Brick Lane & The Carnival, an open letter to Tony Cliff' (1978)

Submitted by AWL on 5 August, 2008 - 2:20 Author: James Ryan,

Dear Comrade Cliff,

You admitted in last week's Socialist Worker that the SWP and the ANL made mistakes in relation to Brick Lane on September 24th.
That is an encouraging sign. It shows that you can't happily shrug off the anger and feelings of betrayal expressed by the Bengali community when they realised that the ANL weren;'t responding to their calls for help.
It shows also that many of your own members were furious when they discovered what had happened.
In the face of these reactions you have admitted to 'blunders' and have pledged that the SWP will act differently in future.
Unfortunately, we remain doubtful on this last point, and for two reasons. Firstly, September 24th was the second time you have failed to mobilise against the Nazis marching into the East End. The first time was May Day, immediately after Carnival 1. You don't mention the fact that 'blundering' in relation to Nazi marches is becoming something of a tradition with the SWP lately.
Secondly and crucially, you completely mis-diagnose what went wrong on the 24th. Your argument is that the general political decision - not to disturb arrangements for the Carnival - was quite right; the SWP's and ANL's failing were purely organisational. This is nonsense.

Core

To begin with, you exaggerate the importance of the ANL as the prime target of the Nazi march; this goes together with an over-emphasis on the electoral success or failure of the NF.
As you yourselves have said many time, poor electoral results will do nothing to break the vicious organised core of NF support. And it is those people who are the immediate danger. The NF are nowhere near winning one seat in the coming elections, let alone about to attain a parliamentary majority.
What does hurt the Nazis is their inability to march or in other ways dominate the streets. Here, of course, Brick Lane has been very important. SWP and ANL members have been prominent in helping the Bengalis try to sweep NF sellers off the top of the market, and the Naxis don't like that at all. They want to get back in there, and their march was a big step in that direction.
Of course you're right in pointing out that the NF (and the Tory press) would be delighted to see the collapse of the ANL; but weren't they also pleased that the NF could go about their business without serious resistance from the ANL?
And this is the crux of the matter. You say quite plainly: 'We have to organise demonstrations against the Nazis, and smash them on the streets'. But how does that square with your remark that calling for the mobilisation to take on the fascists in the Eat End would have disintegrated the ANL?
Won't that always be true of a campaign which refuses to define its attitude to the issue of direct confrontation with the fascists? Aren't many of the ANL's sponsors and leading light resolutely opposed to smashing the fascists on the streets?
And how can the ANL undermine the fascists' base of support when it invites staunch defenders of racist immigration controls to speak on its behalf? Benn [Tony Benn, who supported the Labour governments programme at the time], the minister in a government which, through its attacks on working class living standards and conditions, provides the Nazis with genuine grievances to exploit?
Your decision to build the ANL as a pacifist alliance with racists and liberals was a political decision, as was your decision not to fight against them at the ANL conference. From these decisions came the behaviour of the SWP in preventing an adequate mobilisation in defence of Brick Lane flowed quite naturally.
It is true that there were 'organisational' aspects to this orientation too, such as threats of violence against Workers' Action supporters who gave out leaflets calling for people to go to Brick Lane.
But the biggest 'blunder' you mention, on the police undertaking not to allow the Nazis into Brick Lane itself, was not organisational but political. This undertaking, you say, 'led to a mass complacency among the mass of ANL supporters'.
Your statement is grossly misleading. Firstly, the police said the NF would march to Redchurch Street, twenty yeards from the top of Brick Lane; is there anytinhg in that to encourage complacency?

Blunder

And secondly, the 'mass of ANL supporters' knew nothing of this promise from the police until SWP member Paul Holborrow announced it from the ANL rostrum in Hyde Park in an attempt to stop people going to Brick Lane. That is a 'blunder' for which your organisation must accept full responsibility.
You talk about your lack of experience in “leading a really mass movement”. But you know enough about movements like the Vietnam Solidarity Campaign to be aware that a fighting stand by the ANL against the NF march might have brought losses among its bourgeois sponsors, but would have made its base among the combative working class youth stronger and more meaningful. And you know enough about the hours of the clock and the geography of London to be aware that calling on people to go to Brick Lane only after the Carnival in Brockwell Park would be little use.
Workers' Action supporters and other will be fighting in the coming weeks for an emergency ANL conference to bring Paul Holborrow and other like him to account for the fiasco of September 24th, and to establish once and for all a clear position of mobilising to smash the Nazis on the streets. If the SWP do seriously intend to prevent a repetition of the events of May 1st and September 24th, they will join us in that fight.

JAMES RYAN
Workers' Action, No.119, Oct. 7-14, 1978

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