The
MailOnline, 16 April, reported that a National Conservatism meeting
in Belgium featuring Nigel Farage, former leader of UKIP and the
Brexit Party (Reform UK) and a former Tory Home Secretary, Suella
Braverman, was ‘thrown
into jeopardy following an order issued by Emir Kir, the mayor of
Brussels district Saint-Josse-ten-Noode. He said he was banning the
event from taking place in the Belgian capital 'to guarantee public
safety'.’
An
article commentator makes the interesting point that the obscure
conference is now on main stream and social media everywhere.
It
also gave Nigel Farage the opportunity to rage that, 'We
are up against a new form of communism.' Read
this Blog post Nigel and see that we disagree strongly with any
attempts to prevent you putting across your pro-capitalism
perspective but please don’t make such idiotic statements like that
one.
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-13314255/Gathering-right-wing-politicians-Brussels-descends-chaos-police-local-mayor-attempt-shut-conference-Nigel-Farage-lashing-monstrous-efforts-silence-speakers-warns-against-new-form-communism.html
In
November 1977 the Socialist Standard laid out the consequences
of banning individuals and organisations with whom the ‘authorities’
disagreed.
‘A
ban on all public meetings and processions was imposed by the Greater
Manchester Council in August. Other local authorities have considered
such a measure and announced that their halls shall not be let to the
National Front and “extreme left-wing” organizations. This
reaction to the violent disturbances at Lewisham and Birmingham in
August was not unexpected. The councils say they have a
responsibility for public order and the protection of property, which
take precedence over legal rights of speech and assembly. The
ordinary apolitical citizen agrees, on the reasonable grounds that he
doesn’t want to have his windows broken or be exposed to danger
through rioting.
All
right: grant the validity of that. What about “free speech”? The
Manchester ban is on everyone, and the Salvation Army and the Scouts
have complained that it is unfair to them. (Should the ban last
several months, it will be interesting to see if it is applied to the
annual Catholic procession in Manchester.) In London, local
restrictions and authorities’ reactions have already obstructed the
holding of socialist meetings. The position now is that the
elbow-room to argue a case in public has seriously diminished.
This
is precisely what socialists forecast as an outcome of efforts at
“confrontation” by the Socialist Workers’ Party and other
groups. In pursuing a policy of violent attack on the National Front
meetings and demonstrations, and thereby opposing the law, they put
existing facilities at risk. It is a lesson which advocates of
violence for political purposes refuse to learn. Eugene Debs was once
quoted as saying that when a policeman’s club struck a
demonstrating worker’s head, if the worker listened carefully he
would hear the echo of the vote he cast at the last election. More
correctly stated, what should be heard is that the state has superior
force to support legislation: confrontation cannot win.’
https://socialiststandardmyspace.blogspot.com/2016/05/free-speech-official-cuts-1977.htm
The
view taken by The Socialist Party, and to which it still adheres
today, a view that free speech for all is the only one which is
acceptable is still a contentious one forty five years after the
following appeared.
From
an Editorial in the Socialist Standard of January 1979
‘The
Socialist Party of Great Britain is wholeheartedly in favour of the
fullest freedom of speech. This is because we hold that out of full
and free discussion of today’s social problems only one valid
conclusion can emerge: that Socialism alone will provide the
framework within which they can be solved.
Full
free speech means exactly what it says: any and every view should be
allowed expression so that it can be examined and shown to be wrong.
One of the more obnoxious views current these days is racialism, the
idea that some human beings are inferior to others and ought to be
treated as such.
Many
well-meaning people, appalled at the growing support for the National
Front and determined that a racialist party should never again be
permitted to gain political power anywhere, have been prepared to
listen sympathetically to those who call for the NF and its views to
be banned. This is an understandable gut reaction but a little
dispassionate reflection will show it to be wrong.
Would
banning the NF lead to a diminution in racialist sentiments and
ideas? Indeed, have the various Race Relations Acts banning the
expression of racialist ideas in their cruder forms led to this? The
anti-racialist legislation on the statute book has only led to
racialists being more careful about the words they use. Ideas cannot
be suppressed by legislation.
The
real problem is why do certain sections of the working class hold
racialist views and how can they be got to abandon them. It is fairly
clear why certain workers entertain anti-black prejudices. Suffering
from bad housing, poor hospital services, poor schools, etc., and
having seen an immigration of black people into their areas they
mistakenly link the two together to conclude that it is the coming of
black immigrants that is the cause of their problems.
The
various racialist Immigration Acts which have been passed by both
Conservative and Labour governments to keep black people out have
done much to give respectability to the view that immigration rather
than capitalism is the cause of today’s social problems.
So
workers with racialist ideas are workers who, in their search for an
explanation of and solution to their problems, have reached a
mistaken conclusion. How can they be convinced that they are wrong?
If they can’t be convinced by legislation they can be convinced
even less by the tactic of the Socialist Workers Party and others of
insulting and even physically assaulting them. The only way is to try
to demonstrate to them that their conclusions are wrong.
This
is the approach the Socialist Party has always adopted and why,
rather than physically fighting with the British Union of Fascists,
the Union Movement or the NF, we have exposed their dangerous
racialist nonsense before an audience of interested workers.
People
who deny the validity of our tactic of combating racialism in calm,
open argument are in effect denying that workers are capable of being
convinced rationally of the error of racialism. Many of these people
have been influenced by Lenin and his contemptuous claim that left to
themselves the working class is capable of evolving only a trade
union consciousness. They believe that the working class is only fit
to be led, in one direction or another, by some minority or other,
and so need protection from those who like the NF seek to “mislead”
them.
The
ultimate basis of all arguments for censorship (and the call for the
NF to be prevented from expressing its views is a call for
censorship) is such an assumption that people are too stupid or
irresponsible or immature to make up their own minds and that some
superior body must therefore decide for them. For the SWP and others
this superior body is themselves—the self-appointed vanguard of the
working class. If they ever came to power the application of this
claim to decide what the working class shall and shall not hear would
mean the end of free speech for workers just as it did in Lenin and
Trotsky’s Russia.’
Mere
anti-racialist propaganda on its own, unlinked to propaganda for
socialism, can’t be effective. It offers no solution to the
problems and frustrations which drive some workers to embrace
racialism. It leaves unchallenged the cause (capitalism) while trying
to deal with the effect (racialism).
The
only effective way to combat racialism, then, is to propagate
socialism.’
https://socialiststandardmyspace.blogspot.com/2019/02/on-banning-national-front-1979.html