Over a year ago we moved from printing on Fruit of the Loom and Starworld t-shirts to printing on Continental Earth Positive Shirts. The motivation for this was the decision by FoL, despite promising freedom of association for their workforce, to close a manufacturing plant after the workforce unionised.

The Continental shirts we currently print on are Fair Ware Foundation certified, organic and manufactured in plants using renewable energy making them carbon neutral. This comes at a price. Where before we were able to sell shirts at £10 including UK delivery we’re selling the Continental shirts at £14.50.

Since then the price of postage has increased and we’re now expecting a price rise in the t-shirts themselves.  £14.50 is not cheap for a t-shirt although it’s still cheaper than other “radical” t-shirt companies who’ll also sell you a Jeremy Clarkson for Prime Minister design printed on shirts that are neither Fare Wear or organic.

We’re not in a position to absorb the rise in price of the t-shirts so we have a choice. Put our prices up and break the £15 barrier or do something else.

Our Idea

The idea of charging more than £15 for a t-shirt in the UK in 2013 isn’t a good one and from an ethical point of view there are questions about how useful Fare Trade is. The employment rights we have in the UK weren’t won by people in the markets supplied by the UK buying goods produced to ethical standards they deemed acceptable, they were won by struggle, the kind of struggle happening in emerging markets today.

What we’re proposing to do is to stop using Continental shirts and go back to a mix of Starworld and Fruit of The Loom.  In terms of the actual quality of the shirt from the point of view of the person wearing them, there is no difference.   In terms of pricing this will allow us to go back to charging £10 including UK delivery for t-shirts.

As an option for people buying our t-shirts they can increase the price they pay in £1 increments up to £15 .   For t-shirts on our site that are benefit t-shirts for a group or campaign, the Freedom or the Defend the Right to Protest t-shirts for example the donation will go the campaign. For all other t-shirts and hoodies the donation will go to The Solidarity Federation.

The reasons for choosing Solfed to send donations to are the same reasons we joined Solfed. They’re an active organisation organising in working class communities opposing Tory policies of austerity such as Workfare and the Bedroom Tax. They have no paid officials, any money spent by Solfed is used exclusively in the fight to defend and improve the conditions of working class people.

 That’s our thoughts on the way forward for Sabcat. Any suggestions, comments or questions, add them below.

I don’t recount the details of that meeting as a counter to those who criticise the left  for being male dominated or non representative.  The details of that meeting, the leadership of that party I have given although all perfectly true mean nothing.  If you read that paragraph  and thought it told you something worth knowing then you’ve either abandoned political ideas for identity or you never had any politics to begin with. You’ve given up or you never even started.

Ideas have to be considered in a vacuum, the value of them is not affected by the person who puts them forward. On twitter in the last few days Suzanne Moore was criticised for use of language offensive to Trans people. She reacted with a collection of hate filled tweets devoid of any argument just assertions that Trans people were of a lesser value in her particular movement than proper (as defined by her) women. She was rightly attacked for this, it was pure unadulterated prejudice. There’s no place for that. Anywhere. That’s what my politics tell me. It’s the root of my politics, the politics that took me to the meeting I mentioned above.

Suzanne Moore has left Twitter due to the reaction to her hate. The result has been arguments between supporters of Moore who point to other, good things, that she has said and those who find her attack on Trans people disgusting.

Owen Jones is a supporter of Moore and identity politics is his weapon of choice in the defence. It’s a good weapon to argue with, it shifts and moves and means everything and nothing all at the same time. Male ultra lefts have had the audacity to attack Moore is what his argument boils down to. What have they said? He doesn’t go into that, to do so would mean the issue of naked prejudice would have to be addressed. Too many people have been led by the nose down this dead end “but women have said the same things” they cry and then cry more when Jones ignores them. The issue is naked prejudice against an oppressed group. Some are bemoaning that Moore said what she said, that she could say it because she’s a cisgendered white woman. Would it be better if she wasn’t? The issue is lost in a politics free void of identity and it’s never going to come back.

That’s not to say that identity isn’t important or doesn’t matter or that oppression based on identity is somehow less important than the class struggle. Oppression is important and so is the fight against it and the class struggle can’t happen without it. The two are inextricably linked.

It’s critically important to remember that oppression can only be defined by the group that is being oppressed. It would be ridiculous for example if I as a white, straight man were to hold court on what it means to be a Trans person or to try and define what is and isn’t offensive to women.  No single individual from an oppressed group can do it for the whole group either.  It’s a process that can only come from the organisation of those people on their own terms. They don’t do it in isolation though, their conclusions have to be the property of all of us and we have to accept that those conclusions will evolve over time.

What we have to have is politics. A set of universal ideas. If you believe in freedom and equality you believe in it for everyone or you don’t believe in at all.  Those words, attitudes and prejudices that are offensive to Trans people are offensive to me.  That’s got to be the foundation. Solidarity.  All we have is each other.

If a person puts forward an argument it’s either compatible with those universal values or it is not. This is not dependant on who says it. The information that’s missing from the first paragraph, the information that would allow you to make a judgement about whether the party was compatible with the universal values of freedom and equality is what the party stood for. The identity categories of the people present at the meeting don’t tell you that. The mixed race woman was Sharon Ebanks former BNP councillor and the party was the New Nationalist Party.

I assumed that this was an abuse of a theory that I didn’t understand, that privilege theory wasn’t simply a handy tool to dismiss an argument because you don’t like the person making it.  I asked on twitter for some links so I could find out what this theory was really about.  The most interesting and by interesting I mean the most infuriating was A Class Struggle Anarchist Analysis of Privilege Theory – from the Women’s Caucus.

Before I explain my problems with the theory and it’s uses I’ll first briefly explain where I’m coming from.  I’m a socialist. I believe in and strive for a universally applied set of values that can be simply described as equality and freedom. For a more complete explanation of these values AFED’s own aims and principles  is as good place to look.These aims and principles provide a lense to view the world through and a yard stick to measure the validity or otherwise of ideas against.

People Act in Their Material Interest

The AFED Aims and principles criticism of unions touches on this, the interests of union leadership are often at odds with the interests of their members. The overthrow of the wage system, of capitalism while in the interests of the members is not in the interests of the leadership.  Privilege theory takes no account of shifting material interests  and instead is concerned with fixed categories of identity.  Once analysis moves away from the material and into identity it’s almost impossible to reconcile it with class struggle in all but the most crude terms.  In their analysis of privilege theory AFED abandon class struggle almost completely:

The term “privilege” has a complex relationship with class struggle, and to understand why, we need to look at some of the differences and confusions between economic and social class. Social class describes the cultural identities of working class, middle class and upper class. These identities, much like those built on gender or race, are socially constructed, created by a society based on its prejudices and expectations of people in those categories. Economic class is different. It describes the economic working and ruling classes, as defined by Marx. It functions through capitalism, and is based on the ownership of material resources, regardless of your personal identity or social status. This is why a wealthy, knighted capitalist like Alan Sugar can describe himself as a “working class boy made good”. He is clearly not working class if we look at it economically, but he clings to that social identity in the belief that it in some way justifies or excuses the exploitation within his business empire. He confuses social and economic class in order to identify himself with an oppressed group (the social working class) and so deny his own significant privilege (as part of the economic ruling class). Being part of the ruling class of capitalism makes it impossible to support struggles against that system. This is because, unlike any other privileged group, the ruling class are directly responsible for the very exploitation they would be claiming to oppose.

This idea that the middle class and working class are nothing more than socially constructed cultural identities is convenient for privilege theory.  It’s reduced the class struggle in the material sense to Alan Sugar and other owners of material resources oppressing everyone else. The middle class are part of the oppressed group, it’s an identity no more or less significant than another.  It’s complete none sense. The middle class and working class as well as cultural difference experience different material conditions. The material and the cultural feed into each other in the form of connections and opportunities for the middle class that the working class don’t enjoy. The interests of the working class and middle class are very different.  People act on the basis of their material interests. Just as the union leaderships  don’t share the same interests as their membership, depending on the existing order for their material advantage and power so the middle class exist and enjoy material advantage in the same way.

Item 3 from Afed’s aims and principles:

We believe that fighting systems of oppression that divide the working class, such as racism and sexism, is essential to class struggle. Anarchist-Communism cannot be achieved while these inequalities still exist. In order to be effective in our various struggles against oppression, both within society and within the working class, we at times need to organise independently as people who are oppressed according to gender, sexuality, ethnicity or ability. We do this as working class people, as cross-class movements hide real class differences and achieve little for us. Full emancipation cannot be achieved without the abolition of capitalism.

The twin issues of division and oppression are very real and need to be tackled. The important part of that is “We do this as working class people, as cross-class movements hide real class differences and achieve little for us.“  The reason is that class is unique, other identity categories can feed into the material conditions and interests of a person but on a shifting basis.  That’s not to say that patriarchy or racism are not real or that they can be dismissed but it’s not possible except on single, narrowly framed issues to equate the interests of any group across class lines.  AFED claim this can achieve little for us. I go further and say that it ensures that struggles rooted in identity and not class can never feed into a wider struggle against capitalism because they are made up of people who don’t share the same interests, class interests. The overthrow of capitalism is not in the interests of the middle class whether they’re a cisgendered white male or not.

In their analysis of Privilege Theory AFED touch on racism:

At other times the benefits are more subtle and invisible, and involve certain pressures being taken off a privileged group and focused on others, for example black and Asian youths being 28% more likely to be stopped and searched by the police than white youths. The point here is not that police harassment doesn’t happen to white youths, or that being working class or a white European immigrant doesn’t also mean you’re more likely to face harassment; the point is that a disproportionate number of black and Asian people are targeted in comparison to white people, and the result of this is that, if you are carrying drugs, and you are white, then all other things being equal you are much more likely to get away with it than if you were black. In the UK, white people are also less likely to be arrested or jailed, or to be the victim of a personal crime. Black people currently face even greater unemployment in the UK than they do in the USA. The point of quoting this is not to suggest we want a society in which people of all races and ethnicities face equal disadvantage – we want to create a society in which nobody faces these disadvantages. But part of getting there is acknowledging how systems of oppression work, which means recognising that, if black and ethnic minority groups are more likely to face these disadvantages, then by simple maths white people are less likely to face them, and that means they have an advantage, a privilege, including the privilege of not needing to be aware of the extent of the problem. 

As they say, black and Asian youths are more likely to face police oppression, their example that a white person is more likely to be able to carry drugs and not get caught is odd and isn’t privilege unless the police are harassing someone at all times and if they stop doing so on grounds of race white people are at higher risk.

The unemployment statistics make more sense, black people are oppressed in this way.  Thinking of this in terms of privilege for white people isn’t useful in terms of understanding it and is positively counter productive in tackling it.  What is described is a material reason for solidarity. There’s a pile and some people are at the bottom of it, they belong to a variety of identity categories.  The only way out of this is recognition that the injustice is the existence of the pile itself.  Describing this in terms of white people being privileged fails to recognise the material conditions at the root of the issue, that the real issue is a class issue. Viewing it in terms of race only perpetuates the problem, the problem being the pile itself. Capitalism.

The last race riots in the UK were in 2005 in the Lozells area of Birmingham. The fight between black and Asian people was caused by the multicultural policy of  allocating resources based on ethnicity. This is explored by Kenan Malik in his essay How to Make a Riot:

Once political power and financial resources became allocated by ethnicity, then people began to identify themselves in terms of their ethnicity, and only their ethnicity. ‘People are forced into a very one-dimensional view of themselves by the way that equality policies work,’ says Joy Warmington of the Birmingham Race Action Partnership, a council-funded but independent equalities organization. ‘People mobilize on the basis of how they feel they will get the resources to tackle the issues important to them. And in Birmingham it helps to say you’re campaigning for the needs of your ethnic or faith community, because policies have tended to emphasize ethnicity as a key to entitlement. If somebody in Handsworth or Lozells wants a community centre or a health centre it is often easier to get funding if they say “We want an Asian community centre” or “We want an African-Caribbean health centre.” They are forced to see themselves in terms of their ethnicity, their race, their culture and so on rather than in broader terms that might bring people together.’

The racism, the division of working class people had at it’s roots material resources. The real grievances  of those people who saw themselves as missing out were not racial they were class issues. Privilege Theory does nothing to help us understand let alone tackle this because there is no one with any actual privilege.

Privilege Theory is a tool for middle class people to tell people with no discernible privilege to “check their privilege”.  It provides nothing of any use to a working class movement and undermines solidarity.  It formalises an ad hominem argument when the issues aren’t convenient to discuss.

We don’t need it, we have a set of ideas and values by which to measure arguments against.  What we don’t have, as working class people is much in the way of privilege unlike our middle class friends playing at being radical.  It’s not a game.

On Sunday Laurie Penny excelled herself with the 140 character limit and showed how easy it is for a person with a high profile and a lot of followers to close down debate with ease.

You can see it here the tweets it’s a reply to and the conversation, such as it is, that follows.  She describes all politics as identity politics. @LoveDetective1 tweeted a link in reply to an IWCA article -Multiculturalism & identity politics – the reactionary consequences and how they can be challenged – about the failure of identity politics, political multiculturalism and the importance of class politics. Her reply to this tweet/link? “oh. Oh, I see. You’re racist. That makes this so much easier *blocks*”.

She gets rightly criticised for that, neither the link or @LoveDetective1 is racist. She’s made an error. She doesn’t know who @LoveDetective1 is and clearly at this stage knows nothing of the IWCA. Amazing lack of knowledge for a person who turns up at such things as EDL demos and writes from an apparently antifascist perspective.  She continues to assert that the link is racist, sexist and using it for the basis of an argument is racist and sexist. She receives more criticism from more people, people who do know who @LoveDetective1 is and do know what the IWCA is, where it came from and what it stands for.

She then tweets “Now all the trolls are bitching that I’ve blocked them. Seriously. What makes these people think I owe them my attention?” Cue support from her friends up until now completely uninvolved in the discussion, amongst others Owen Jones and Billy Bragg. They know nothing of the discussion that prompted her “all the trolls are bitching” tweet, that in this context “troll” means someone who doesn’t agree with her. Owen Jones tweeted ” I love how trolls equate the right to annoy people and force you to listen to their abusive messages with “free speech” Retweeted by Laurie.    When he’s asked if he thinks the IWCA are racist Owen Jones withdraws explaining he thought that she was being attacked by right wing trolls and that he doesn’t know anything of the discussion, not retweeted by Laurie, obviously.  Doesn’t matter now, he turned up Laurie got to retweet this support and send some thank you tweets to Owen and Billy, the discussion is closed down.   The twitter ‘left’ have spoken, even if they didn’t know what they were speaking about. There’s nothing left of the debate now, it’s all about accusations of sexism and racism. Completely unfounded accusations.

What we are left with  is 55 thousand twitter followers of Laurie Penny happy in the knowledge that @LoveDetective1 is sexist, racist and the IWCA publish racist and sexist analysis and by implication are a sexist, racist organisation that is best ignored. The debate, any debate is framed by the people with the power and the privilege which in the context of Twitter is followers.  If the debate strays or the wrong people participate the sexist/racist/troll finger is pointed and everything is back on the right track. In this case it’s all about identity politics and no debate was necessary to establish this position as fact.

What’s the source of the power and privilege that Laurie enjoys on Twitter? The answer to that question requires a class analysis, identity politics won’t help you understand it. The power and privilege Laurie enjoys on twitter is just an extension of the power and privilege she and others from a private education, Oxbridge background with the ability to get a foot in the door by a combination of connections and the ability to work as an unpaid intern enjoy. It’s a very old fashioned tale and not at all radical.

People who’s privilege is based on the existing class structure are always by definition going to be at the very least suspicious of an organisation who’s founding statement is:

“The Independent Working Class Association has been established to promote and celebrate the political independence of the working class, and to pursue the political and economic interests of that class with no consideration for, and regardless of, the consequences to the existing political and economic structures.”

On Sunday Laurie Penny outright smeared them as racists and sexists.

On Tuesday as well as saying she wasn’t calling @Lovedetective1 a racist (she claims confusion over the RT system, which is frankly a pathetic weasel way to avoid admitting she was wrong. It’s not as though she’s new to twitter, is it?) Laurie tweeted “Why is it that thinkers on left and right seem happy to be called ‘sexist’ – but when ‘racism’ is mentioned they explode + threaten to sue? “. The answer is that sadly, the word  “sexist” as used by Laurie has become a meaningless word, a label to attach to someone who doesn’t agree with her.

Anyway, get yourself a Laurie Penny T-shirt. Only £14.50.

After more than 4 years of dire economic circumstances though that friends and family safety net has been torn to shreds. We really are all in it together, in the shit.

A  close friend after redundancy forced  a job change and a period of serious (although not life threatening) illness is in a financial mess. Facing eviction, stressed about Christmas (they have two children) and still recovering from illness they’re going through what looks to me to be a mental breakdown. The acute pressure is money, not thousands of pounds, a few hundred quid would relieve it until the new year, give them chance to get perspective and find their feet. A few years ago, it wouldn’t have been a problem.  At least one of us in their circle of friends would have been flush, a couple of weeks pulling extra shifts on the taxis and flogging that guitar that I never learnt to play on ebay would have done it. Today those extra shifts are already being worked as a matter of course to make up the shortfall in what’s been a 20% hourly wage cut in 4 years and the guitar is already long gone. We’re all in the same boat. It’s not that chucking a mate a few hundred quid would be difficult, the money isn’t there to chuck. I’ve never known this before, everyone is skint, everyone is struggling to just get by and fearful about the future. It’s the new norm, not the exception.

If I’m right, that many people will be able to relate to this, and me and my friends aren’t a particularly feckless bunch the question is. How long can it go on for? How much of this kind of pressure can we take?

When the Luddites began what would become armed insurrection in 1811 they described themselves as followers of Ned Ludd. They signed letters outlining their grievances and demands “General Ludd”.  There was no General Ludd, the name came from the story of a Ned Ludd who had broken a weaving frame 30 years previously.

The Luddites could hardly have used their real names, they were engaged in open confrontation with the authorities and powers of the day. As it was 13 of them were hanged in 1813 and many more died fighting.

Wikileaks isn’t organising an armed insurrection but they are throwing light on the activities of governments and causing severe embarrassment to those governments.  It’s worthwhile work, it is making a difference. Or at least it was. A cursory glance at Wikileaks twitter feed now could leave a person thinking that they’re an organisation who’s only function is to defend an Australian accused of raping women in Sweden.

Now, some people, like the arch self aggrandising twat, George Galloway hint that the accusations are a product of Assange’s involvement in Wikileaks, as it’s founder, that he’s a target and the women have dubious state and political connections.  For various reasons I consider this “honey trap” explanation of Assange’s predicament fanciful. Not least of those reasons is the sheer amount of good luck the people planning such a trap would need, and appear to have had. No, I don’t smell conspiracy in these allegations, I smell charges to answer in court. Galloway, Michael Moore and others have asserted that the accusations don’t amount to rape or any other crime. This is frankly desperate, offensive and the most divisive aspect of this whole episode.

So what’s my point? It’s this, beware of heroes. Don’t make them, don’t elevate a single individual to the point that they are the embodiment of an idea, a group or a campaign.

In 1812 General Ludd was not discovered to be at the centre of a paedophile ring, he was never accused of rape or failing to get his round in. He didn’t exist. He represented an idea, he was short hand for a cause so much so that we don’t remember the names of the real people behind the rising but we’ve all heard of the Luddites.

I replied to this that being working class is kind of hereditary and the that the “left” is working class struggle. I also accused her of being a tourist who’s playing at it. I apologised for this at the time, she’s not playing at it. Just because  she doesn’t come from a working class background doesn’t mean that she is automatically irrelevant or wrong in any discussion.  What she lacks, through no fault of her own, is experience of being working class.

The same is of course true for my ideas about feminism. I’m on the outside looking in, to say I’m opposed to patriarchy and sexism is fine but I lack the experience of being on receiving end of this particular injustice.  This is important.  I don’t experience it so who am I  to identify the problems and to  devise strategies and take a leading role in the fight against it?  I’m a man, it would be a strange feminist movement that’s framed and led by me and other men.

I could also mention racism or disability and make the same points but my argument  is that things  all these things have in common – sexism, racism, disability – is that they are secondary to person’s class background. Class is the factor above all else that defines a person’s life. Laurie almost makes the same point in an article for the Independent Women “having it all” is a middle class myth

Usually, it’s poorer women being paid to do the domestic work, the “women’s work”, that those in high-salaried, full-time careers no longer have time for – and nobody asks whether it’s possible for a nanny or a cleaner to “have it all”.

The middle class woman has no more escaped patriarchy than the working class cleaner or nanny but her experience of it is very different.  A working class disabled person is no more or less physically disabled than a middle class person by virtue of their class but their experience of life is likely to be radically different.  Does it need to be said that the experience of a working class Asian immigrant working as say a taxi driver in Birmingham is going to be completely incomparable to that of Lakshmi Mittal?

Class is not simply a question of material wealth, there’s a cultural component that is equally, if not more important. The connections that a person makes growing up, the networks their families belong to which they can benefit from are largely a product of their  class background.  These connections are largely unavailable to working class people regardless of how well they do in terms of wealth accumulation.

The connections and the resources you have access to make you who you are – We’re a product of our material and social conditions.

There’s been a lot said lately by liberals (of the Libdem variety and others) about falling levels of social mobility. Crudely put, social mobility is people from low income working class backgrounds going to university, making connections, getting professional jobs and generally being better off than their parents.  The important thing to bear in mind is that the current fall is not the anomaly, the high levels of social mobility seen during the post war boom – roughly 1945 to 1970 – were the  anomaly. What we’re seeing now is a return to historic norms.  During the 400 or so years preceding the post war boom social mobility was the exception, people died in the class they were born, father to son, mother to daughter expectations of life were the same.  Right now we’re told that the young people can expect to be poorer than their parents.

The point of this is that the “left” if it means anything at all is the struggle of working class people to throw off the yoke of capitalism. The problems that we face as a class need to be defined by us, the struggle to improve our conditions must be led by us. Yes, we’re a diverse group but our class more than any other aspect of our identity makes us who we are, letting ourselves be divided along the lines of race, gender or sexuality only serves to weaken us just as we were weakened by the idea that a mortgage to buy a council house made us middle class. It didn’t, it trapped us in a whole new way.

They represent a fundamental misunderstanding of what politics is. The first one can just as easily be turned around. If you vote, whoever you vote for, you can’t complain because you’ve validated the system that selects people to represent you for a fixed term. These people armed with the legitimacy you’ve given them can go on to spend that time doing whatever they like, no mechanism exists to recall them, to hold them to account. You’re stuck with them.  Left leaning people with a sense of social justice committed to such things as free university tuition who voted Libdem in 2010 know this only too well.  They can’t do anything about it until 2015 and even then the only option the system provides is to go into a booth and tick a box next to the name of some other politician who promises to do something different. And so the cycle continues.

The second pro voter platitude – You’ll get some extremist like the BNP if you don’t turn up and vote Labour (or some other mainstream party). Is this really an argument?  Representative democracy reduced to voting for someone less bad than the extremist or that’s what you’ll get?  Put another way – Support the status quo because the best (electorally) organised alternative is fascist.

Election day isn’t the day to combat fascism, to try to head off the change that they represent. It’s far too late by then. The question is how the hell have fascists been in a position to organise openly, to canvass for electoral support in your community in the first place? What’s going on there? What were you doing before election day about this?

Do you live surrounded by people with a natural affinity for fascism or are there people in your community so disillusioned with mainstream politics that a significant number are prepared to vote for fascists because they are the only alternative on offer and even then, an alternative wrapped up with the existing system of box ticking every four years we call electoral politics?

Voting? It’s a mugs game.

There was a piece I wanted to reference, a piece which I believe to be the most important comment on anti-fascism and working class politics written in my lifetime. Filling the Vacuum. It was originally published in issue 12 of AFA’s magazine Fighting Talk , and marks the intellectual beginning of the IWCA. The link on the IWCA’s own site is broken and the only place I could find it is in a pdf of a scan of the original issue on Libcom’s site.

I was going to write about my belief that the ideas in that article are as relevant now as they were in 1995. I don’t think that’s necessary though. It speaks for itself and of our current situation as though it was written yesterday. I’ve re-typed it from that scanned copy and posted it here so it’s searchable and easily copied – post it to your own blog.

FILLING THE VACUUM

In Novemer 1990, at a public meeting in east London, AFA declared that the “working class is the natural constituency of socialism, not fascism. Racism and socialism are incompatible. One only exists at the expense of the other. The success of the Far-Right is due to the fact that the Left are not seen as a credible option. AFA are committed to creating the space in which on [a credible alternative] can develop”

Three years later, addressing a meeting in south-east London, an AFA spokesperson returned to the them: “While the initial aim must be to root out the organised racists/fascists – the motive force behind the attacks – and thrown down a challenge to those that provide them with facilities, the long term solution must be to create communities of resistance. By creating some space, perhaps in time a real working class alternative to the lying bullshit that now passes for politics in this country can emerge. The entire Left has failed the working class, black and white alike, though many prefer to believe that the working class has failed the Left. We are here today, not only because they [the Left] are bad socialists but more specifically because they are bad anti-fascists”.

In 1994 in a widely distributed expose of the Anti-Nazi League [Don't believe the Hype], AFA was even more specific. “The BNP can be stopped and on many occasions up and down the country AFA has physically stopped them. However we are not blind to the fact that the fight is political and accept that the resurgence of support for the Far-Right is a symptom of a deeper malaise. We do not see is as our job to campaign for Labour. It is not AFA’s role to argue that change is not needed. The function of anti-fascism is not to see the electoral threat from the Far-Right beaten back so that Labour and the middle-class Left can, as happened between 1982-92, turn their backs on both the social causes and their own collaboration in the political betrayal that gave rise to the NF and the BNP in the first place.”

The ambition of militant anti-fascism is not simply to see the Far-Right defeated and removed from working class areas: the ultimate solution is to see them replaced there. The BNP’s attack on Labour is from the Right and is racist, ultra-conservative and anti-working class. Our primary role is to guarantee that a successful challenge to Labour comes only from the Left. Furthermore, and purely from an anti-fascist point of view, as the best insurance against any nazi renaissance, it would be the duty of militants to offer protection and encouragement to any genuine [anti-Labour] working class revolt.

When AFA was relaunched in London in September 1989 it was accepted that while AFA was still organised around the single issue of anti-fascism, “AFA propaganda must contain a class message” in order “to negate the efforts by the fascists to present AFA as a bunch of middle-class outsiders, part and parcel of the Establishment, working in the long term interests of the status quo”.

Much has changed since 1989, not least the fact that AFA is now a national organisation with over forty branches organised in four main regions each with the physical ability to forcefully implement AFA’s founding statement on the streets. In addition other organisations such as ANL, ARA and YRE have jumped on – and off – the bandwagon. The early nineties also saw the return to electoral prominence of the Far-Right not just in Britain but throughout Europe. The success of AFA on the streets also led to the birth of the wannabe paramilitary grouping C18.

In another tribute to AFA’s militant strategy the BNP declared in April 1994 that there would be “…no more marches, meetings, punch-ups…” A year on, this declaration must now be regarded as serious change of strategy, something other than a temporary electoral ploy or an effort to court respectability. There appear to be at least two crucial reasons for the change of strategy. One undoubtedly, is that since their resurgence to national prominence, AFA have fought the BNP to a standstill. In 1991 Scotland was regarded by the BNP leadership as its highest growth area and the area possibly with the greatest potential. Today the BNP no longer visibly exists. Literally beaten into the ground by anti-fascist militants.

In the North West the BNP organisation and morale has all but been destroyed. A similar pattern is emerging in the Midlands. In the South East the fascists have been constantly harassed. Apart from the east and possibly south east they are practically invisible in London.

In many of these areas the politics of the BNP undoubtedly have a resonance, but they are unable to take advantage of the latent support due to the logistical problems caused by the constant possibility of attack and their own profile as a “party of strength”. One way to resolve the problem would be to recruit, but they cannot have open recruitment for fear of infiltration. In addition the fear of physical violence means that they are unable to bring their more articulate middle class supporters onto the streets for fear of losing them entirely.

The situation in Europe would also have played an influence. Here the fascists, particularly in Austria and Italy, have recognised that with the demise of the support for the communist parties there is no need for a visibly menacing counter-threat. If there is no physical danger, fascists do not need to hide behind a sinister private army. The battle for control of the streets need not be fought if control is not being contested. If the end can be achieved without the traditional means there is no need for the rough stuff. In Britain, with the absence of any tangible political threat to their adopted working class constituency the argument for a physical force movement to contest the streets becomes not only void but instead represents a serious impediment to their own political ambitions -only!

Since their meteoric climb in 1990 in not one area of the country, despite significant sympathy on the ground, have they for more than one day at a time been able to control the streets; Bermondsley, Bloody Sunday and the Isle of Dogs being the exceptions. More often than not in regard to the large set pieces they have been humiliated. And even when they have won, the victory has gained them nothing except a confirmation of what already sustains them; that Labour and the Left are increasingly alien to working class people. So in a sense for them simply to continue with the strategy of “marches, meetings, punch ups” only provides an enemy that has already lost the fundamental arguments -Labour/ANL/Trotskyism, etc. (or in the case of AFA which has failed to put an argument) – with a legitimate political excuse/focus, ie: anti-BNP. The BNP policy of open swaggering aggression also affords an organisation like AFA a legitimate opportunity to answer in kind, and in doing so physically destroy the BNP’s political prospects by crippling its infra-structure. With AFA having no political prospects of its own they are on a hiding to nothing.

It takes two to tango, so what of AFA’s reason for being if the BNP decide that they don’t want to play anymore? Certainly in London, AFA has only been able to seriously damage the Far-Right once recently. If this is a permanent change of plan there is a serious danger that AFA, without the physical challenge for which it was designed, will itself begin to lose direction and begin to atrophy.

The flip side of the coin is that C18, who have no electoral ambitions either, don’t do anything but ‘play’. The ideal solution for both the State and the Far-Right would be for AFA to get locked into a clandestine gang war with C18, thereby allowing the State to select candidates of their own choosing for lengthy incarceration. That done, the now entirely legal BNP could go about their business like their European counter-parts, articulating ‘genuine racial concerns’ unhindered.

Furthermore, if the BNP operation is made entirely legal and if AFA physically opposes them, then our operation is de facto illegal. The BNP then might reasonably expect, in return for their collaboration with the forces of law and order, that the tactic of summary arrest be employed against AFA on a consistent basis. Circumstances are changing and AFA needs to adapt.

Fascism is the vanguard of reaction. It is at once the manifestation, the contributory cause and the principle beneficiary of society’s decomposition. Unlike the rest of the anti-racist Left, AFA’s emphasis has always been on the political danger represented by fascism., while others such as Searchlight and the ANL have laid the emphasis on their violent and criminal tendencies. In addition they refuse or are unwilling to recognise that anti-fascism is by definition a rearguard action and that fascism is the consequence, rather than the cause, of the Left’s failure. Inevitably the strategies adopted to combat fascism carry with them the germs of the strategies that caused fascism, invariably leading to compound failure. So while it cannot be denied that the ANL’s media campaign focused public attention on the problem, it also proved to be a distraction in regard to the solution.

One of AFA’s strengths in its formative years was its limited platform; the ‘single issue’. This concentration weeded out or repelled the sectarians, the ‘tough talkers’ and the dilettantes. However, during the Isle of Dogs campaign, the ‘single issue’ exposed AFA’s limitations. AFA had nothing to say on the principle business.

AFA has long recognised that once the Far-Right is allowed to mobilise, is the allowed the set the agenda, and has passed a certain point, they begin to control their own destinies – and opponent’s. Once that point is reached it would be useless and possibly counter-productive to rely upon a purely anti-fascist stance, primarily because people look to politics for solutions. It might be clear what you stand against, though their understanding of what you stand for will effectively determine their overall response.

As the activities of the ANL on the Isle of Dogs demonstrated (despite blanket canvassing the BNP vote actually rose by 30%), an anti-fascist message on its own would find little favour with working class people, even those repelled by the BNP, if they suspected that it was simply a spoiling tactic, carried out by the allies of the local Labour establishment in an effort to maintain the status quo. AFA has ever fought to maintain the status quo, but, even at their most effective, anti-fascist militants can never hope to achieve anything more than to maintain that vacuum. There is little doubt that the vacuum has been successfully maintained but now, in the absence of any other suitable candidates, it is incumbent on the anti-fascist militants to help fill the vacuum themselves.

The working class is increasingly alienated from Labour, the BNP’s strategy is entirely reliant upon this alienation: ‘they really hate Labour’ etc. The total ineptitude and the tangible contempt that exists in some areas between Labour and its former constituency has locally and nationally begat the BNP. And fascism begat anti-fascism. In straight-forward language, it is the politics of the Labour Party that has created the BNP. So by acting as campaign managers for Labour, the ANL/YRE are prostituting anti-fascism, and instead of being identified with a radical, pro-working class position, anti-fascism is seen to be defending the status quo, thereby practically forcing people who who want change to vote BNP, out of sheer desperation. They are literally driving people into the arms of the fascists. Up to now it is entirely due to the cutting edge of AFA that the passive support has remained just that. But it is unrealistic to expect that vacuum to be maintained indefinitely.

Nor as working class militant anti-fascists can we stand on the sidelines, wringing our hands hopelessly. We have to take that stand against Labour. Not simply in a theoretical sense, but in an organisational sense. It is vital that the working class on the estates, seriously alienated from Labour, are provided with an alternative to the BNP. The election of a Labour government will be a massive shot in the arm for the Far-Right. It is also very possible that in the subsequent local elections the Isle of Dogs scenario could be repeated on a national scale, and all our good work in the last decade would be undone at a stroke.

What is needed is a new organisation. In all probability the impetus of the Clause Four controversy will cause a realignment of the Left that will give it birth. It is not being suggested that AFA disband and becomes the organisation. It is as vital as ever that AFA maintains its own structures and agenda. Nor is it being suggested that AFA create this new organisation. This would hardly be possible in any case. What must be recognised is that it will happen with or without AFA. AFA contains the best working class militants in the country. It is absolutely vital that in order to shape the organisation in its own image, AFA is in from the very beginning. To shape it in AFA’s own image would mean stipulating from the outset: a) a democratic structure, built from the bottom up rather than from the top down; b) rather than appeal to a mythical ‘labour movement’ the strategy requires and orientation to, and accommodation of, the working class proper; c) non-sectarian. This does not mean being forced to work with everybody; it means working alongside others towards a common goal, not making no apology for a refusal to collaborate on any project for which you have no enthusiasm, or with those with whom you fundamentally disagree.

In any case it must be obvious that to stand aloof would be an unmitigated disaster. That would allow the middle classes once again to set the agenda. AFA has been dealing with the consequences of their agenda for over a decade. It would be criminally negligent to allow our adversaries to fill the space we have created and maintained in that time. This is an opportunity to add a string to AFA’s bow. It will be a compliment to, rather than a deviation from, vigorous anti-fascist activity.

Even on a limited tactical basis the benefits of an independent working class organisation operating alongside AFA would be immediate and widespread. AFA could, for the first time, campaign for something instead of merely campaigning against something – and campaign legally.

AFA could be pro-active as well as reactive. There would be no breathing space for the likes of the BNP. And, for as much as an embryonic association might welcome AFA’s physical presence, the situation demands that AFA avails itself of a wider political platform than was hitherto considered either necessary or available. For the first time since the thirties militant anti-fascism would be associated with solutions rather than simply violent actions and threats. For the first time, too, involved with setting the agenda rather than clearing up the political mess left by someone else’s.

Ultimately the challenge for AFA is not only to destroy the BNP in working class areas but to replace them there. So the political message, to have resonance, will have to be deeper and more comprehensive. A straight forward anti-fascist parable, a simple refutation of the ‘radical’ in nationalism will, on its own prove unsatisfactory.

If AFA’s efforts are to culminate in victory we must seek to replace them, but to replace them we must not only out-violence them, we must also out radicalise them.