2nd Northern March Against Racism, Newcastle (25th Oct 08)

Please put photos of the NF demo on showing the bastards faces.
Please don't put the faces of anti-fascists on the internet. Faces can be blurred out.

We need to stand together against the NF and the border police. Such solidarity can be achieved by differentiating campaigns that support refugees from the political organisations that tend to take over and exploit such campaigns. The presence of a banner advertising the Statist Communist newspaper Fight Racism! Fight Imperialism! on the monument alongside the banner of Tyneside Community Action for Refugees is an example of a political organisation exploiting the situation of refugees, the compassion of participants and the labour of activists. People are driven away from TCAR by the Che Guevara badges and the shouting of slogans like "lock up Labour" which is offensive to many people including prison abolitionists. Refugees are pressured to buy an expensive newspaper and to increase their personal risk by openly opposing the government.
There is potential for TCAR to grow with increasing support from the workers movement.
When TCAR voted to ban groups from selling newspapers at their demos, FRFI responded by threatening to leave TCAR. Refugees should form their own networks of people they know and trust. These groups should be dictating the agenda; not the "vanguard".

You obviously have no clue what you're talking about. When (white British) activists proposed a motion to ban newspapers from TCAR - and the same people at the same meeting proposed a motion to expell the RCG from TCAR - refugees in TCAR voted unanimously against it. Some of the refugees at the meeting made the point very clearly that they were familiar with people who wanted to censor newspapers and ban organisations, that was precisely what they had fled in their own countries and they wanted none of it in TCAR. The same meeting went on to enshrine opposition to censorship in the TCAR consitution. Most of the people who backed the censorship motions refused to accept the decision of the majority in TCAR, including all of the refugees at the meeting, and they were the ones who walked out of TCAR.

You can bang on about the RCG being 'statist' all you want, but the true colours of the people who backed those motions were exposed in their attempt to censor and ban people in the movement who they had disagreements with. The RCG on the other hand has always fought for the fullest democracy in TCAR, as we understand the responsibility of any movement's leadership to decide the direction of the movement through full and open public discussion.

'@nti Fascist', you say "Refugees should form their own networks".

Who are you to dictate to refugees on how they should organise? So you think refugees should make their own decisions, but only as long as they agree with you?

Shouldn't we support refugees' right to organise as they see fit, whether autonomously, with British people, in political organisations, or whatever, as THEY decide? Isn't it a little hypocritical to lecture refugees on how they should avoid being lectured to by 'vanguardists'??

I couldn't give a fuck what the RCG are up to, can we have some better pics of the fronters please?

cheers.

The corporate media in England encourages racism; it does so by perpetuating lies and myths about asylum seekers, refugees and economic migrants – “ ‘they’ take the best jobs”, “ ‘they’ are claiming too many unemployment benefits and scrounging off the British tax payer”, “ ‘they’ take the best council houses”, “ ‘our’ schools cannot cope with the influx of ‘them’”, “most of ‘them’ are criminals” etc. With these lies and myths the government of the day – in this case Labour – can ratchet up attacks on asylum seekers with an ever increasing racist social policy. They do so by making it illegal for asylum seekers to work, only allowing asylum seekers two thirds of benefit entitlements that people in this country can claim, housing asylum seekers in some of the worst council housing and private housing in the country (much of which would not be fit to house a wild dog in), exaggerating the numbers of asylum seekers attempting to enter the country (as if that should matter) along with scare stories about an influx of rapists, paedophiles and plague infested drug dealers; thus by doing so creating moral panics and a climate of fear. The Labour Party et al and the corporate ‘main stream’ media also deliberately keep from the public the role of British companies in the economic disasters, corruption, torture and hunger from which many asylum seekers are fleeing – all this done with the baying approval of some of the most disadvantaged people in England – the working class.

Yet with the lies and myths constantly perpetuated by racist gutter snipe middle class journalism at the behest of the privileged silver tongued politicians they choose to support, a division can be created between working class people in England and the working class internationally - which is precisely what these ruling classes want; they do not want a politically aware and unified working class opposition to their thievery, profiteering and plunderous looting of the very countries from which many asylum seekers are attempting to escape. If this were to happen then by doing so working class people in this country would begin to recognise that the same economic system and the same state that is waging war on the working class internationally is the same one that is attacking them. Working class English people and many working class asylum seekers, refugees and economic migrants have the same needs; decent schools for their children, clean hospitals, affordable housing and a repealing of oppressive anti trade union laws at the very, very least..

Unfortunately, the democratic rights of some supporters of Tyneside Community Action For Refugees (TCAR) who try to alert the public to British involvement in this theft abroad and racism at home have come under attack in recent years, providing added reason as to why it was important that a strong show of solidarity was in evidence at the Tyneside Community Action for Refugees demo Saturday 25th October 2008. Sadly, as can be seen in the above post from @nti Fascist (which is an odd mixture cluck-cluck, tut-tut pseudo posturing anarchist-cum-social-democrat pontificating) we seem to be witness yet again to sinister attempts by these forces of regression at silencing the Revolutionary Communist Group and their newspaper, Fight Racism! Fight Imperialism! The RCG/FRFI activist provided a solid expose of the all that was so utterly contemptuous and nausiatingly incorrect in that slithering serpentine post by @nti Fascist - who seems to only want to offer asylum seeker "compassion" - which translates as "pity" - a pat on the head, a cup of tea and a plate of biscuits; let Asylum Seekers decide for themselves if they want to purchace a news paper for 80p or £1 or donate as little as 1p and let them decide how they want TCAR to function instead of applying your own form of control by not respecting their democraticly won constitution; or is @anti Fascists really as fascist?

What ever the form of censorship, where ever the attack on free speech comes from – it must be opposed. Independent activists such as those who work extremely hard administering on an accountable level within groups like the TCAR are not charities and need the financial as well as political support of the public. At TCAR meetings, leaflets advertising events such as film showings and fund raising gigs are often on display along with news papers; particularly Fight Racism! Fight Imperialism! which has a complete back page dedicated to informing and updating on the daily struggles of asylum seekers as well as those asylum seekers being held in prisons and detention centres throughout Britain with every one of its bi-monthly publications – this kind of democracy (particularly in a Capitalist society) and the publicising and information sharing it encourages needs funding in order to print and distribute. Most literature is often not free to publish, therefore cannot often be given away free; money raised can also help to pay for public transport costs, the hiring of meeting venues and the purchasing of materials for banners and information stalls.

There are those who would like to silence an alternative, independent non corporate economic analytical alternative. Some would even do so not out of racist motivation but as already mentioned, because they see working class English people and particularly working class asylum seekers as harmless objects of pity that are too stupid to understand an economic class based analysis. What ever camp they choose to squat in, whether middle class social democrat or anarcist posturers through skulduggery and belligerence and attempts at conniving bellicose censorship that would make any true progressive simply want to weep or the capitalist state by tip-toe with the use of archaic by-laws/the judiciary/the police; they only do so in order to protect their 'own' privilege, power and influence. The real threat to grass roots movements does not come from swaggering, simian semi-embecile's like the National Front - it comes from people like @nti Fascist with his/her covert fascist views.

Of course there will always be those who also strangle debate by baffling and befuddling their counterparts in a exercise of intellectual gymnastics through entangling their opposition in a deceitful web of word play by use of covert semantic pedantry - they come in my many political shades. To them it is important that working class people are not seen – or heard - to be in the vanguard; working class people and those from other oppressed sections of society might start saying the ‘wrong sort of things’ which might mean that the ‘wrong sort of people’ might start listening to them – the oppressed. And of course, if we are to have change then it is better that it be monochromed mediocrity rather than radical. Better to leave it to social democrats rather than communists; reformists rather than revolutionaries; the same dangerous social democrats and reformists that betrayed and effectively murdered Rosa Luxemburg.

It therefore follows that if the oppressed do want change – they must ASK, and ask NICELY for the door to be opened and for them to be let in from the cold. Concessions might be made, but only as long as those asking for those concessions do so on the understanding that those opening the door can slam it shut in their face at any time. If like Malcolm X you not only DEMAND that the door be flung open but want to rip down the wall that supports it – you will be silenced. Indeed, it is interesting to note that as Martin Luther King began to recognise and actually say that white Middle Class Liberals with their insistence on non-violence in order for black people to protect themselves individually and in their communities (but who where happy to accept state violence in the shape of armed white police officers to ‘protect’ black people) where more of a threat to the black civil rights movement than the white racists were – he was silenced. Coincidences? I think not.


Oh no, we can't chant "lock up Labour" - Can I point out how ridiculous it is for you to think that its is totally inappropriate to be exposing Labour Party support for capitalism, imperliasm, zionism and racism at an anti-racist demonstration? Labour lefts and their supporters in the SWP, Socialist Party, etc, have seemed very upset in the past at this exposure, and have made every effort short of physical violence to shut down and drown out what the Revolutionary Communist Group are saying.

"Unquestioning defence of British imperialism; contempt for the rights of the oppressed; abhorrence for the poor, these were the hallmarks of Labour in 1900 as much as they are today. Yet the left has spun illusions in the Labour Party for as long as it has existed. Fearing the mass of the real working class, those whom are excluded from the official labour and trade union movement, they have pretended that the election of a Labour government would make a difference. They said this in 1983, in 1987, in 1992, again in 1997. They have fooled only themselves. Blair's government is what Blair promised it would be – imperialist, racist, pro-big business and deeply oppressive. The continuity with its early years is a fact, as we shall see.


Labour has always been a racist, imperialist and war-mongering party.


Between 1925 and 1931:

• It sanctioned the use of the RAF to bomb unarmed Kurdish villagers in 1925;

• It used the RAF once again in the brutal suppression of the Indian freedom struggle between 1929-31;


Between 1945 and 1951 Labour:

• Committed British troops to aid the restoration of French colonial rule in Viet Nam and Dutch rule in Indonesia;

• Continued military intervention in Greece against the ELAS, and blockaded Iran following the nationalisation of the British-owned Anglo-Persian Oil Company;

• Ruthlessly exploited the British empire in Africa to aid post-war reconstruction in Britain – The NHS for example.

• It saw no offence to its socialist principles in using head-hunters in a murderous war against Malayan freedom fighters in 1949-51;




Between 1964 and 1970, it:

• Defended apartheid South Africa, blocking calls for sanctions in the UN. It capitulated to the racist settler regime in the former Rhodesia;

• In 1969 it sent troops into the north of Ireland to bolster the tottering Loyalist statelet, and then between 1975 and 1979 supervised a regime of torture and criminalisation directed against the nationalist minority;

•Terrorised the Irish community in Britain, (as it does now with the Muslim community);

• Was responsible for the routine torture of suspected freedom fighter detainees in Aden;

• It gave slavish support for the US war against Vietnam from 1964-70 and to Zionist aggression against the Arab people in 1967;

• Under Tony Benn’s (Labour left celebrity) guidance, it approved RTZ’s illegal plunder of Namibian uranium in 1968 ;


Between 1974 and 1979, it:

• Implemented a ruthless regime of torture against republican prisoners in the North of Ireland.

• It supported the Shah of Iran right to the last days of his regime in 1979 because his regime was the biggest purchaser of British arms;

• In 1978 it sold Hawk jet fighters to the Indonesian Suharto dictatorship which were then used in the genocide of the people of East Timor.


Throughout its periods in government in the 1960s and 1970s it supported all forms of immigration controls.


Whilst in opposition from 1979, ‘Real Labour’:

• Supported the Tories against the Irish hunger-strikers in 1981;

• In the same summer, it supported the racist police against the uprisings of black and white youth;

• The following year, it supported war against Argentina over the Malvinas;

• In 1984-85, it betrayed the struggle of the miners and helped destroy their working class communities;

• In 1990, tin pot generals such as Kaufman and Kinnock bayed for blood in the first war against Iraq.


During the first imperialist war, the great revolutionary Rosa Luxemburg condemned international social democracy as a 'stinking corpse' for its support for the mass slaughter. She was right. But even before 1914 the Labour Party did not play a progressive role – that was never its intent. Its formation depended on the defeat and isolation of socialists and the political exclusion of the mass of the working class in favour of a privileged upper layer and its middle class allies. With the triumph of the revolution in Russia and the threat that its promise of colonial liberation presented to the British Empire, Labour became the principle organiser of reaction within the international working class movement. Labour in 2000, Labour in 1900: they are both the same. " Part of an article in Fight Racism! Figh Imperialism! (exact date unknown, circa 2000).

Not by,

"...the compassion of participants and the labour of activists..."

The kind of people that,

"...are driven away from TCAR by the Che Guevara badges and the shouting of slogans like "lock up Labour" which is offensive to many people including prison abolitionists. "

Here we go, flibertygibbet fops dressed up as revolutionaries (@nti Fascist) - but who are probably nothing more than ‘liberals’ with a few vague ideas - sitting round computers making banal ill-informed comments like nodding dog mascots on the back of an dastardly, rickety bandwagon.

I am not a member of the Revolutionary Communist Group and i know Stone Soup is not but these individuals repeat meaningless mantras regarding the Revolutionary Communist Group (RCG) and their newspaper Fight Racism! Fight Imperialism! (FRFI) through a smoke and mirror haze of antagonising views about the RCG and FRFI. They simply see working class asylum seekers, refugees, economic migrants and working class people from this country as being nothing more than an impotent disorganised rabble - a pitiful rump that have been duped by the RCG or who are just too stupid to do anything about it.

These are the same kind of patronising middle class liberal sob sister attitudes that see Asylum Seekers as some sort of "worthy cause" so long as they remain meek and aquiesent and who although possessing some kind of understanding of imperialism probably posess a deep rooted loathing and distrust of white working class English people who they no doubt refer to as “the poor”, “the under privileged” or “the less well off”; viewing them with only barely concealed contempt.

I am pleased that previous posters have summarized a few factual points in order to tackle and drown with derision each one of the reactionary lies about the working class asylum seeker/white English activists within TCAR - along with their middle class comrades that understand where their wealth comes from and chose to attack it rather than defend it - unlike better paid social democrats/opportunists (upper working class/lower middle class) that hide behind the Socialist Workers Party, Socialist Party, Alliance for Workers Liberty, Workers Power et al - lies often gleefully propagated by belligerent anti-communist Anarchists dreamers.