Far-right riots in the UK: only the proletariat, fighting as one against its own bourgeoisie, can crush racist scum!

Prises de position - Prese di posizione - Toma de posición - Statements - Prohlášení - Заявления

Far-right riots in the UK: only the proletariat, fighting as one against its own bourgeoisie, can crush racist scum!

On July 29, a 17-year-old teenager stabbed participants in a dance workshop in the village of Banks, north of Southport. Among the thirteen people stabbed, three very young victims, aged between 6 and 9, died of their wounds. Social networks quickly got into a frenzy, with a series of rumours circulating about the origin and religion of the assailant, who was supposedly a Muslim from Syria. One of the protagonists of this virally circulating fake news is Tommy Robinson, neo-fascist activist (1) and founder of the English Defence League (EDL), a far-right, Islamophobic, identitarian organization. It was this group that instigated a series of demonstrations in several UK cities, including Manchester, Hartlepool, Aldershot and Sunderland, which rapidly degenerated into racist riots and anti-immigrant pogroms, accompanied by the traditional beatings and burning down of migrant hotels and mosques (2).

The government's response was inconsistent to say the least, initially warning against "inappropriate" speculation about the identity of the killer - in the words of Home Secretary Yvette Cooper - before finally being forced to reveal the identity of the killer, a young British man born in Cardiff to a Rwandan family. As the riots spread, the government resorted to more martial language, with the recently elected Labour Prime Minister, Keir Starmer, warning that rioters would be punished "with the full force of the law", echoing his election campaign in which he had presented himself as the candidate of law and order. He announced the creation of a special unit to combat violent rioters, which could make use of facial recognition cameras, while Yvette Cooper floated the idea of a ban on the movement.

Contrary to bourgeois commentators who, relying on the undeniable fact that these riots have been amplified by the weight of conspiracy and fake news on social networks, present these riots as unprecedented, revolutionary Marxists are well aware that not only does the UK have a long history of similar racist pogroms, but, above all, that racism is a vital necessity for capitalism.

Attacks on immigrant proletarians are not simply the product of the rise of racism in society, particularly in Europe, in a climate of deepening contradictions of capitalism and the economic crisis. In fact, immigrant proletarians have always been the target of attacks by capitalism, and particularly its most extremist wings, with only the nationality of migrants varying according to the waves of migration. In the 1970s, for example, when the National Front (NF), an explicitly neo-fascist organization, was growing, South Asian proletarians were the designated targets. At the time, several racist demonstrations and riots had already taken place, notably on June 15, 1974, in London, when several far-right groups organized a march calling for the "repatriation" of migrants. The march degenerated into a confrontation with anti-racist groups, notably from the far left. A few years later, on August 13, 1977, the National Front organized another march "against the multi-racial society" in the London Borough of Lewisham, again sparking clashes with anti-racist and anti-fascist groups. All these racist, neo-fascist and conservative groups, taking advantage of periods of crisis, manage to recruit from the petty bourgeoisie, the sub-proletariat and the working-class aristocracy, that "fifth column of the bourgeoisie within the working class"(3). Then, as now, the immigrant proletariat suffered beatings and provocative parades in the ghettos where capitalism forced them to live.

Without denying the role played by neo-fascist scum in the attacks suffered by the immigrant proletariat, it would be a mistake - as the far left has always urged us to do with its myth of democratic anti-fascism - to consider that only the extreme fractions of the bourgeoisie have an interest in racism. In reality, these groups are not only the agents of this anti-worker policy, but also the product of capitalism as a whole, which needs to encourage the division between native and foreign proletarians to further their exploitation. In this respect, the British bourgeoisie is no exception. In the last 75 years alone, British capital has initiated a series of laws designed to make the immigrant proletariat the most oppressed and exploited sector of the working class. Family separation, virginity tests, deportations, criminalization - this is the arsenal that the British bourgeoisie has used and continues to use against this fraction of the proletariat. Examples (4) include: the Commonwealth Immigration Act 1962 (Conservative government), which introduced a system of residence permits to control immigration; the Commonwealth Immigration Act 1968 (Labour government), which granted residence permits only to British passport holders with at least one UK-born grandparent; the Immigration Act 1971 (Conservative government), which replaced immigration by people wishing to settle permanently with a system of contract workers, and introduced a distinction between patrials (who could move freely and were not subject to deportation) and non-patrials (who needed a residence permit and a work permit valid for one year); the British Nationality Act 1981 (Conservative government), which again tightened the criteria for obtaining British citizenship; the Nationality, Immigration and Asylum Act 2002 (Labour government), which initially abolished support for asylum seekers; the Immigration, Asylum and Nationality Act 2006 (Labour government), limiting the right of appeal in the event of refusal of entry clearance; the Borders, Citizenship and Immigration Act 2009 (Labour government), tightening the criteria for obtaining indefinite leave to remain by introducing "probationary" citizenship. More recently, the plan to expel migrants who entered the UK "illegally" in Rwanda illustrates the racist policy pursued by the British bourgeoisie, whether Conservative or Labour.

In reality, it serves a dual function: on the one hand, it allows the proletariat to be divided between a fraction that is the object of relentless exploitation and repression, and another, "indigenous" fraction that appears comparatively "relatively" preserved, favoring class collaboration. The British bourgeoisie is well aware that the main danger to its domination is the cohesion of the proletariat, and therefore seeks to do everything possible to undermine it.

The second benefit of this racist policy is that it enables the British bourgeoisie to overexploit the immigrant labor it needs in a range of poorly-paid trades, in agriculture, construction, the textile industry, garment manufacturing, service and cleaning activities, domestic staff, and so on. Faced with a proletariat deprived of basic protections, under the threat of the sword of Damocles of expulsion from the national territory, the bosses are thus in a position to subject this fraction of the proletariat to ever more ferocious exploitation. This policy, which is not specific to the British bourgeoisie - just look at how the French situation is in many ways similar to the one we are studying here (5) - requires a class response from the proletariat.

On the road to struggle, the proletariat will face a major obstacle: democratic anti-fascism and anti-racism, traditionally promoted by petty-bourgeois democrats and the far left, notably the Trotskyites. This is particularly true of the Socialist Workers Party (SWP), the country's main far-left formation, historically committed to diverting the proletarian struggle onto a terrain alien to it. So, just as the EDL had its ancestors in the National Front, today's anti-racist movements are offshoots of the Anti-Nazi League and Rock against Racism, both of which were spurred on by the SWP. Today, he is the spokesperson for "Stand Up against Racism", a "unitary" movement bringing together anti-racist activists, members of parliament and trade union bureaucrats (6). Shifting the battle to parliamentary and democratic terrain, they are targeting scarecrows Nigel Farage - the country's traditional far-right leader, a major figure in the Brexit campaign and the country's third-largest force since the last general election, when his Reform UK party won nearly 15% of the vote - and Suella Braverman - former Home Secretary in the Sunak government, a fervent supporter of the plan to deport migrants to Rwanda and a far-right stalwart within the Conservative Party. As a corollary to this focus on these two figures, the signatories of this declaration call for the fight against racism in Parliament and on the streets by building a "united mass movement powerful enough to drive back the fascists". Continuing this populist, cross-classist line, their press release states that "The majority of people in Britain abhor Robinson and the far right. We are the majority, they are the few." Taking up the traditional populist slogan "For the many, not the few", bourgeois and petty-bourgeois anti-racists are calling on the proletariat to take part in a genuine inter-class front, using slogans and democratic modes of action.

On the contrary, the latter must build its struggle on strictly classist ground.

THE PROLETARIAT'S RESPONSE TO THE RACIST RIOTS: FOR PROLETARIAN UNITY IN ANTI-CAPITALIST STRUGGLE

There is only one path for the proletariat to follow: class solidarity between national and immigrant proletarians. This solidarity is built step by step, in the common struggle against the exploitative bourgeoisie, through strikes, occupations and wildcat demonstrations. But if this solidarity is not to be an empty word, national proletarians must resolutely combat the nationalism, racism and social-chauvinism that the dominant ideology spreads daily among the working class through its multiple channels, foremost among which are the media and, now, social networks. True unity can only exist through the recognition that immigrant proletarians constitute the most exploited and oppressed sector of the working class, and through support for their struggles to improve their living and working conditions. For its part, the immigrant proletariat will have to revive its history of insurrectionary struggles against the bourgeoisie, such as the Brixton episode of 1981, when immigrant and metropolitan proletarians clashed with the police for entire nights, erecting barricades and setting buildings on fire.

And it is thanks to the leadership of its internationalist and international class party, the bearer of its consciousness, that the proletariat will be able to reappropriate the lessons of its past struggles and build its revolutionary unity in the struggle against capital, a prerequisite for its violent overthrow.

(1) In 2004, he joined the British National Party, which is nostalgic for the Third Reich.

(2) See the article "Au Royaume-Uni, des émeutiers d'extrême droite dans les rues de Southport après une attaque au couteau" in Le Monde of July 31, 2024: https://www.lemonde.fr/ international/article/ 2024/07/31/ au-royaume-uni-des-emeutiers-d-extreme-droite-dans-les-rues-de-southport-apres-une-attaque-au-couteau_6262985_ 3210.html

(3) See our article published in Le Prolétaire no. 313 (May 16-29, 1980): "En Angleterre aussi la lutte des travailleurs immigrés".

(4) See "Les populations immigrées en Grande-Bretagne" in Programme communiste No. 87, December 1981 and https://en.wikipedia.org/ wiki/History_of_UK_immigration_control.

(5) See our statement "Class struggle against the immigration law and all attacks against workers!" of January 18, 2024, available online at pcint.org.

(6) See the common statement on the SWP website: https://socialistworker.co.uk/ anti-racism/sign-and-share-unity-statement-against-the-far-right-and-take-action/

Il comunista - le prolétaire - el proletario - proletarian - programme communiste - el programa comunista - Communist Program