Race in Smethwick (1965)

From the June 1965 issue of the Socialist Standard

Last October the previously little known town of Smethwick, situated, ironically, on the edge of the Black Country, was suddenly shot into the headlines of every national newspaper. The town was described as “England’s Little Rock”, a “race-hate town”, were the electorate were “politically illiterate”. All of this because the controversial Councillor Peter Griffiths had unseated Mr. Patrick Gordon Walker at the General Election.

To what extent does racialism exist in Smethwick? What, if anything, gave rise to it? Does it have any basis in fact? To find the answers to these questions it is necessary to first know a little about the conditions in Smethwick which gave rise to the now notorious events of last October.

One of the first things to take attention in the town are the blocks of multi-storey council flats, towering over the slums they are replacing. Many people say that this is evidence of how much better off we are now; that this is progress. But these jerry-built dwellings, with their damp, paper-thin, warped walls and fierce draughts, are deteriorating into slums in about half the time it took for a back-to-back. The case of a man, reported in the local press recently, speaks for itself; he had had to spend the last ten months off work as a result of illness caused by the damp in his new council flat.

This one feature of the town typifies, as nearly as anything does, what sort of a place Smethwick is. Like thousands of other places, it has the thin veneer of the Affluent Society we are always being told about; but underneath there is the same old poverty.

Confronted with this, and other problems, the people of Smethwick looked for, and found, a scapegoat. Not for the first time, collective wrath fell upon a section of the community who are marked off by the colour of their skin. They overlooked the fact that racialism is no answer to inadequate housing, bad schools and social services.

It is unlikely that many Smethwick people are deep-rooted racialists. Undoubtedly, a lot of them trusted the panaceas of the politicians, in the hope that they would solve their problems. Yet with the records of inconsistency held both by Councillor Griffiths and Mr. Gordon Walker, one wonders if they themselves have any idea of how to go about it.

Griffiths has not always been so outspoken about immigration. For him, in the 1959 election the burning issue was that we should all vote in “a Smethwick man for Smethwick”, which conveniently ignored the fact that he himself is a Welsh immigrant. However, this did not cut much electoral ice and in 1964 he took advantage of the emotions aroused by the concentrations of immigrants by basing his platform on the immigrant question. In contradiction to the memorable photograph which once appeared in the local paper, showing his wife chatting over a cup of tea with a Pakistani woman, Griffiths declared that “Smethwick rejects the idea of a multi-racial society ”.

On the other side, Mr. Gordon Walker had spoken against the Immigration Bill when it was first introduced by the Tories and, although he had decided by 1964 that perhaps immigration control was not such a bad idea after all, he had already lost much support. However, the dissident Labour voters need not have worried. We all know that the Labour Party, now that they are in power, have not only retained the Act they attacked so strongly, but are actually enforcing stricter control than the Tories did.

Smethwick Labour Party are bitter about the whole affair. At their inquest on the election many speeches were made on the reasons for their defeat and on how they propose to win back the constituency. But next to nothing was said about the ways to solve the problems which face people, both white and coloured, in Smethwick and elsewhere.

Labour Party and Immigration (1965)

From the June 1965 issue of the Socialist Standard

High-flown phrases about "the brotherhood of man” fall thickly from the lips of the Capitalist politician, and perhaps some of them are sincere, at least some of the time. Fenner Brockway, until last October the Labour M.P. for Eton & Slough, tried and failed no less than seven times to interest the Commons in a bill to outlaw racial discrimination. "When a child is born", he said with a note of Christian piety on December 13th, 1961, “ it is not its physical form or the pigment of its skin which makes it sacred—it is the spiritual life, the personality within ”,

The precise meaning of those words is a matter for discussion, but what is undeniable is the anxiety of Mr. Brockway and other M.P s over the growing signs of racial friction in Britain. However, it is one thing to condemn racialism, but quite another to deal with it effectively in a world of private property, where antagonisms and prejudices of all sorts are fostered. In any case, whatever Mr. Brockway’s opinions may have been, he was a Labourite and cannot escape responsibility for his party's actions over the question of racialism and immigration control.

Indeed, despite fierce Labour opposition to the Commonwealth Immigration Bill in 1962 (and we shall come to that later), it may not be generally remembered that it was two Labour members, H. Hynd (Accrington) and M. Lipton (Brixton) who over four years before (on April 3rd, 1958) had said in the Common that “. . . the time has come for reconsideration of the arrangement whereby British subjects from other parts of the Commonwealth are allowed to enter this country without restriction ”. At that time, it was the Tory spokesman, Miss P. Hornsby-Smith, who resisted their motion and reminded the freedom lovers of the Labour benches of the part coloured workers had played in taking jobs rejected by whites:

Anyone who uses public transport in our big cities, will know that they have filled a very great gap in staff and . . . have done a very good job.

But as she also had to admit, the heavy demand for labour was easing, and coloured workers were finding it more difficult to find employment than before. Here we can detect one of the economic pressures which made the question politically explosive in the early sixties, and perhaps cost the Labour Party three constituencies in 1964-5.

It was convenient for the Macmillan government that so many people seemed to forget that housing and employment problems existed long before coloured immigrants set foot here in any numbers. The Tories saw the issue as a political godsend, among other things an opportunity to deflect criticism of their own failures to solve these problems onto the innocent shoulders of the coloured minority. And despite their assurances to the contrary, the subsequent Immigration Bill was far from colour-blind in its provisions. The Tories were in fact pandering to the worst prejudices of public opinion and, by using a minority as a scapegoat, were taking crafty advantage of racist sentiment without incurring the stigma usually attached to it.

Here it was that the Labour opposition under Gaitskell committed a first class tactical blunder in assuming that it was still enough to label a party racialist to condemn in in the eyes of the public. Conditions in British politics were changing, but Gaitskell showed little awareness of this when commenting on the Queen’s speech on October 31st, 1961:

. . . whatever hon. Members opposite may say, whatever the Home Secretary may say . . . this will be regarded very largely throughout the world as the imposition of a colour bar over here.... To impose restrictions is a very grave step indeed, and , one that I personally hope the Government will not, when they come to it, actually take.

This bitter and unqualified attack was resumed the following day by George Brown. He threw the words of the Tory Cyril Osborne into the Government’s face (“This is a white man’s country and I want it to remain so ”), and ended by saying:

The proposal to take these powers is not really to solve the difficulties and the real consequences of the proposal is to give themselves gn alibi for what they are refusing to do, whether for brown, black or white.. . . The casual way in which this is dealt with is a gross reflection on H.M. Ministers, and if the house were easily to accept it, it would be on the house.

It is old news now, that the government’s measure was passed in the teeth of fierce labour opposition, something which was to cost Gordon-Walker his seat at Smethwick three years later. By then, however, Labour policy under Wilson’s leadership hail undergone a right-about-face on the issue. Forgotten were Gaitskell’s words (“ immigration from the Commonwealth has been of economic benefit to us.”) for the new leader was wily enough to see that the old stand was a positive vote loser.

So the 1964 Labour manifesto talked of retaining the very measure of which they had been so scornful, and indeed since their return to power, Labour have actually tightened control at all points of entry. Of course, they are at one with their Tory sparring partners in denying any racial bias, but in the light of this, the words of their home secretary, Sir Frank Soskice, have a strange ring. In a Commons debate on Match 23rd, he resisted any extension to the law because:

I should have to ask you to give these powers to be used against Canadians, Australians and New Zealanders, against all members of the old Commonwealth countries as well as the new. They would have to be operated against visitors and students, from all these countries with complete impartiality.

True, the Labour government have since introduced a bill outlawing racial discrimination in certain spheres, but this is as much a question of public order as anything else. Statesmen can learn from the mistakes of their counterparts elsewhere and British capitalism cannot afford another Selma or Little Rock in Smethwick or Brixton.

However, even if immigration restrictions achieve their purpose, there are almost a million coloured workers in Britain and they are here to stay. They will have children and their numbers will swell. They will suffer the same problems as their white brothers, but with the added indignity of resentment and prejudice which no law enactment can cure. The coloured vole will also increase and this is something which no Labour or Tory politician will be able to ignore when trying to keep the situation in check.

They have all pandered to ignorance and bigotry in the furtherance of their vote catching—racially prejudiced workers are always impressed by government restrictive measures against minorities—but the boot may not always be on the same foot. The present set-up could conceivably produce an offspring in the shape of mounting coloured resentment against while workers in the future; already some ugly signs of this are appearing elsewhere in the world. But whatever happens, it should be interesting to watch Labour and Tory antics as the drama is played out. and should prove as instructive a lesson in political tightrope walking as we have ever seen.

Eddie Critchfield

The Jews and Racial Purity (1935)

From the September 1935 issue of the Socialist Standard

In the past month there has been another orgiastic outbreak of Jew-baiting in Germany; and a Manchester slum child has received front-page publicity for a childish essay maintaining that “England is the best country in the world." Is there any connection between these two facts, the one so brutal, the other so smugly conventional? Decidedly. The members of the National Government have, in their well-bred, take-it-for-granted, true-blue-British way, been comfortably preening themselves on an unchallengeable “racial superiority," just as confidently, and just as unwarrantably, as have their crudely blustering Nazional fellows in Germany. 

Superstitions on the subject of race, of racial differences and superiorities, are so rife even today that we can well afford to examine the subject.

In its usual everyday acceptance the term “race" is loosely used to equate with “nationality." There is a widespread belief that there are inherent and immutable differences between “races" (meaning nationalities), and that one’s own is vastly preferable to all others.

Such beliefs are amply demonstrated in anti-Semitic movements, in the position of negroes in the U.S.A., in the Australian Yellow-Peril phobia, in the “colour problem" generally. The growth and consolidation of the British Empire has particularly fostered these theories in every quarter of the world—always, of course, in favour of the British “race." Shaw speaks ironically of “England’s legitimate conquests, given to her by God because of her peculiar fitness to rule over less favoured races for their own good," but there are large numbers of people who hold that view in all seriousness.

Such beliefs are dangerously reactionary. They very conveniently serve to conceal, to justify, or to help intensify the exploitation of one section of the world by another. They represent, however, a slapdash, rule-of-thumb sociology which is by no means founded on fact.

Properly speaking, the word “race" is used for a purely physical, scientific classification of human beings, just as horses or dogs are classified. A race, anthropologically, is “a group of people possessing similar physical characteristics." The primary determining factors are the shape of the head, the height and the colour of the skin, all three being taken into consideration. Mankind is divisible, on these lines, into three races: the fair, the dark, the yellow. Each can be further sub-divided, but for the purpose of this article the sub-divisions of the fair race are all that need be noted; they are Alpine (short, dark, round-headed), Mediterranean (short, dark, long-headed), and Nordic (tall, fair, long-headed). But, in the world to-day, practically no pure races exist.

Only two remote sections of humanity, the Eskimos and the Pigmies, have any real claim to racial purity, and they are dying out. All the rest of the world is racially thoroughly mixed, and only in occasional, isolated, individual cases is a pure racial type to be found. Race overrides both national and linguistic frontiers; people of similar race speak entirely different languages and live in different countries, and, at the same time, people of divergent race speak the same language and live in the same country.

Many so-called races are nothing of the kind; for example, “Celtic" “Latin" and “Aryan" are all language divisions and by no means racial. Latin (or Romance) languages are spoken by people who differ widely from each other racially—Bretons and Roumanians, Spaniards and Walloons, for example. As for Aryan, not only is it not a racial division, but even as a language division it is no more than an assumption. There is a large group of languages called “Indo-Aryan" but the root derivation of them all has never been discovered. Hitler uses the word Aryan to describe a type which would correctly be called “Nordic"—but we may note that a very small minority of those speaking Aryan languages are of Nordic stock. Most Germans, for example, are of alpine type. So are the Jews, who are a religious and not a racial group. They are no more a race than are the Christians. Racially they are very mixed, but predominantly Alpine and Mediterranean, though with a fair admixture of Nordic stock. Only about thirty per cent. of the Jews have the so-called “Jewish nose"—which is actually a characteristic of the East Alpine group, irrespective of religion. From an anthropological point of view the Hitler doctrines and policy are comic to the point of absurdity; logically, to exclude all but the Nordics, he would have to dispense with some two-thirds of the population of Germany—while if he countenanced the Alpine stocks of which most Germans come, he would have to include most of the Jews, too. He is not, however, concerned with logic: an anti-Jew campaign helps to lessen the unemployment problem of non-Jews and distracts attention from other social problems; and foggy ideas about race foster the prejudices which encourage his campaigns.

The theory of inherent differences of temperament or outlook between racial groups is entirely baseless. It springs not from fact but from national prejudice. The only innate differences between races are the purely external physical ones of skin-colour, height and shape of head. These superficial distinctions have no influence whatever either upon temperament or intelligence. Intelligence is determined by quickness of sense perceptions, especially sight and hearing; it is conditioned—warped or encouraged—according to social environment. “Intelligence tests carried out in Australia and South Africa have shown that black children are not inferior in intelligence to white children. These results have caused some surprise, but there is no real reason why they should. Intelligence in children is the result of quick sight and good hearing. Every child born with good eyes and ears is born intelligent, though in most cases it is soon made stupid by disease, dull surroundings and dogmatic teaching. So-called racial differences, so far as our evidence goes, are merely differences in upbringing. Nationalism exists and thrives on the entirely false belief that these artificial, and often indeed non-existent, differences are innate and unalterable." (Lord Raglan, in the Listener, October 3rd, 1934.) The social circumstances, the sum total of manifold social influences, are what determine such differences as do exist between people of different nations.

But in class society the paramount social factor, overriding and often obliterating all others, is class. Class distinctions are stronger and more apparent than national or racial ones. There is an infinitely greater resemblance between two workers of different race, than between a worker and a capitalist of the same race. Except for the language barrier, a white miner and a yellow one would find far more in common with each other than either would with a mineowner of his own colour. It is easier to mistake a Pole for an Englishman or a Dane for a Frenchman, than to mistake Mr. Selfridge for a navvy or an archbishop for a 'bus conductor.

What are the uses of this race superstition? It both springs from and foments social prejudice: it assists political domination, that is, economic exploitation, as in India and Africa; it assists capitalist sections by encouraging jingoism and war-mongering, as in Abyssinia; above all, it is invaluable in obscuring the class issue: by setting up barriers of superstition and prejudice among them, it prevents the workers all over the world from realising their common cause. Actually, the world is divided into two opposing classes, buyers and sellers of labour power, whose interests cannot be reconciled under capitalism. But the race superstition makes it appear that there are numbers of “races" (corresponding with political divisions) whose characteristics and whose interests are fundamentally and inherently at variance. That is mere nonsense; but the capitalists would rather the workers' heads were filled with such nonsense than with sense about the class struggle and how to end it. This particular nonsense is a useful spur to patriotism when national sections of the capitalist class come into conflict, and want the workers to do the fighting for them.

There is only one way to end all this confusion of thought, this muddle of prejudices: remove the ignorance on which the exploiters trade. Do not allow the real nature of present-day society to be shrouded in these webs of misconception and falsification. By clearing away such fancies we lay bare the class issue which is the crux of the world problem. The workers must understand, plainly and unequivocally, that society to-day stands on a basis, not of nationality or of race, but of private ownership of the means of life; that it is organised not for “progress" or for "enlightenment," but simply and only for profit. The sooner the workers grasp these simple facts and their implications, the sooner will they sweep away the present organisation of society and all its superstitions, and bring into being a state of things organised to produce not for profit but only for use.

Not until the means of production are collectively owned and controlled by the whole community can class distinctions vanish. Not until then will the idea of race be wholly freed from these false associations that are bound to cling to it in capitalist society, which depends for its very existence on the exploitation of man by man.

Stella Stewart

Whither South Africa? (1950)

From the April 1950 issue of the Socialist Standard

On the western outskirts of Johannesburg lies the “shanty-town" of Newclare—an ugly sprawl of wooden shacks, patched up with canvas and corrugated iron, dirty and horribly overcrowded. Buried deep in the misery and squalor of Newclare and other places like it, live the Native workers of Johannesburg and the gold-mines of the Rand.

On February 13th this year, two armoured carloads of police drove into Newclare. Their object was to make a surprise check-up on passes, the documents which the law compels all adult male Africans to carry to show they are in work (and which, incidentally, most of them are unable to read).

These “pass laws” have never been completely effective. They are even less effective now when the Natives have been flocking into the towns in such large numbers that the authorities have found it quite impossible to keep up with them. And so, to remind them that the law still exists even though it cannot be administered properly, the police have taken to making surprise raids (often in the middle of the night), in which they make a sudden swoop on an area, quickly round-up likely suspects, arrest those found without passes, and carry them off to gaol. Sometimes the arrests run into hundreds, and the raid looks more like a minor military exercise.

Perhaps because it was only a small raid, the one on February 13th did not pass off quite so smoothly as usual. When the police tried to make an arrest on this occasion they were immediately attacked by a large crowd of Natives who eventually forced them to retire under a hail of stones and other missiles. Having driven off the police, the crowd then proceeded to throw barricades across the streets and began stoning every vehicle they found carrying Europeans, at the same time setting fire to shops and looting the contents.

The rioting continued unchecked until the following day, when heavy reinforcements of armed police and firemen were drafted to the scene, and to other places where disturbances had also broken out in sympathy. Covering the firemen with rifle and machine-gun fire to enable them to fix the hoses and at the same time prevent the crowd from cutting them, the police began to occupy the area. The crowd resisted fiercely, attacking both the police and the bands of armed Europeans who were now also roaming the district, bent on taking matters into their own hands. (The presence of these gangs was one of the most significant aspects of the riot, and is a disturbing indication of the level to which racial feeling has now risen inside South Africa.) Finally, after several hours of pitched battles, the police cleared the streets, and the disturbances came to an uneasy end.

The incident itself has since been referred to the Riots Commission, which is already sitting to consider five other cases of rioting. All of them have occurred within the last six months.

What has brought South Africa to this perilous pass? What has brought about this situation, in which certain elements in the White group are already expressing their intention of suppressing all future trouble, whatever the cost and whatever the consequences? Where some of the politicians are already talking about the dangers of civil war? South Africa has always had a racial problem. What has happened in the past few years to bring it to such a terrible state?

To answer these questions, we must first make a brief review of the events that have taken place since 1948.

The Past Two Years

There are two main political parties in South Africa, the Nationalist Party under Malan, and the United Party under Smuts. In addition, there are two smaller organisations, the Afrikaner Party led by Havenga, and a Labour Party.

At the last General Election, held in May, 1948, the Nationalists and Afrikaners combined had a slight majority over the United Party and the Labour Party. This enabled them to form a Coalition Government with Malan as Prime Minister, and Havenga in the key position of Minister of Finance.

Backed largely by the Boer farming vote, the Nationalist Party has always taken an extreme line on the racial question, and, indeed, they fought the election on this issue. Malan himself, in a speech at Praal on the 20th April, 1948, said about the election that it was 

  “dominated by the question of whether the European race would be able to maintain its rule, its purity, and its civilisation or float along until it vanishes for ever in the black sea of South Africa’s non-European population.”

Once in power, there is no doubt that Malan would have been prepared to go the whole way with his extreme racial policies if it had not been for the reluctance of Havenga to go the whole way with him. As his Government depends upon the support of Havenga and the Afrikaner Party, he has had to give way—at least for the present. This, however, has not prevented him from pressing on with all kinds of other repressive legislation, with or without the support of Havenga. Prominent in this legislation has been: —

(a) The pushing forward of the general ideal of "complete separation” of all the racial groups of South Africa, “socially, residentiary, industrially, and politically.” This means that, the four groups of South Africa—the Whites, the Coloureds (people of mixed blood), the Indians, and the Africans, will be for ever kept strictly apart. In line with this, legislation has already been introduced forbidding inter-marriage between Europeans and Coloureds (laws already exist forbidding marriage between Whites and Indians, and Whites and Africans).

(b) The intention to keep the Natives on the Reserves, and away from the towns—in Malan's own words, “the Native reserves must become the true fatherland of the Native." In the towns they must henceforth be regarded as “visitors.” 

(c) Repeal of the previous Government’s law allowing the Indians three representatives in Parliament.

(d) Abolition of present Coloured vote, and in its place a similar system to that now operating for the Natives in which they are allowed three separate representatives (who must be Europeans).

(e) Repeal of the previous Government’s Bill recognising Native Trade Unions.

(f) All training of Native skilled workers to cease.

(g) All voting rights to be taken away from the Indians, and from all Natives living away from the Reserves.

As the culmination to all these repressive activities Malan is now about to introduce an identity-card system by means of which every person in the Union will eventually be registered according to “race.” Its effect will be to put every individual, once and for all, into a racial classification from which there will never be a chance of escape. To the darker-skinned African it will be just another document to add to the others he has to carry already, but for the Coloured group its effects will be profound. It will put an end, in fact, to all possibility of a white-skinned Coloured person “passing over” into the White group.

Finally, the Nationalists have extended the racial laws to cover the Cape Province, formerly the least subject to prejudice. In the post offices, non-Whites are now directed to separate counters; there are separate exits and entrances at the railway stations; “Jim Crow” travels the trains; and rides shamelessly on the buses, where Europeans now sit in the front and members of the other groups sit at the back.

All these things show clearly that the Malan Government is determined to put the clock back in South Africa. But what of the United Party and Smuts? Are they any different? Only to this extent— that whilst they do not wish to put the clock back, they neither wish to put in very far forward. Their alternative boils down to a few reforms here and there which they hope will take the sting out of the Natives' rebelliousness, relieve the pressure on the Indians and Coloureds where it hurts them most, and leave them all once more contented with their inferior position.

The same applies to the Labour Party. Only recently there was a split in their ranks when their Leader and Deputy Leader in Parliament voted against the Indians being allowed the vote. One member abstained and the others voted in favour of the Bill, which was in any case a milk-and-water effort that only allowed them representation by Europeans.

What it comes to is this, irrespective of Party, irrespective of class, almost the whole of the White group are united in refusing to allow the non-Whites anything like a position comparable with their own. They may differ here and there amongst themselves as to which particular rung of the ladder each of the other groups should occupy, but one thing they are agreed upon—that they, the Whites, belong near the top of the ladder and the others a long way further down.

They continue to deceive themselves that they can maintain this situation, that for ever and ever 2½ million Europeans can keep the other 9 millions in subjection. There never was a more forlorn and fantastic hope, nor one with graver possibilities of terrible consequences for themselves. Speaking in the South African Parliament three days after the riot. Smuts said: —

  “Something new is coming into the life of this country. We are accustomed to the orderly conduct of our Natives and on the whole our Natives are well behaved, but some change is coming about  

  “Unless this new development is stopped and stopped at once and unless firm measures are taken no one can be sure of the future of South Africa.” (Johannesburg Star, 15/2/50.)

Unfortunately for Smuts, for Malan, for all the vast majority of Europeans in the Union who think like them on the Native question, there is a change taking place in the Natives, not only in South Africa, but throughout the whole of the continent. Smuts has sensed the change and would like to explain it by the recent activity of Malan and the Nationalist Party. What he fails to recognise is that whatever the Nationalists have done to provoke matters, they have only helped to bring more quickly what is bound to have come in any case. What all the Whites of South Africa fail to face up to is that the Natives are on the move, and will not stop until they have gained the same position as the Whites.

On this question we can do no better than quote from our pamphlet. “The Racial Problem.” What it said three years ago is even more relevant now than it was then:—

  “As industry develops, they (the Natives) will learn more, and want more, and then the same position will face the South African White worker as faces the American White worker at the present time. Then will the South African workers, White, Native. Coloured, and Indian, be at their own cross-roads. What their decision will be we do not know nor do we intend to guess. What we say to the South African workers we have already said to the American workers. They must realise that their interests as workers lie together: until they do so they will remain divided and weakened, wide open to the attacks and encroachments of the capitalist class. Much worse may result; the logical end of the road which the South African White worker is treading can only be bloody violence and destruction. No group can permanently hold down another many more times more numerous than itself, and sooner or later the working class, particularly the White section, will have to face up to the situation and make their decision.”

Recent events in South Africa have served only to underline the warning contained in this statement. The White workers in the Union will ignore it at their peril.

Stan Hampson

Breivik’s Philosophy of Hate (2012)

From the June 2012 issue of the Socialist Standard

We look at mass murderer Anders Breivik’s attempt to imitate Mein Kampf.

On 16 April the trial of the Norwegian right-wing terrorist Anders Breivik started and is scheduled to conclude by the end of June. Breivik has confessed to the bombing in Oslo, killing eight, and the shooting of sixty-nine at the Norwegian Labour Party’s youth camp in Utoya.

Like young, white, male right-wing terrorists before him, such as Timothy McVeigh and David Copeland, Anders Breivik (despite his claims to be part of the Knights Templar) seems to have acted alone. Like McVeigh and Copeland, Breivik became disillusioned with co-operating with anyone in larger far-right organisations preferring a kind of messianic narcissistic individualism.

All grew up under the capitalist system, but with varying provision for welfare. McVeigh became transient after the leaving the army, and ended up in a dead-end job with long hours. Copeland struggled through a series of failed jobs before working on the London Underground. Breivik perhaps enjoyed the best welfare provision growing up, McVeigh quite possibly the most meagre. All were alienated from society and all found familiar scapegoats for their degrees of alienation. McVeigh expressed some of this in writing before the bombing and after in a 1,200 word essay. Only well-educated Breivik, however, seemed well-paid and not precariously employed (traditionally the far right exploit unemployment), and took a language other than his first and wrote a 1,518 page manifesto entitled 2083: A European Declaration of Independence by Andrew Berwick. This somewhat troubles those keen to label anything outside the political mainstream as “extremist” and medicalise his condition as insane. He wrote that his main motive for committing the atrocities on 22 July was to market this manifesto.

The far-right scapegoat which finds the most traction post-9/11 happens to be Islam. It used to be Jewish immigration or Afro-Caribbean immigration. While Copeland talked of a Zionist conspiracy, the far-right, after 9/11, switched support from Palestine to Israel. In any case, like European efforts of the English Defence League, Breivik is more pan-nationalist than nationalist. He writes:

  “One of the reasons why hardcore anti-Semites (David Duke would be a case in point) are unreliable allies is that they hate Jews so much that it shuts down the rational parts of their brain and they end up making common cause with Muslims, based on mutual hatred. The same logic applies to hardcore anti-Europeans, of which there are many even at ‘conservative’ websites such as LGF. They have an irrational hatred, a dark cloud in their minds which prevents them from seeing the world clearly. In a way, some LGF-ers thus have more in common with David Duke than they’d like to admit. If mindless anti-Semitism and anti-Americanism should be considered a problem then so should mindless anti-Europeanism.”

What matters chiefly is that the group persecuted by fascists is in a position of weakness. Breivik implicitly acknowledged this “If I was a bearded jihadist there would be no question of insanity”.

Only about half of the manifesto was written by Breivik and the rest is compiled from other sources. “I’ve spent a total of 9 years of my life working on this project. The first five years were spent studying and creating a financial base, and the last three years was spent working full time with research, compilation and writing.”

The introductory chapter of the manifesto defining “Cultural Marxism” is reprinted from Political Correctness: A Short History of an Ideology by the right-wing think tank, Free Congress Foundation. Very early on, the fabrications and leaps of logic jump out. “Political Correctness now looms over Western European society like a colossus.” then “Political Correctness is Marxism, with all that implies: loss of freedom of expression, thought control, inversion of the traditional social order, and, ultimately, a totalitarian state.”

By the end of the introduction, Political Correctness and other restrictions of freedom of speech or language are treated as synonymous with Cultural Marxism. The conclusion then is to get rid of both, which somewhat discredits later claims to defend free speech.

It should come as little surprise then that Breivik’s particular bête noire was “Marxists”. He is reported to have repeatedly shouted during the shooting, “You are going to die today, Marxists!” and the badge on the left arm of his diving suit read “Marxist Hunter”.

A lot of what follows is tortuous, wrongly interpreted, one-sided opinion, or just plain invented. Long-term demographic projections, an old favourite of fascists, make an appearance despite being notoriously dubious.

Book 1, entitled “History and Islam” focuses on largely historical disputes about genocides, falsification and apologism.  Islam and its adherents are selectively demonised while religion generally gets a get-out-of-jail free card.  The manifesto states “Negationism in Europe is practised with the most prowess by historians and writers who are under the spell of Marxism. Lenin had wanted to use the Muslims against the French and British colonialists. Modern Leftists with Marxist sympathies see Islam as an ally against Israel and the US.”

Book 2, entitled “Europe Burning” is dull speculation about a conspiracy theory of “Eurabia”, and some reprinted rambling about Feminism. ‘Cultural Marxism’ is also used interchangeably with multiculturalism and becomes a phrase for any bad thing you can think of.

One chapter is entitled “Why the discipline of Sociology must be completely removed from Academia”. As far as Breivik is concerned, the reason for this is that it is Marxist. He suggests replacing it with ideas from The Bible, Machiavelli, George Orwell, Thomas Hobbes, John Stuart Mill, John Locke, Adam Smith, Edmund Burke, Ayn Rand and William James. The selective philosophising is tedious and tiresome to read. Perhaps because he knows he is on shaky ground with capitalism and democracy, the chapter on “Globalised Capitalism” gets a mere four pages and in any case is traditionally code on the far-right for anti-Semitism.

In the rest of Book 2 he writes chapters entitled “Discrimination and harassment against cultural conservatives” and “ ANTIFA/Labour Jugend – State sponsored Marxist lynch mobs” where he states, “These brave Leftists or ‘anti-Fascists’ do, for some curious reason, seem to behave pretty much like, well, Fascists, a bit like the Brown Shirts in the 1930s, physically assaulting political opponents to silence them.” Some of this unfortunately can be levelled at SOS Rasisme and Blitz in Norway.

The manifesto concludes in Book 3 with a mixture of practicality and pure fantasy. One of the final chapters oddly reproduces a ‘Marxist’ study course.  Breivik also credits Wikipedia. All in all, the manifesto represents years of wasted time, money and effort and, most important, wasted lives.  It reads as a hotchpotch of prejudices, has little nuance and is full of generalisations, principally about wrong assumptions. As if to remind us where these prejudices come from, U.S. conservative commentator Glenn Beck came out with the most offensive stupid response. He compared the victims to the Hitler Youth before being reminded that groups affiliated with the Tea Party movement and the Beck-founded 9-12 Project also sponsor politically oriented camp programs for children.

The trial continues.

DJW

50 Years Ago: Labour’s New Race Law (2018)

The 50 Years Ago column from the April 2018 issue of the Socialist Standard

Attacks on wages and the trade unions, defence of profits and unemployment, bringing back health charges and now, again, a colour bar law. Thus, one by one, Labour abandons its old principles, partly under pressure from capitalism, but partly also from a desire to stay in office. While economics has been responsible for the failure of Labour’s futile attempts to make capitalism work in the interests of all, politics is behind this, their second, capitulation to colour prejudice. For, as they themselves pointed out in 1962, if anything economics demands free immigration: there is a relative labour shortage in Britain which could delay expansion. (….)

On February 22 Home Secretary Callaghan announced Labour’s Bill to stop the Kenya Asians. These unfortunate people were holders of British passports so the Bill had to provide for the extension of the immigration colour bar from Commonwealth to British citizens. (….)

Extending the colour bar to British citizens abroad needed careful drafting to avoid keeping out “white” as well as “coloured” people. In the end Labour found a solution that only those whose father or father’s father were born in Britain would from now on have free entry into Britain. One lawyer, writing in New Society (29 February) commented:

  “Each lawyer will recognise the finger print of the formula that has been evolved: it is designed to draw a racial distinction by finding a dividing line which approximates to the racial division yet is capable of expression in words which make no specific reference to race.”

The Socialist Party, basing its principles on the fact that workers the world over have a common interest, is opposed to all racialism and to all nationalism. We are opposed to all legislation to prevent the free movement of workers, whether in search of jobs or fleeing from oppression. We denounce the Labour Party’s new race law as a shameful sell-out to colour prejudice. Let them never dare speak of the brotherhood of man again!

(Socialist Standard, April 1968)

Happy Birthday? (1998)

Book Reviews from the May 1998 issue of the Socialist Standard

The British General Election of 1997 by David Butler and Dennis Kavanagh (MacMillan, 1997) and Labour’s Landslide edited by Andrew Geddes and Jonathan Tonge (Manchester University Press, 1997).

One year on from 1 May last year, the hullabaloo has subsided and something more like boo-hoo has started. These two books, however, chronicle New Labour’s climax, not the messy post-coital depression we have been living with since. They are useful in that the demonstrate the fickleness of the British working class’s love affair with the Labour Party, and amply demonstrate its underlying worries about Labour’s suitability for the marital home.

Both expand on their findings that the main reason the working class decided to embark on an affair with Labour was the regular beatings it had been taking from its previous paramour. Labour was wanted primarily for what it wasn’t, not what it was. Most significantly, less than 31 percent of the electorate voted Labour into power last May, despite its “landslide” victory, this being largely because of the extremely low turnout. This, historically, is a low winning share of the vote and actually lower than that managed by the Conservatives under John Major in 1992.

Butler and Kavanagh’s study—Butler has been producing such analyses of General Elections for decades—is typically rigorous and thorough, well researched and with few mistakes. Possibly its most interesting chapter is the one on the press and how Labour managed to win over the affections of Wapping and Fleet Street (which helped avoid the press's anti-Labour excesses of the previous election). Another feature highlighted was the lack of success of those candidates who played the race card (such as Nicholas Budgen in Wolverhampton) and the relative lack of hostility to ethnic minority candidates generally.

Fascinatingly, some of the most bizarre constituency results last year were produced in fights between ethnic minority candidates themselves, such as in Bradford West and in Bethnal Green and Bow, the latter being where the local Bengali community put its traditional pro-Labour loyalties behind it to produce a six-percent swing to the Conservative Bengali candidate and against Labour’s Oona King, a “mixed-race” Afro-Caribbean Jew.

Where the white population has previously elevated the importance of “race” beyond considerations of class politics (or anything else), it is now the ethnic minority population that seems to be doing it. Though in some ways understandable, it is still no more justified for that. For if the 1997 election demonstrated anything it was that a confused and ideologically rootless working class is one that is most prone to the slick blandishments of handsome young spin doctors and their pet vultures.

Dave Perrin

Blogger's Note:

See here for an explanation for the above corrected version.