We note -
The continuing growth of the BNP, including the very significant possibility that they will win at least one MEP in the upcoming European elections.
The openings given to the BNP by the economic crisis to boost themselves as critics of the mainstream political parties.
Our current, and correct, analysis of the BNP as a fascist party whose organisation on any level (from a one-person paper sale to a mass rally) represents a threat to ethnic minorities, LGBT people and ultimately the labour movement itself.
We further note -
The poverty of existing mainstream anti-fascist organisation. Both UAF nor Searchlight/Hope not Hate (the two tendencies which hegemonise anti-fascist political space within the labour movement) are essentially popular-frontist organisations, which reduce activists to electoral foot-soldiers for capitalist parties. Their avowed aim in the Euro-elections is to maximise the Tory, Lib-Dem, and New Labour vote so as to nudge down the BNP's percentage and thus reduce the chance of the BNP winning a Euro-MP. Even if this stratagem should work arithmetically, it is counterproductive in that it presents anti-fascist activists to disillusioned and frustrated people as people urging them to accept or tolerate the status quo. It thus strengthens the BNP's claim to be the most serious channel for radical dissatisfaction. UAF and HnH are both undemocratic at the national level: there is more room for debate in some local UAF or HnH groups. The Antifa organisation, while made up of courageous activists, also does not offer any sort of alternative (nor does it claim to). It is based on an elitist conception of physical-force anti-fascism that necessarily excludes the mass of working-class people (who for the most part are unprepared to firebomb cars or lay siege to houses of suspected fascists) and may well again be counterproductive (hitting non-BNPers by mistake, diverting activist energies into small-scale conspiracy and into defence efforts for its own activists who fall foul of the police.
The limited but real success of AWL members in Nottingham in launching and developing the Notts Stop the BNP campaign, which brought together much of the organised left, trade unionists, dissident Labour Party members, some Antifa-affiliated anarchists as well as working-class community campaigners. In August 2008, this campaign was able to call and organise the first national demonstration against the BNP for over a decade, despite the initial indifference and eventual hostility/attempted sabotage of UAF.
The lack of experience amongst some AWL members of organising and co-ordinating potentially confrontational direct action against fascists and the police who protect them.
The lack of a meaningful working-class political alternative which we can build in order to offer an alternative vehicle for the political representation that the BNP claim to give (white) working-class communities.
We believe -
Fascism can be fought effectively only on the basis of class-struggle anti-capitalism. This means:
- No class-collaboration: Capitalist politicians, whose policies are responsible for creating the conditions in which the BNP have grown, are not allies in the struggle against fascism. We do not call for votes for straight bourgeois parties to “keep out” the BNP.
- Direct action and physical confrontation: given that fascist organisation represents an immediate declaration of civil war on ethnic minorities and LGBT people and a threat to the labour movement as soon as it gathers momentum, it must be fought using war tactics. Campaigns must be prepared to physically confront fascists in order to, for example, (as the Nottingham campaign did with some success in October 2007). It is on this basis – i.e. as a tool of self-defence for unions, communities, etc., and as an assertion of the right of the labour movement and targeted communities to speak out against the fascists – that we organise demonstrations which may blockade and shut down fascist meetings, not on the basis of an abstract principle of “no platform” or of silencing anyone with unpleasant views.
- Transitional demands: the BNP relies for its immediate strength and growth on being able to posture as pro-working class radicals against the privatisers and marketeers of the three main bourgeois parties. Their members have, for example, taken part in local campaigns against Academy schools and healthcare privatisation. These are legitimate working-class grievances, and to prevent the BNP from exploiting them we must have our own response. This means developing and arguing for transitional demands on issues like transport, education, healthcare and jobs – an integral element of our 'workers' plan for the crisis'.
- Fight for a workers' party and a workers' government: we must provide a political project that can cut the roots of fascism, not simply hold its worst excesses at bay. That means providing an alternative model for how society might be organised and managed – that is, by a set of interests other than the interests of profit which have created the conditions in which the BNP has grown. Throughout all of our anti-fascist campaigning we should pose the workers' government slogan, the struggle for the conquest of social power by the organised working class and, in the immediate term, the struggle for a party with this as its core aim. This is particularly essential in the context of providing an alternative to the capitalist consensus at election times.
We therefore resolve that -
Where there are opportunities to “intervene” in existing campaigns to argue for our perspectives, we should take them, as with taking part in anti-fascist campaigning during the Euro-election campaign with the model leaflet originated by the Notts anti-BNP campaign in our hands even if the other leafleters have UAF or HnH leaflets. In our unions, we should argue for an anti-fascist strategy whereby the union branch, region or other body uses its resources to conduct independent campaigning on the political basis outlined above, counterposing this to support for UAF/HnH if and when it is proposed.
Seeking to convince anti-fascist activists of our politics on this question, AWL branches should aim to convince and rally enough of them to set up local campaigns active against fascism on a working-class basis, such as exist in Notts and a few other places. This work will involve exploring possibilities for developing this work through local TUCs, as well as approaching other left groups, community campaigns and independent anti-fascists to discuss collaboration.
AWL will develop a series of educationals/training looking at the history of working-class, anti-fascist direct action and aimed at helping our comrades develop the skills to organise further action in the future.
The incoming AWL NC should commission a pamphlet on anti-fascism based on the political perspectives outlined in this motion and including expositions of historical episodes such as Cable Street and the union-organised anti-fascist defence squads during the 1934 Minneapolis teamsters' strike.