The nineteen thirties were resurrected on 13th August, when the fascist National Front held a march through Lewisham in south London. This area was selected by them because it has a high proportion of black people. The march was claimed to be a protest against mugging, and carried placards which said: “80 per cent of muggers are black, 85 per cent of victims are white”. Implication obvious.
Opposition to the march was organized by the Socialist Workers’ Party, and the result was an afternoon of violence with 214 arrests and 110 people taken to hospital. There was further violence in Birmingham, where the National Front had a candidate in a by-election, and several indiscriminate attacks in London. The SPGB was among the objects of it. Though we oppose both the National Front and the Socialist Workers’ Party and condemn everything which happened in Lewisham, the front window of our premises was smashed by a brick on 16th August.
The question raised is of democracy. Should the National Front be tolerated when they are preaching intolerance? Why cede free speech to them when everything known about them indicates that their aim is to suppress free speech? In the same terms, is there any justification for the Socialist Workers’ Party trying to prevent forcibly the expression of views they object to? The word “fascist” is both definite and indefinite; in the early ’thirties the Communist Party used “social fascist” as a self-granted licence to break up any opponent party’s meetings, and the SWP and its predecessor International Socialists have done the same.
The SWP produced two curious arguments. First, Paul Foot was quoted in The Times (15th August) as saying 98 per cent. of his party are against violence. Since the SWP now claim 4,500 members, this means only 90 support violence and 4.400 are against it. In a democratically-run party a minority accepts the view of the majority. Why are not these 90 expelled from the party? Second, Duncan Hallas said on TV (18th August) the National Front is outside the rules because “it is not a political party”. That is absurd. A political party is a group which aims to win or participate in control of the state machine, and that is the nature of the NF.
The SPGB’s attitude is quite clear. We are against violence as a political means because it denies democracy; we are for the expression of views, however pernicious they are considered to be. The way to defeat the National Front is to expose its policies fully (most of its supporters either do not know or do not understand them). The SWP and others play into its hands by seeking to make superior force the issue. It is not a matter of “should be allowed”. That means, again, some forcibly superior body — in this case the government — deciding what views may or may not be expressed. Most people take it as a question of “right” and “wrong”, but governments do not act on ethics.
The legal “rights” of free speech, publication, assembly and voting are permissions given by the state for historically or immediately practical reasons. They can be withdrawn, as has happened many times and is suggested now; The Times had an editorial on 15th August saying the citizens should not mind losing “these nebulous rights” in the interests of public order. Socialists understand the value of these facilities which capitalism has to allow, and at the same time see them in perspective. We link democracy with Socialism, as an essential of the means for a democratic society to be established.
Democracy depends on knowledge, and that is why we are for all views being expressed, questioned and debated. We do not, however, join with non-Socialists to demand legal rights for them as a stepping-stone to run capitalism. Under existing conditions it is always possible for the bully or would-be tyrant to use democratic procedures which he wants to stamp out. Why should we help them? The application of democracy in the true sense, as part of the demand for Socialism, is the only realistic way to deal with fascism—and all the other evils produced by capitalism.
A related matter is the myth which has grown up round the “Battle of Cable Street” in 1936. Here, the Communist Party and other groups organized opposition to a march by the British Union of Fascists; the street was barricaded, there was fighting, and the BUF leader Mosley agreed to divert his march. This has led to the legend that the fascists were defeated, and the SWP today are trying to emulate it. In fact the fascists marched again in East London, and continued their activity and contested elections until the outbreak of war in 1939. According to Martin Walker in The National Front they gained about 2,000 members in the East End in the two months after the battle of Cable Street.
Finally, it should be noted where the National Front gets its support. Its policies apart from racism are a miserable ragbag which would not in themselves elicit votes on any useful scale. But, like the Nazis and other fascist parties which have won political power, in a depression it attracts workers who are discontented and misdirect their resentment — and, in particular, think parliamentary democracy has been no good to them. The rise of fascism since the first World War is due above all to the failure of the social-democratic parties who consciously rejected Socialism. The policies and activities of the SWP do nothing to alter that.
Robert Barltrop
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