Issue 174 of SOCIALIST REVIEW Published April 1994 Copyright © Socialist Review

Tower Hamlets marches against Nazis

The two issues dominating left wing politics in Britain are how do we get rid of the Tories and what can be done to stop the rise of fascism? On both counts, the next month may well prove decisive. The local elections in early May--for London and parts of the rest of the country--have assumed a disproportionate importance as they will be used to judge whether John Major and his weak, corrupt government can survive. They will also help to indicate whether the fascist BNP's election victory in the Isle of Dogs last September was a flash in the pan or something more enduring.

There are signs that the political temperature is rising in the run up to the elections. There is growing opposition to the fascists in the unions and the localities. That fight was given a great boost by the TUC march against racism in Tower Hamlets last month with many local people turning out to join the demonstration.

This was the largest mobilisation against racism in the area since the Anti Nazi League Carnival in 1978. The 50,000 to 60,000 who turned out could easily have been two or three times the numbers if cheap transport (or indeed any transport) was laid on from many areas outside London, and if the TUC leaders had been actively campaigning for the march in factories and offices up and down the country.

Where rank and file activists mobilised, the results were very encouraging. But too many unions, especially some of the manual workers' unions, backed the march in name only. So many union members--or people who were not even in a union--turned up as individuals, not as part of organised delegations.

Even so, the result was a very impressive show of opposition to racism and fascism from within the trade union movement, success which can feed other campaigns involving trade union members.

Meanwhile hatred of the Tories shows no sign of abating. They are set to do disastrously in May and in the European elections in June. The tax increases which take effect this month are likely to create even more of a political storm. Increases in mortgages (through the reduction of tax relief), national insurance contributions (which go up by 1 percent) and VAT on fuel will mean worse living standards for the vast majority of workers.

It is often hard for the anger felt at Tory policy, and at the attacks coming from the bosses, to develop into any tangible form. Few of the protests are reported in national newspapers or on television. But despite the national union leaders doing nothing to build campaigns there are signs of a heightened level of class struggle. The workers at Girobank won their pay rise after a series of one day strikes. The mainly women workers also won improved maternity leave. At Rover's Longbridge car plant in Birmingham there were a series of protests and walkouts over bonus payments. A strike in London's Tower Hamlets over funding for Section 11 teachers led to a demonstration of 1,200. Threats of redundancies at Pilkington and Beecham's in St Helens led to a march of 1,500 through the town. Thousands of Sheffield council workers struck against wage cuts and British Telecom workers in London balloted over attacks on work conditions.

These were just some of the industrial disputes in March. The problem is that there is no national focus and the TUC does its best to make sure it stays that way.

However, there are signs that this can change. The engineers' right wing union leader Gavin Laird responded bitterly to a speech by David Hunt, Tory employment secretary, last month with these words:

'Your government is about the destruction of the British trade union movement. You're going to fail, but you're going to destroy people like me. The kind of person who will take over from me will be the kind you deserve.'

Similarly, the row over Liberal leader Paddy Ashdown not being invited to speak at the TUC demo over racism gives a sense of the pressure TUC leaders are under. They were pressured by local activists disgusted at the behaviour of local Tower Hamlets Liberals, who refused to even allow the demonstration a park to disperse in.

The fact that the TUC stood up to media and Liberal pressure in however limited a way gave trade union activists a boost. But one demonstration cannot on its own turn the tide against the Nazis. Building groups against the Nazis in workplaces--among teachers, civil servants, postal workers and the rest--can weaken the fascists and also help to strengthen working class organisation.

But we also have to look at wider issues to undercut them. The fascists attract people because they seem to have plausible answers to the social and economic problems people face: unemployment, housing shortage, cuts in services. Labour has little to say to these people but instead pursues policies aimed at attracting middle class voters--and so leaves some of its traditional voters increasingly in despair.

More than anything else, a rise in the level of class struggle, and a growth in the influence of the unions and the working class movement can provide a bulwark against fascism. Socialists have to put every effort into helping this come about.

France

A movement even bigger than that against the poll tax has hit France. Street protests are once again rocking the government, only a year after its crushing electoral victory. The French Tories are being forced onto the defensive by the anger of thousands of school and technical college students. They have taken to the streets to protest at attempts to reduce the SMIC (minimum wage) for youth to 80 percent (to £439 a month).

There has been demonstration after demonstration in Paris and in major provincial cities. The major trade union confederations have called demonstrations of up to 400,000 demanding that the government withdraw the proposal completely.

The situation among young people (nearly a quarter of under 26s lack a job) is like a tinderbox waiting for a match. The protests are also pulling together kids from different ethnic backgrounds, black as well as white.

Many of the demonstrations have spilled over into rioting. One such riot, not connected with the specific issue of the SMIC, occurred in the Paris suburb of Garges-lès-Gonesse over a racist murder. There have been running battles with riot police, with cars overturned and set on fire and shop and restaurant windows broken. The atmosphere is like the campaign against the poll tax. Sympathy for the rioters among workers is widespread.

The effect on the government and its supporters has been a mixture of hysteria and fear. The hard line minister of the interior, Charles Pasqua, targeted the rioting casseurs (smashers) as part of some sinister plot. Other politicians have been nervous about taking too hard a line. There has been much speculation that France is heading for another May 1968.

The government's attack on the minimum wage is part of its austerity programme. With the economy growing at barely 1 percent this year the French ruling class would like to cut interest rates to stimulate growth but dare not unless the Germans do, for fear of creating the sort of currency crisis that knocked sterling out of the ERM. It wants to cut public spending but fears that this will endanger an already feeble economic growth.

Every time the government has tried to go onto the offensive it has been forced to retreat by opposition. At the end of last year mass strikes at Air France forced the government to shelve its plans for restructuring the airline. Then the government had to backtrack on its intention to inject cash into private education under pressure from widespread opposition. Bitter protest action by fishermen and farmers against the effects of EU agricultural policy and new GATT measures also dented its confidence.

With unemployment at an all time high the government then dreamed up a scheme to get employers to take on young people for less than the minimum rate for a certain period of time in return for some on the job training. It attempted to sell this idea as a scheme for reducing youth unemployment. But it didn't take long for people to see through it. The youth SMIC would devalue the technical qualifications that many take after completing their school leaving exams, be cheap labour for the employers (to be dismissed as soon as the employer had to pay more) and be a threat to older workers' position.

The government now gives the impression of having lost control--and not just over economic questions. The most farcical of its retreats came after it attempted to ban live transmission of Lovin' Fun, a sexually explicit talk show on Fun Radio, which claims 1.3 million young listeners. It took only three days of protest, with 375,000 people ringing in to offer their support and 10,000 demonstrating for the communications minister to assure all and sundry that the government would not interfere with young people's 'method of dialogue'.

An opinion poll in early March discovered that 55 percent of all French people and 60 percent of wage earners thought the social and economic situation was poor, while 69 percent believed that a serious social crisis was imminent. Even more worrying for the government was the response to the crisis. No less than 44 percent of all French people and 57 percent of all wage earners would be prepared to join in a general movement of opposition were it to develop. In the event of opposition being purely workplace based the figures went still higher: 69 percent in the public sector, 54 percent in the private sector.

Encouraging though this is, not everything is rosy. Le Pen's National Front is still capable of pulling large numbers of votes, despite losing (narrowly) in the mayoral by-election for the town of Nice. But the French Tories are looking as weak as their British counterparts and, even if the present upsurge is not a rerun of May 68, French workers and young people are showing powers of political recovery that some had thought lost.

Italy

Whoever wins, the government will be fragile

As this issue of Socialist Review went to press it seemed likely that the right wing coalition would win most seats in the Italian general election. For the first time in Europe since the war there is a possibility that fascists will take part in government. It is certain that the fascists will emerge stronger than at any time in the last 50 years. At the same time the former Communist Party--the PDS--has emerged as the largest single political party at national level. In the run up to the election, the message from the PDS was: vote for the left and we will ensure stable government in alliance with the centre.

Whoever wins the election, the government which emerges will be extremely fragile. The right wing alliance in Italy has been cobbled together from three quite different and antagonistic forces.

The Northern League, centred on Milan and the surrounding area, was founded in the 1980s and is based on the prosperous middle class and lower middle class: the owners of small businesses, the professions, shopkeepers and artisans. The things that unite these groupings are hostility to Rome, opposition to taxation and state subsidies, and contempt for the poverty stricken South.

The MSI was the traditional party of fascism. In an attempt to disguise its direct link with Mussolini it has hurriedly renamed itself the National Alliance. All the old elements remain: the pictures of 'The Leader', the songs, symbols and salutes, the blackshirt thugs. The fascists are almost entirely based in Rome and the South. They call for a strong nation state, law and order and the expulsion of unregistered and unemployed immigrants of whom they claim there are 7 million. Their appeal is to the most backward elements in the towns and to the peasantry--because of their commitment to state subsidies and control of the market.

The new element is, like the League, an anti-party party. Forza Italia is the creature of media boss Silvio Berlusconi, a Thatcherite capitalist who has entered politics because of the 'Communist threat'. Forza Italia's appeal is to those who are 'fed up with politicians' and state bureaucracy. Berlusconi was a member of the shadowy Masonic grouping P2, the network of businessmen and politicians which has been behind most of the corruption and right wing terrorism of the last 25 years. Despite this he claims to stand for clean government.

The alliance is a marriage of convenience, brought together to exploit the deep disillusion with the political parties and the state that is tearing Italian society apart, and sustained only by fear and hatred of the former Communist Party. It is thus completely unstable, but it has created the pretext for Italian fascism to put on a respectable face.

The threat from the right is growing. But the forces on the left are far more organised and powerful. Over the past two years the anti-Mafia/pro-reform movement has gained overwhelming support in the South and in Sicily. The traditional areas of Communist support have held solid. Key cities have moved to the left. Above all workers' organisation is tremendously resilient. Attempts by the League and the fascists to build trade union affiliates have had no impact, in spite of the history of breakaway unions in Italy. Union calls for strike action have received massive backing from workers.

Against this background the ambitions of the PDS have soared. Systematically excluded from office, the former Communist Party now projects itself as the party of moderation and stability. In its manifesto in February the PDS promised: parliamentary reform to guarantee pluralism; devolution of power to the regions; simplification of the tax system; flexible working arrangements to tackle unemployment; privatisation of the banks; limits to the abuse of market power through financial reforms; a 'citizen's pact' to reinforce family values; limits on television advertising; better use of public sector resources; independence of the judiciary; reform of the South through the creation of small enterprises.

Any talk of improving workers' conditions has been ruled out on the grounds of the need for international competitiveness. PDS secretary Achille Ochetto has committed himself publicly to continuing the policies of the previous government, preferably under the leadership of the Christian Democrat prime minister, Ciampi. It has already prepared the ground to ditch the left for an alliance with the centre when the opportunity presents itself.

The left has considerable support--shown in the votes won by Rifondazione Communista, the grouping made up of disillusioned Communists and revolutionaries. Rifondazione has clearly attracted the support of many young workers who are fed up with the class collaboration of the PDS and angered by the rise of racism and fascism. But the organisation remains a prisoner of its origins on the left of the Communist Party. There has been little mobilisation against the fascists or any sign that those involved see the need to build an organisation based on activity inside the working class rather than electioneering. Yet that is exactly what will be required in the weeks and months ahead.