21.02.2008

Facing up to the fascists

Jim Grant and David Isaacson take issue with Jack Conrad on anti-fascist strategy

Recently, in the pages of the Weekly Worker, a fierce series of polemics has erupted over fascism and anti-fascist strategy in the present period.

It has become clear that, quite apart from the longstanding dispute between the CPGB and most of the rest of the left as to whether ‘no platform for fascists’ constitutes a tactic or a strategic principle, the CPGB is itself divided over a number of other questions. In the light of this, the preparation and presentation of a motion to the February 9 members’ aggregate by comrade Jack Conrad - in line with the views of the current majority opinion - is in itself to be welcomed, as it will ‘force’ a full and frank debate over differences which have hitherto been simmering in the background.¹

Unfortunately, in our view, the motion is deeply problematic in many other respects, and - rather than, as comrade Conrad intended, bringing clarity to the discussion - actually creates confusion on several points.

General problems

In the first place, the motion seems unsure as to what it is actually for. Point two insists - correctly - that anti-fascist tactics “have to be concrete”. However, the motion is not concrete at all. There is no mention of the actual application of the various generalities about flexibility and so on - except in the supporting documentation which provides some sort of analysis. This strikes us as getting it backwards. Shouldn’t the motion consist of what we are actually resolving to do, not the lofty abstractions from which we derive those tactics?

In any case, the stated desire for concreteness is undermined by the general character of the six points. We have a reference to “organisations such as the BNP, National Front, Ukip, etc”, which lumps together into presumably one social force three very distinct groupings. Regardless of the debates over where the BNP fits into the far right, it is clear that the NF are now and always have been unambiguously fascist, and Ukip are categorically not. Is Jack claiming that all three are fascist, that all three are non-fascist ‘populist’, that all three fight for the same constituency ...? It is completely unclear.

Summing up the debate at the aggregate, the comrade claimed that they were all - indeed - broadly of the same character. This strikes us as highly misleading. Ukip derives most of its support and funding from disaffected members of the Tory bourgeoisie, such as Wetherspoons’ Tim Martin, and is functionally an external faction of the Conservative Party. The BNP attracts and orients itself to mostly lower petty bourgeois and, more recently, the worst-off sections of the working class. The National Front is explicitly fascist and has been since at least the early 1980s, and has hardly enough support to identify any kind of class base at all.

There is, in addition to this, the question of the character of the BNP itself, undoubtedly the most significant organisation of the far right in Britain. We think it is deeply naive to claim, as Benjamin Klein and Jack Conrad have both done, that fascism has shed its violent baggage, that the BNP has undergone a “qualitative change” and now “shuns the skinhead image. Nazi uniforms, songs and stiff-arm salutes are banned and clashes with the left are avoided”.² Clashes with the left avoided? Well, comrades, what about Redwatch? What is that website apart from an ongoing physical threat to leftists around the country, with deep and well-established links to the BNP? Ben claimed James Turley was in a time-warp for noting this sort of thing - we claim he is in a parallel universe.

What else, indeed, could explain his assertion that, at the infamous Oxford Union debate, “Griffin was able to pose as the voice of reason, democracy and moderation”? The practical result was, in fact, the opposite - the most unsavoury policies of the BNP were once again paraded by apoplectic members of the establishment: The Independent, for example, cited their desire “to see millions of people deported from the UK because they do not regard them as truly British”, in an article stirringly headlined ‘The uprising against fascism’.⁴

Indeed, the BNP’s continuing practical commitment to racist violence is very well documented - if its strategy is now primarily electoral, the fundamentally violent nature of its activities is abundantly clear. We need only cite the most serious examples from the recent period:

Tony Lecomber, one of Nick Griffin’s closest allies, approached ex-BNP stalwart Joe Owens in order to hatch a plan to assassinate key establishment figures “who are aiding and abetting the coloured invasion of this country”.⁵

In the much celebrated documentary Young, Nazi and proud, Mark Collett is seen to rehash all the standard racist tropes that the BNP has ostensibly left behind, and claimed the party was preparing to take power in a future racial civil war.

Last March, Robert Cottage, a council candidate, pleaded guilty to stashing explosives and bomb-making manuals.⁶

One can argue that the shift from openly paramilitarised violence to nudge-wink ‘decentralised’ violence in the BNP’s strategic orientation will necessitate a certain tactical shift on the left - but the attempt to ‘magic’ the violent character of the BNP away altogether is thoroughly suspect. At best this is an overly bent stick; at worst an insult to those who really are falling victim to violent bigotry, regardless of what Nick Griffin says in the Oxford Union.

Flexibility

We agree with the need for tactical flexibility. What we do not agree with is the apparent attempt to thereby send all these different tactics into an abstract equivalence. Flexibility is one thing, but we should not imagine anti-fascist struggle follows the aleatory dream logic of a Luis Buñuel film. It is perfectly permissible to favour certain anti-fascist tactics because they are precisely anti-fascist tactics, and fascism has certain general qualities that do not change massively.

Whether or not our response is automatic, for example, it does not take the CPGB very long to excoriate popular fronts or state bans because it is in the nature of both that they are class-collaborationist; also, our tactics are unlikely to include asking John Rees nicely not to form the former or call for the latter.

It is also the case that the motion is actually less flexible than it purports to be - as Nick Rogers pointed out in the aggregate debate, claiming that boycotts and no-platform policies have ‘failed’ implicitly wipes these weapons from our armoury.

It is meaningless, furthermore, to claim that no-platformist organisations (or, for that matter, popular fronts) have ‘failed’ to stop the fascists. Nothing will stop the fascists short of revolution. In the present period, anti-fascism’s purpose is containment. It is to stem the growing influence of fascism in any way possible, to whatever extent possible. In that aim, no-platform has considerable successes to its name; in many towns, the effect of Anti-Fascist Action, Red Action and the like was to render it essentially impossible for new fascist cells to gain any influence. The adoption of the new Griffin line on suits and boots, moreover, was to a considerable extent a function of the fascists’ failure to rule the streets - AFA was simply harder.

Lastly, while British society as a whole has no sort of no-platform policy, and Nick Griffin gets on Newsnight on a more or less monthly basis, one sphere where no-platform policy is common is that of student organisations; and, indeed, the considerable success of the BNP in electoral politics has not been proportionately reproduced on campuses.

Free speech

There is a subsidiary matter here of the use of ‘free speech’ in point six. Are we champions of free speech? Yes - with regard to the bourgeois state.

But it is not true, as the motion goes on to say, that “free speech and the widest democracy provide the best conditions for Marxism to grow and flourish and for the formation of the working class into a future ruling class”. Just as the bourgeoisie has no interest in the ‘free speech’ of communists, communists have no interest in the ‘free speech’ of the fascists, and for Marxism to truly flourish - that is, for us to make revolution - we will have to be capable of limiting the free speech of fascists in quite brutal ways.

We do not imagine many of the ‘majority’ comrades believe that free speech is an absolute right (indeed, Peter Manson opposed such a characterisation at the aggregate) - but the motion effectively treats it as such. If “free speech and the widest democracy” really are the magic formula for the success of Marxism, then there can be no question of restricting fascists’ free speech at all - but this sits uneasily with the breezy assertion of the legitimacy of anti-fascist violence in point two. Surely the violent suppression of fascists is an infringement of their free speech?

In reality, the “free speech and the widest democracy” formula has to be qualified - free speech and the widest democracy with regard to the bourgeois state. In that sphere, we truly are ‘absolutist’ on the issue - but nowhere else.

Unfortunately, most of the majority contributions so far - in the paper and at the aggregate - ignore our agreement on these positions and concentrate on the wrongness of the SWP/UAF popular-frontist strategy of hysterical, moralistic denunciations and demands for state bans. This is not a position held by anybody in the CPGB - least of all us. It is not even the ‘highest form’ of no-platformism in any meaningful sense.

Hopefully, with these issues out of the way, a productive debate - both within our ranks and with other leftists - can begin.

Notes

1. J Conrad, ‘What is fascism?’ Weekly Worker February 7.
2. J Conrad op cit.
3. B Klein, ‘Firm in principle, flexible in tactics’ Weekly Worker January 10.
4. www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/the-uprising-against-facism-students-storm-oxford-union-debate-760584.html
5. 82.69.12.18/lancasteruafblog/thelecomberstory.htm
6. www.voiceofreason.org.uk/blog/?p=57