29.03.2000

Official anti-racism

Greenwich council Anne Frank: a history for today

This exhibition, which explicitly links the Nazi genocide of Jews with the racist murder of Stephen Lawrence, has just finished its month-long showing at Greenwich town hall in south London.

Until March 29 the exhibition was packed, with four daily tours of schoolchildren guided by local education workers instructing them in the evils of racism.

Although individual members of the public visited the free exhibition in reasonable numbers, it was the demand from Greenwich schools that kept the staff busy. Every local school, primary and secondary, accepted the invitation to send their students and in the end some could not be catered for - calls for an extension were regretfully declined, as the exhibition is about to transfer to Swansea, after which it is expected to settle for some considerable time in Bethnal Green.

It is quite possible that in this East End venue the Anne Frank-Stephen Lawrence exhibition will become a permanent feature - with visits for London school students considered an essential part of the curriculum (requests for tours from non-Greenwich schools could not be accommodated in south London).

Visiting school parties are first shown a 20-minute video of the life of Anne Frank, based on her diaries. It is moving and sincere, despite the muted and sanitised content - like the exhibition itself, it does not contain any explicit images of cruelty or maltreatment, in view of the intended audience. Next the children are shown the photos, documents and other material on display, with sections devoted to the oppression and mass murder not only of Jews, but also of homosexuals and gypsies. There is of course no overt reference to Hitler's bloody repression and slaughter of communists, trade unionists and workers, although some photographs of Nazi rallies display banners which bear witness to the "anti-Bolshevik" and "anti-Marxist" crusade.

Finally there are the warnings about the present-day growth of racist and fascist organisations throughout Europe, including "extreme nationalism". The exhibition culminates in the display dedicated to Stephen Lawrence's life and death. The message is that he was just an ordinary, hard-working boy - copies of his certificates from school and the local scouts are used to bear this out. The children are by implication invited to make the 'obvious' link - unchallenged, racism and extremism will inevitably produce another holocaust. The Socialist Workers Party seems to believe it too.

This link was made explicit and taken a stage further by Neville Lawrence, father of Stephen, when he spoke at the official opening of the exhibition. He quite simply equated Nazi oppression of the Jews in Germany with 'institutionalised racism' in Britain.

It is certainly ironic that he made this comparison regarding state-sponsored oppression at a state-sponsored event whose sole purpose is (in the service of capitalist stability) to condemn racial, religious and ethnic prejudice.

What do the school students make of it all? Can even children be completely convinced that both the Nazi genocide and the stabbing of Stephen Lawrence must be put down to irrationality pure and simple? I heard a guide attempting to portray to her young charges society's incredulity and revulsion that Stephen was murdered just because he was black - such racism was, well, ridiculous, she said. This particular guide I recognised as a retired headteacher who had been renowned for her regressive views on school discipline and authoritarian-style education. Needless to say, on this issue she is not only liberal, but mainstream.

The exhibition has a very 'British' feel to it. A special place is reserved on the Lawrence stand for the white girlfriend of a racist thug who reported her boyfriend to the police after he bragged of an assault on an Asian. Clearly this is how racism must be combated. 'Our' police may be 'institutionally racist', but they are nevertheless the main weapon to be employed, it seems. Another guide declared that "we" fought two world wars in order to ensure that all people could be free to live "where they are": it is only people who want to move somewhere else - especially if it means coming into Britain - who are to be denied. But that is perfectly 'normal', after all. Locking unwanted people up in detention centres because they have the audacity to try to settle in a different country does not come under the heading of "extreme nationalism", of course.

Anne Frank: a history for today provides all the evidence that anyone could require of the bourgeoisie's determination to press home their redefined ideology of anti-racist national chauvinism. Through ethnic quotas, affirmative action and political correctness they seek to divide workers within Britain passively - we are expected to act like supplicants hoping for a 'fair' distribution of the crumbs on the basis of ethnicity. However, externally our rulers seek to divide us much more actively: British workers - black and white - are called upon to unite against the latest deadly threat from outsiders.

The exhibition is merely intended as a reinforcement for the official anti-racism that is now compulsory learning for most education authorities. The establishment believes it can consolidate its hold if it catches us young.

Yet the reaction of most of the left is either to complain that this official anti-racism does not go far enough or, even more pathetically, to declare that it is all a conspiracy to cover up the actual guilt-ridden existence of state-sponsored racism.

The left has not yet 'unlearnt' that capitalism must inevitably, in every circumstance, rely mainly on racism to divide us. Like the children visiting the Anne Frank exhibition, those comrades learnt their elementary lessons using the 'keep it simple' method.

One thing is certain: unless we understand the nature of ruling class ideology in all its complexity, we cannot hope to challenge it - let alone replace it with our own, working class, morality.