Workers' Liberty

Bruce Robinson reviews Race and Intelligence: Science's Last Taboo, 26 October, Channel 4. (Still viewable on Channel 4’s website).

Somali-born Rageh Omaar’s programme entered the “dangerous territory” of the purported relationship between race and intelligence. Every few years it reappears in the form of the assertion that IQ tests show black people to be less intelligent than whites and that this is caused by genetic differences.

The Scottish Defence League (SDL), an offshoot of the English Defence League which has staged anti-Muslim demonstrations in several cities, plans an event in Glasgow on Saturday, 14 November.

Mike and Dave report from the Leeds demonstration against the English Defence League on 31 October

The most disturbing thing about this programme were the images of two British Asian reporters (posing “undercover” as a couple living on a largely white working-class housing estate in Bristol), being subjected to daily racist bullying by children and young people. But that was not the only disturbing aspect of this programme.

More than one hundred Romanians have been forced from their Belfast homes and are in hiding under armed police protection after a series of coordinated racist attacks.

On 24 May, a crowd of five hundred rioted in Luton city centre, seeking out and terrorising people whom they thought were Muslims and attacking Asian-owned businesses. We carry a report in the centre pages of Solidarity 3/152.

More than five hundred “demonstrators” went on a racist rampage in Luton on Sunday 24 May. Orchestrating the mob — which clashed with police, attacked at least one local Muslim man and several businesses — were a team of balaclava wearing thugs.

“Rome and Italy today are responsible for a racial segregation unique in the west” (La Republica).

This speech by Lenin, from 1919, shows how the Bolsheviks attacked the problem of age-old Russian anti-semitism after the workers' revolution of 1917.

The recent construction workers’ strikes began under the slogan “British Jobs For British Workers”.

On 4 November Barack Obama was elected as the first black president of the USA. He got 60% of the votes of the relatively hard-up (household income less than $50,000 a year) and only 49% of the votes of the well-off (household income above $100,00 a year).

Written and published for Black History Month

William Davidson and the Cato Street conspiracy

Last time we heard of Lee Jasper, Ken Livingstone's hundred grand-plus adviser on race during his tenure as mayor, he was speaking at a West End private members' club about the route to "money, power

Four months after a decisive election victory, Italy’s right-wing government has pushed through a series of racist anti-immigrant measures.

This fascinating programme told the full story about the “black power” protest by Tommie Smith and John Carlos at a medal ceremony during the 1968 Mexico Olympics. Although the story is well known (and the image even more famous), especially in America, it was worth telling again, in this film, by the athletes themselves.

If you missed the “Black Power Salute” film on BBC 4 last night you missed one of the best hours television for ages.

These are bad times for the Socialist Action group. Not only did the defeat of Ken Livingstone mean the loss of their sinecures at City Hall, their front group “Student Broad Left” has now almost disappeared. In an attempt to shore up their position, SA have hit out at their erstwhile allies in the SWP.

Middle class producers at the BBC have conveniently rediscovered the working class in order to make a series that attempts to drive a wedge between workers. The vile advert designed to build some hype around the “White” series depicted a bulldog man’s face being progressively blacked out by foreign words.

Chris Rock at the Hammersmith Apollo.

Last week my seventy year old mother, who walks with the aid of a stick, was deemed a security threat by a bus driver.

By Robin Sivapalan
I read Assed’s initial article just over a week ago when I was invited by comrades in the SWP to join the Facebook group set up to defend him. On a quick reading I was pretty disappointed by what he had to say and also, from experience, I could predict the scale and type of enraged response this article would provoke.

Yves Coleman, in Paris, has written an interesting response to an Italian sociologist's article hailing the French riots of 2005. Read it here. Of particular interest to readers in Britain may be Yves' section which he entitles "The Racialisation of Social Questions Leads Nowhere",

With a Federal election looming and opinion polls consistently running against the Coalition it is no wonder that this conservative government has once again played the race card.

By Stuart Jordon

At this year’s TUC conference, the labour movement showed its weakness as it sat supine and listened to "its" unelected leader, Gordon Brown, make one of the most vicious right-wing speeches in Labour party history.