25.07.1996

TUC losing respect

Liberal ‘anti-racism’ reached a new peak in London last weekend. Thousands of mainly young people flocked to the ‘Respect’ festival, organised by the TUC in Finsbury Park. They enjoyed the free concerts by groups such as Incognito, Credit To The Nation and Dub War, performed on three different stages spread over the park, while families were entertained by various stalls and children’s attractions.

Anti-racism today, far from being the preserve of ‘loony left’ Labour councils as it was in the early 80s, is respectable in the extreme. In this sense, the name chosen by the TUC’s marketing advisers was very apt. But ‘Respect’ also sums up perfectly the established opinion of what racism is and how it should be opposed.

Racism, according to the mainstream liberal view, is an unpleasant, irrational prejudice which envelops individuals and, like a contagious disease, can spread rapidly if the individual is not treated with the appropriate dose of ‘racist awareness’ medicine. An injection of ‘respect’ for the different characteristics, customs and culture of others will surely cure each individual of this distasteful illness.

Anybody can be anti-racist: the company director and the low paid worker; the capitalist politician and the person in the street. Formerly committed supporters of South African apartheid, FW de Klerk and Pik Botha, underwent a miraculous cure, and until recently even gave their enthusiastic backing to the ANC-led anti-racist government.

The TUC has learnt this well. ‘Anti-racism’ is a catch-all which enables its advocates to project a positive image. Having given up long ago on any genuine attempt to win real improvements for its members in the workplace, it can still show us how nice it really is through such festivals. And at such a relatively low cost too.

Of course, if you cannot make gains for your members through fighting the bosses, why not invite the employers to join you in funding such a worthy event? Companies such as Marks and Spencers and Fords sponsored a stage. For them it was simply a marketing device - having their name associated with such a respectable cause should do their image no end of good.

Fords in particular needed to gloss up theirs, after the recent controversy when they ‘whited out’ the faces of black employees on a promotional poster aimed at Europe. That too was a marketing exercise - give your potential customers what you think they want to see.

Thousands of people enjoyed themselves in Finsbury Park, but just about all of them would have been committed anti-racists already. What about the potential BNP recruits in deprived council estates? Will they ‘see the light’ through such festivals?

The leadership of the official workers’ movement has all but given up on trying to improve their lot. Despite that, much of the ‘revolutionary’ left insists on advising them to vote Labour anyway. The racists of the BNP seem to be the only ones offering answers - easy explanations as to why they have to endure such degrading conditions. If you could get rid of the ‘outsiders’, then jobs, housing, healthcare, leisure facilities would ‘obviously’ be more readily available for this extremely alienated section of the working class.

Racism appears as an affliction which affects individuals. But the disease cannot be combated on that level. Its material base must be undermined. That cannot be done through placing immigration restrictions on those outsiders, as such renowned ‘anti-racists’ as Conservative and Labour politicians and supporters of The Marxist advocate, but through striking at the heart of oppressive capitalist rule.

We can make a world where nobody is an outsider, where everyone’s needs can be met. To do that, we need to build our own, working class, organisations - the genuine alternative.

Alan Fox