Fight Fascism with Ideas

Today we remember Kevin Gately, killed by police during an anti-National Front protest in Red Lion Square on June 15 1974. Kevin, a Warwick University student, was not a member of a political group and had never been on a demonstration before.

The Socialist Party position in regards to opposing the right-wing and racist political groups has led to it being criticised and its meetings also subject to protest. Many are alarmed at the growth of racist and fascist organisations and talk of fighting or crushing the movement, and even appeal to the government to ban them. The only answer to the BNP and the EDL is knowledge and understanding. Has the fist and the boot led to a decrease in  racist sentiments and ideas? The most seductive claim of the neo-fascist right is that they are the (white) working class. It is fairly clear why certain workers are prejudiced. Suffering from bad housing, poor hospital services, poor schools, etc., and having seen an immigration of black and brown people into their areas they mistakenly link the two together to conclude that it is immigrants that is the cause of their problems. The various anti-immigration policies of both Tory and Labour and their slanted anti-terrorist legislation legitimises and reinforces such discrimination and gives anti-black, anti-asian and anti-muslim views a respectability.

People who deny the validity of using persuasion and reasoned argument in combating racialism  in effect deny that workers are capable of being convinced rationally of anything. The ultimate basis of censorship (and preventing  the EDL or BNP  from expressing its views is censorship) is the 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.

Rather than street- fights the socialist movement must be uncompromising and stand firmly by democracy.