West Indian workers hold conference on racialism

The Newsletter, vol. 9 no. 407, 21 August 1965 · scan page 5

Title, extent and credit checked against the scan (17 October 2026, from the scan: page 5 (printed page four), headline across columns 1-2, 'By Sylvia Pick'; the headline was lost in the split; the Leicester tenants box and the Tenants feature welded after it are cut off). The text is machine-read and not corrected: for anything you quote, read the scan.

must help ourselves, delegates trom West Indiar immigrant organisations in London and the Midlands were told at a meeting last week-end in Birmingham.

Delegates decided to form a national organisation to protect themselves from racial discrimination and from violence of a Ku Klux Klan type.

'A retrograde step which reeks of South Africa, and is the first step towards a Fascist police state', was their opinion of a clause in the Labour Government's recent White Paper n Commonwealth Immigratior hich proposes to make coloure people register with the police.

Speakers referred to the complete breakdown of confidence among immigrants in the ability of the police to protect them against racialist attacks.

Threats

This meeting took place against a background not only of racialist violence in America, but a campaign of threats in London against immigrants, including one threat to burn alive a university research assistant if he did not leave the country by the end of this month.

Racialist violence in the Midlands during the past week included a fiery cross incident at Leicester and race riots in Wolverhampton last Saturday, when a crowd of white people, nearly 150 strong, armed with sticks and bottles, collected round the home of an immigrant family, shouting 'we want to get at the black bastards'.

The sharp stepping-up of racialist agitation and violence in this country during recent months is no accident. The 'Newsletter' has repeatedly pointed out that the shameful appeasement of racial prejudice by the Labour Government was an encouragement to every fascist and racialist in the country.

Retreat

As the Labour leadership has gone through the rapid stages of its headlong retreat from all-out opposition to racialism, so the demands of the racialists have grown, insisting on still harsher controis, and the violent fascist-type elements have become more open and arrogant in their attacks.

The new -moves of the West Indian immigrant organisation, however, will do nothing to solve their problems. Forming allimmigrant organisations cannot become a substitute for unity of all workers around demands which are now put forward increasingly by the rank and file of the Labour movement: end to the wage freeze, nationalisation of building industry, make the monopolists pay.

Unemployment

This coming winter the deflationary policies of the Government will inevitably produce unemployment and a yet more acute shortage of housing. To create a situation in which immigrants, instead of the insoluble crisis of the capitalist system, are blamed, must clearly be the object of all reactionaty political elements.

To distract the attention of all workers from the responsibility of capitalism for the economic crisis, and to split coloured from white workers in order to weaken the ability of the class to fight back in its own interests — these are the prime objects behind all racialist agitation.

It can only be successfully countered if workers stand resolutely together and fight against their real enemies, the system of monopoly capitalism and the ruling class which operates it.