and refugees. More deaths would sell more papers.
The government
In a letter to The Guardian on 9 August, a member of the Medical Foundation for the Care of Victims of Torture explained that previous racist attacks at Sighthill were: ‘reported by refugee workers to the Home Office’s national asylum support services (NASS) with a request that further dispersal to the areas in question be halted until proper community relations programmes had been set up. So far the NASS has shown itself impervious to such concerns.’
Most anti-racist campaigners have been explicit in condemning the media for inciting and encouraging racism. The Anti-Nazi League commendably organised a picket of the Anderson Quay headquarters of the Daily Record after its smearing of Firsat Yildiz. However, it has been much less ready to point the finger at politicians and the Labour government.
Jack Straw, who introduced the dispersal system as Home Secretary, has the blood of Firsat Yildiz on his hands. Now, as the Labour government’s Foreign Secretary, Straw will be wading in the blood of the poor and oppressed around the world. Jack Straw and the Labour government are sophisticated politicians devoid of principles. They knew the consequences when they began to turn the handle of the racist hate machine to appeal to the greed of the middle class and better-off workers. A racist alliance is forming through social democracy as refugees and other black and Asian people are targeted and attacked. Contempt for refugees, contempt for the poor, contempt for the working class – these are the values of the Labour Party.
The united struggle against racism and poverty is forced to confront the root cause, the Labour government and the capitalist system it represents. The predominantly middle class left will abandon this struggle because they refuse to confront the racist Labour government or undermine their own privileged positions in the capitalist sewer. Those really demanding justice will be forced to organise themselves independently to defend the community, stop the racist attacks and start the fight back!
Sinan Bostanci, Helen Burnes and Michael MacGregor
