FRFI takes part in march against NF on Tyneside

This is the fourth year the National Front have had their April march through Newcastle, and the fourth year Labour’s cops have protected them, even guarding the door of Weatherspoons as the fascists get drunk after their march. The police do this because they are part of the state, and the British state is a racist state. It exists to defend the interests of the British ruling class, whose luxury lifestyles are dependent on the exploitation of the people and resources of oppressed countries.

Wars of occupation, sweatshops, cheap migrant labour and the pillage of natural resources are the daily bread of British imperialism, and are justified by racism. The British state protects the NF because they are useful. When the NF march and the BNP go to the ballot box, it is the perfect excuse for Labour’s next round of attacks on black people and immigrants.

The biggest perpetrator of racism, day after day in communities across Newcastle, is the British state under a Labour government. Anybody who is not prepared to confront the British state, and who prefers to stay ‘respectable’ for fear of alienating their Labour Party ‘friends’, will also have to stop short of really dealing with the fascists.

Use Your Vote to Stop the BNP and NF?
How can you stop one racist party by voting for another racist party? Since coming to power in 1997, Labour has unleashed a wave of attacks on asylum seekers and other migrants. Families are being dragged from their homes in Newcastle and other cities in early morning raids, and being forced onto planes back to situations of extreme danger.

Thousands of children, including babies, are being locked up in immigration detention centres in Britain every year, and more centres are being built. A report last year estimated that over 300 asylum seekers are currently destitute in Newcastle, with an average of 20 forced to sleep outdoors on a given night.

The Labour government has terrorised Muslim communities with raids and shoot-to-kill policies, in an effort to scare them away from supporting the movements which are confronting imperialism in the middle east. This is nothing new. In the 1970s the Labour Party backed the same tactics against Irish immigrants to intimidate support for the Irish liberation struggle.

To talk about ‘old’ and ‘new’ Labour is an illusion, smoke and mirrors. There is only one Labour Party, and it is and always has been a thoroughly racist party. An effective movement against racism cannot be built on the basis of half-supporting and half-opposing Labour. The illusion that racism can be stopped through the parliament of the British state holds back the development of any serious movement.

The Way Forward
Fascists must be opposed on the streets wherever they organise. They won’t be stopped by votes, and they won’t be stopped unless we challenge the racism of the party in power – the Labour Party. Racism will not be challenged by a demonstration once a year, or by leafleting only in response to fascist electoral campaigns. Anti-racists need to support people engaged in the daily struggle against state racism - for example Tyneside Community Action for Refugees (TCAR) has launched a Pledge of Resistance to immigration raids. Contact us and find out how to support TCAR’s pledge.

The counter-demonstration was called by the trade unions, and as usual was dominated by Labour Party lefts attempting to use their opposition to a bunch of 50 thugs to distance themselves from the racism of their own party. FRFI comrades called them out on their party's own war against asylum seekers, and on the record of their party in terrorising Muslim communities today just as they did the Irish in the 1970s and 1980s.

The Labour lefts could think of nothing to say in their defence, but members of the Socialist Worker Party jumped to their aid and pointed out how totally inappropriate it was to be talking about racism at an anti-fascist demonstration.

As happened last year, the organisers marched the demonstrators 100 metres down the road into a police cordon, waited for the fascists to make it safely to the pub, and then announced the counter-demonstration over, around 30 minutes after it had begun. Throughout the demonstration FRFI comrades used leaflets, chants, one to one discussions and the megaphone to draw attention to the role of the police in protecting the fascists, without whom the 300 counter-demonstrators could easily have dealt with the 50 fascists. This was the British state exposed in its defence of organised fascists, yet the Labour lefts and their supporters in the SWP, Socialist Party, etc, seemed very upset at this exposure, and made every effort short of physical violence to shut down and drown out what FRFI was saying.

When the demonstration was declared officially over FRFI activists went with others to Weatherspoons, where the fascists were getting drunk under the protection of the police. Protestors formed up outside but were gradually forced back by the police using horses, one of the cops reaching out to rip the cord out of the back of a megaphone. Protestors continued to chant, exposing the cops with 'Labour's bobby on the beat Protects the fascists on the street!' and slowed down the police by linking arms and repeatedly sitting down.

When they were eventually forced back into the city centre a core of protestors headed to the police station to protest against the police's defence of the fascists. The police quickly formed a line in front of their door, and imposed the ridiculous condition under the Public Order Act that the protest could only continue for 4 minutes, after which they dispersed the protest. There was one arrest during the march for breach of the peace, which comrades only learned of later.