STUDENTS up and down the country are sharply divided over the National Union of Students' bun on racist and fescist speakers. The NUS conference which meets in London next weekend will be discussing whether or not to overturn it.
Official NUS policy, established a few weeks ago at Liverpool, is to ban racist and tascist speakers by any means necessary including disruption of meetings". Many students unions have since rejected this policy, calling for free speech for racists and fascists like anyone else. A small number. notably Kent, have decided to fight for the original position. The NUS the-road position, wanting to retain the no platform position while rejecting direct action to hack it up.
It is absolutely essential that NUS sticks to its original policy. The Execative's position misses the whole point about the 'no platform policy.
AGITATION
For what is the essential point of fascist agitation The fascists workers and the middle groups of society can only be solved by ridding the 'nation' of "divisive" elements: communists, militant workers, Jews, black people, and even "unpatriotic financiers Being very practical people, the fascists teach that Parliament cannot be depended on to do this job - only mass organisation to carry out violence and intimidation will do the trick, The fascists are out to build a paramilitary organisation which can organise this terror, assaulting and eventually exterminating those whom it sees as guilty of dividing the nation" As history warns us, this includes hundreds of thousands of the most politically conscious WOEKOTS, TO DUCKOODG OF TIC WOTAGES issue has already found a favourable response on the Trades Council.
THE INHABITANTS of the northEven where it doesn't lead directly to recruitment to an organised rightwing group, racist and fascist agitation stirs up others to commit violence against fascists' targets, particularly black people. Quite apart from the "respectable' cover racists like Enoch Powell give to the fascists (the NF sometimes operates through Powell Supporters Groups in factories), the racists stir up assaults and intimidation directed against black people, whether by police, fascist thugs, immigration officials, or skinhead gangs.
FACTS Without starting from these basie facts, arguments around the 'no platExecutive has retreated to a middle-of- form position inevitably become bogged down in philosophical debatos about relative and absolute freedom' or abstract moral principles like free speech, In a pamphlet which the IMG has published, and sold widely on campuses, called Racists and Fascists Free Speech Will Not Stop Them', we point out that the capitalist class does not use such fancy principles to decide who shall speak and who shall be silenced, or whether to pursue peaceful or violent tactics.
However, many students do not see that the tascists represent such a threat. Either they don't know about the violent activities of groups like the National Front, or they consider them to be 'accidental" excesses.
A second IMG publication 'Fascista Smash It Now attempts to deal with these problems, It gives an account of contemporary fascist violence in Western Europe. It describes, for example. Ordre Nouveau's participation in violent attacks on immigrant workers in France, and the extensive bombings carried out by the fascist MSI in Italy since 1969.
National Front violence is less spectacular but no less significant.
Lace Dr awarenes about sis pornaps understandable. After all, Fleet Street NO Part of the 50-strong picket, which successfully dispersed a group of National Front elsarents in Basingstoke, at the Carnival Hall on Viednesday night. Supporters of the picket included students, hospital workers and engineers. Basingstoke has been singled out by the Front for special attention and to counter this threat, an Anti Fascist Committee has now been formed, which includes members of the Communist Party, the Labour Party, as well individual militants and members of the IMG. The comm ittee is attempting to get official Labour Party and trade union delegates and the than two-chirds of Brescia's magisdoes not give the same publicity to the near blinding of a black student by the NF in Nottingham as it does to the discomforts suffered by at Oxford University. The attack by ary, in which the shop was smashed at the offices of Beaverbrook Press.
ON THE FIGHT Harold Soref in climbing over a wall the NF on a maoist bookshop in Januand its occupants beaten up. did not give rise to a great wringing of hands on the head from right-wing candidati Giscard d'Estaing in the French elections, when he used them as a stewarding force for his public meetings The MSI is given cover in Italy by a massive conspiracy among officials in the Ittiun police and military.
STRATEGY
Stopping fascist activities by any means necessary is part of a strategy
ING PUBLIC MEETING
No Piertonor to Racists & Fascists Speakers will include TARIQ ALI and a sporker from the National Committee of Trade Unions Agains:
London Universisy, Institure of Educ ation (off Malet St WC 1).
FRIDAY JUNE 14th. 8.00pm.
struggle even though its actions are not endorsed by mass organisations, although we will continually fight for Of course, it is necessary to fight the ideas of the fascists too. But this task should not cut across the equal-