strengthened. Without such unity, the struggle against international capitalism will be impossible. The fact that the idea of international working class solidarity is a difficult one to explain to workers in an imperialist country, must not lead to bogus talk about the usefulness of immigrants to the British capitalist economy. 2. "As holders of British Passports the Ugandan Asians are entitled to come to Britain."
No socialist should base his case on bourgeois law, for it is a weapon against the working class here and abroad. The state could easily cook up some equally good 'legal' reason why Asian passport holders should not be allowed in, and at one point the Tories were thinking of doing just that. We counterpose the 'law' of working class solidarity with all oppressed people to the hypocritical legality of the bourgeoisie. 3. "The foundation of racialism is irrational prejudice. It spreads like a disease because nobody wants to know the facts." It is true that racialism is irrational for the working class because it won't solve any of the problems which workers face. But it is not true that the source of racialism is prejudice, or stupid ideas. Such an analysis of the causes of racialism is a typically middle class way of looking at the problem. The practical conclusions to which it leads are either a pious attempt to make man' more "civilised' or a despair at the foolishness of 'mankind". The social basis of racism is left untouched. In fact, the roots of racism are not prejudices in people's heads, but the economic conditions in certain definite social classes.
Racialism has a different basis in different social groups. The bourgeoisie's racism stems from its need to oppress and exploit the black peoples of the world, and racism justifies such exploitation. The middle class turns to racism because it is threatened by the double threat of working class power on one side and the power of monopoly capital on the other. Both powers threaten it with extinction and it tuns to fantasy as a solution - racism in its fascist variety. The appeal of racism to the working class is different from both these views. The working class is faced with a continual struggle for adequate living conditions -jobs, housing, education, etc. And at first it appears that the enemies of a working class family in this struggle are the other exploited families searching for a iob and a decent place to live. The capitalist class appears as a well meaning individual employer-or landlord doing what he can to provide jobs, houses, etc. The arrival of a million black people into this country in a situation of rising unemployment and a growing housing crisis encourages workers who see their problems in this way to accept racist arguments: that the black people are to blame for the lack of housing.
The whole history of British imperialism has helped to educate workers into thinking of black people as inferior, making it easier for these racist ideas to gain an influence. Such workers simply cannot see the root of their problems because they have been denied the necessary information and knowledge to see that the well-meaning employer is part of a class which survives through exploiting the working class and through crushing its welfare under the hammer blows of the struggle for profit. 4. "A few facts soon neutralise Powell's position."
This implies the exact opposite of the last quotation: all the left has to do to defeat the appeal of racism for the mass of people is to dish out a few facts. The reality is that those who do not accept the necessity of fighting against the capitalist class, who do not see capitalism as being responsible for the economic problems of the working class will always be prey to racist ideas. Secondly, it is not possible to convince those who are out of work or without a decent home that capitalism is the enemy just by offering a few facts in a newspaper. They will only be convinced by their own experience in struggling to solve their social problems, and not by reading a newspaper article. Thus, although it is absolutely necessary to present the true facts on immigration, this is no substitute for the job of taking up all the social problems of the working class and other oppressed sections of society. It will be through the entire work of socialists to organise the anti-capitalist fight that the poison of racism will be neutralised. 5. "Unemployment and bad housing existed before black immigrants came to Britain."
This is true, and a point that must be made, but it misses the point when it is used against the argument that the arrival of Ugandan Asians will make the job and housing situation worse. The only answer to such an opinion is to challenge the chauvinist assumption on which it is based: worse for whom? Why is it more important for British workers to escape the sufferings of bad housing and economic hardship than it is for Asian workers?
It is intolerable for any section of workers to put up with these ravages of capitalism when the economic resources of the world could be organised in such a way that such suffering could be wiped out. And it is just not true that British workers have any more right to the wealth that exists in Britain than workers from Africa and Asia. The wealth that the capitalist class has accumulated has come from exploiting workers in every part of the globe, and the workers of Britain will never be able to solve the problems of unemployment, housing, pay and conditions of work unless they are prepared to throw off the nationalist idea that they have more in common with British capitalists than with black workers. POSSIBILITY The possibility exists of drawing all the thousands of militant workers fighting against the Housing Finance Act, the Industrial Relations Act and all the other fronts of class struggle into the campaign against racist agitation. It is, for instance, very significant that building workers in different parts of the country have been playing such an active role against the National Front demonstrations. The issue is directly linked to the fight against the capitalist attack on the trade unions, and socialists must therefore ensure that every union branch, and rank and file committee, takes up the fight against racism and stands in solidarity with the Ugandan Asians. But for this work it is all the more important that the ideas of socialists are sound Palestinian resistance movement, and the other guerrilla movements throughout the world.
The action of the German police has been justified with the morality of the internaional struggle against liberation movements, though some sections of the bourgeoisie think the police attack was politically unwise. For socialists, the action of the Black September group must also be justified and defended from the point of view of the morality of the struggle against imperialism. This point must be remembered just as much when the tactics of the guerilla group were not correct. view such methods of struggle do not contribute to the relaunching of the Palestinian resistance movement after its defeat at the hands of the Arab counter-revolution. Black September guerrilla The overthrow of the Zionist state in the Middle East requires the violence of the Palestinian and Arab masses (with the support if possible of the Israeli masses) and the task of the vanguard in the present period is to prepare for this mass struggle through political work among the Arab masses. The military work of the vanguard must be subordinated to that goal.
RESPONSIBILITY The Munich action expresses the political paralysis of the Palestinian organisations at this moment in the liberation struggle. But to criticise the tactics of the Black September group in this way is only possible for those who recognise the responsibility of imperialism for the bloody war in the Middle East which shattered the Olvmpic utopia in Munich.
Every bourgeois newspaper except one has proclaimed that the TUC turned left at Brighton. Eddie Marsden, the Communist Party's leading trade union official, told the Party's executive that "Congress decisions reflected the growing struggle....". The three reasons put forward for this interpretation are: first, the suspension of 32 registered the trade union bureaucracy is based on conciliation between two classes - its existence depends on finding ways back to industrial peace. Even when there is no basis for social peace except defeat for one class or the other, it has to propose one. Economic utopias and more and more negotiations are the only strategy the TUC can put forward!