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	Workers Hammer No. 192	Autumn 2005

US/British troops out of Iraq now!

Down with "war on terror" government repression!

“The rules of the game are changing”, intoned Tony Blair on 5 August, as he seized on the criminal London terror bombings to justify strengthening the state’s machinery of violence and repression. The July London bombings were horrific indiscriminate attacks on civilians. Whoever was responsible for them, and for other similar atrocities such as the 23 July bombing in the Egyptian resort of Sharm el-Sheikh, shares the same mindset as the imperialist rulers, identifying the working class and the population as a whole with the policies of the capitalist rulers. The Blair government is shamelessly whipping up a climate of fear and hoping to meet with little opposition to repressive measures that in the past have been highly controversial.

The government and the police want the public in Britain to accept “shoot-to-kill”, which has long been the form of British imperialist “justice” meted out to “IRA suspects” in Northern Ireland. The morning after the 21 July bombing scare, with public fear at its height, the Metropolitan Police brutally killed Brazilian immigrant Jean Charles de Menezes in cold blood. The Metropolitan Police’s policy of “shoot-to-kill” has been endorsed by London mayor Ken Livingstone, in the face of growing public outrage at the police lies which are rapidly being exposed. The state’s attempt to frame up the victim as a “terrorist suspect” floundered; however, in today’s climate of Islamophobia, one can only imagine the vilification that would have taken place had the dead man been a Muslim. Gruesomely justifying why cops pumped several bullets into the victim’s head, former London police chief Lord Stevens, who sent police teams to Israel and other countries for training, explained that the only way to stop a “suicide bomber” is to “destroy his brain, instantly, utterly” (Guardian, 25 July).

Announcing the fourth “anti-terrorism” law in five years, Blair complained in his 5 August speech that in the past “each tightening of the law has met fierce opposition” and that “regularly we have had defeat in parliament or the courts”. The 2001 Anti-Terrorism Crime and Security Act allowed for foreign nationals to be detained indefinitely without trial but this was subsequently ruled to be contrary to the Human Rights Act. The Prevention of Terrorism Act 2005 was rushed through in March, amid huge controversy, replacing indefinite detention with “control orders” — ie house arrest — for both foreign and British nationals. But this expires in March 2006; the government’s majority is much reduced since the May election, and Blair wants to take advantage of public hysteria to make these measures permanent. As he said, “the mood now is different” (Statewatch News Online, 18 August).

The government is intent on deporting “terrorist suspects” to countries where they will be tortured, dismissing objections by Amnesty International, civil liberties organisations and the UN that this contravenes the European Convention on Human Rights. Blair plans to challenge the Convention and to amend the Human Rights Act that incorporates it into British law. Meanwhile, government ministers are seeking assurances from Algeria, Jordan and other countries that returned prisoners will not be tortured. Such “assurances” are widely condemned as worthless, but that’s good enough for the British imperialists who are infamous for their sadistic torture of prisoners, not only in Iraq but also at home in prisons like Belmarsh.

Among ten foreign nationals previously serving control orders who have now been rounded up for expulsion are a group of Algerians who have been hounded and incarcerated as “terror suspects”, despite the fact the state has failed to find a scrap of evidence against them. Ann Alexander, a friend of some of the men, wrote to the Glasgow Herald describing the cruelty and barbarism of their treatment:

“They have been the most monitored people in the country for four years and if they had been suspected of doing anything, least of all breaching their control orders, they would have been arrested and charged. Something that never happened, and they have never been charged with any terrorist offences.

“These are vulnerable people, asylum-seekers and refugees with wives and children who were born in this country. They are being sacrificed to show us how ‘tough’ the government is being. This action is being taken against the weakest and most damaged people. One man suffers from the effects of polio and walked into Belmarsh but left in a wheelchair due to his immobility while detained. Another has no arms. Most have been victims of torture and their fathers before them in Algerian desert prison camps. They have never been alleged to have any connection to any acts of ‘terrorism’ against Britain let alone the London bombings last month in which all the suspects appear to be British. They are political prisoners.”

— Herald, 15 August

Frustrated by judges who refuse to authorise deportations, the government now proposes to set up secret “anti-terror” courts, with special “security-cleared” judges who would conduct pre-trial hearings in secret, in which the accused would have no idea what the charges against them were. The new legislation would extend the maximum period of detention without charge from two weeks to three months or more. This attempt to enshrine in law the right to detain foreign nationals indefinitely without trial — amounting to Northern Ireland-style internment and no-jury Diplock courts — is an attempt to “disappear” people, the essence of a police state, which this government aspires to. “What we are seeing in Britain is the rise of the democratic police state”, writes liberal journalist John Pilger, adding that: “Blair is silent on western state terrorism in the Middle East and elsewhere; and for him to moralise about ‘our values’ insults the fact of his blood-crime in Iraq. His budding police state will, he hopes, have the totalitarian powers he has longed for since 2001 when he suspended habeas corpus and introduced unlimited house arrest without trial” (19 August, www.ukwatch.net).

Other police-state measures that are planned include drawing up a list of “extremist” centres, networks, websites and bookshops. A taste of things to come was seen on 15 July, when police smashed down the door of an Islamic book centre near Leeds and confiscated anti-war material. This included a DVD of Respect MP George Galloway addressing the US Senate and a New Statesman article by John Pilger, because it was illustrated by a famous photograph of a Palestinian man in Gaza trying to shield his son from the Israeli army, who then killed the boy. The Respect coalition — an alliance between the Socialist Workers Party and Islamic forces, led by maverick MP George Galloway — is a particular target for Islamophobic campaigns. We defend Respect and Galloway against any attempts at witch hunting and state repression.

Unions must oppose the “war on terror”

The Labour government’s “terrorism” bogeyman, stigmatising Muslims as the “enemy within”, fuels racism which only serves to further divide and weaken the working class. The largest groups of Muslims in Britain are of Pakistani and Bangladeshi descent, of whom some 69 per cent live in poverty according to a recent TUC study. But Muslims are not just victims; they are an integral component of the workforce. Only the multiethnic working class has the social power to defend minorities and immigrants against attacks, and to combat racist divisions. That social power was brought to bear with tremendous impact in the August strike that paralysed Heathrow Airport, when British Airways ground crews struck in protest against the sacking of Asian catering workers, mainly Sikh women. The racially-integrated workforce at British Airways recognised that their own interests and those of the Asian catering workers were the same, which demonstrates the power of class solidarity to transcend ethnic divisions. Moreover, the strike contradicts the prevalent lie that workers and minorities are powerless in the face of government attacks.

For too long, the government has felt emboldened by the fact that the union misleaders will not lift a finger to mobilise their multiethnic membership in defence of Muslims against the “war on terror”. Indeed some of the union tops have signed up in support of it, albeit with criticisms. A letter opposing Blair’s latest proposals, published in the Guardian (26 August), argues that they will alienate people — meaning Muslim leaders — who ought to be co-opted to work with the police. Co-signed by union general secretaries David Prentis of Unison, Billy Hayes of the CWU, Paul Kenny of the GMB and Keith Norman of Aslef, as well as by Ken Livingstone and a selection of Muslim leaders and civil libertarians, the letter is a blatant call for co-operation with the police in the “war on terror”, saying:

“We support the police and measures against those who plan, support or carry out such terrorist attacks. However a number of the security measures which the government has said it is considering risk criminalising or excluding people who condemn terrorist attacks and whose co-operation is indispensable to the work of the police in fighting terrorism.”

It is downright treachery for the so-called leadership of the unions to support increased powers for the police and the state, the very same “special bodies of armed men” that will be used against the unions in class struggle. Contrary to the myth that the state is simply responding to exceptional circumstances presented by the threat of “suicide bombers”, the British capitalist rulers have never hesitated to deploy the full force of the state — the police, army, courts and prisons — to crush dissent as well as class struggle. Innocent Irish people such as the Guildford Four and Birmingham Six were framed up and incarcerated for decades as part of the 1970s witch hunt against “IRA terrorism”, while an army of cops was sent to the coalfields to smash the 1984-85 miners strike.

Many of the union bureaucrats back the “war on terror”, but simultaneously like to brandish “anti-war” credentials and in the past have been welcomed on “Stop the War Coalition” platforms. But their supposed opposition to the Iraq war stemmed from social-patriotic motives — believing that following George Bush’s foreign policy is not in the best interests of feeble British imperialism. Manifestly these bureaucrats did not mobilise the ranks of the unions in struggle against the war. Rather the firefighters strike was throttled by the FBU leadership who feared being branded as “unpatriotic” on the eve of the invasion of Iraq. At last year’s Labour Party conference, Prentis and TUC bureaucrats, with the aid of pro-occupation Iraqi trade unionists, saved Blair’s bacon by ensuring the defeat of a motion calling for early withdrawal of British troops from Iraq.

The purpose of the “war on terror” is to stifle class struggle and to regiment the working masses through domestic repression, the better to free the hands of British imperialism for its bloody depredations abroad. We seek to link opposition to the bloody imperialist occupation of Iraq with a perspective of mobilising the working class for revolutionary struggle against the capitalist rulers at home and abroad.

Government foments racist terror

It is in the direct interest of the working class to mobilise against the racist violence against all minorities that has increased dramatically as a result of the state’s vendetta against Muslims. On 29 July, a gang of race-terrorists carried out the heinous murder of black Liverpool teenager Anthony Walker, embedding an axe in his skull as he waited at a bus stop with his white girlfriend. This grisly murder has caused outrage in the city of Liverpool and beyond, echoing the murder of black teenager Stephen Lawrence in 1993. On 6 August Paul Coker, a 32-year-old black man, became the latest in a long list of black men to die in police custody. This government’s policies have led to a rise of over 500 per cent in the level of racist abuse hurled at Muslims and Asians generally since the 7 July bombings. A mosque has been firebombed; a 12-year-old Muslim child in London had a gun pointed at his head by police; countless numbers of Asians have been detained for “stop and search” at airports, train stations, while driving or walking in the street.

In an attempt to gag its opponents, the government proposes to create new offences of “acts preparatory to terrorism” and “indirect incitement to terrorism”, which aims to criminalise speech and political views. Home secretary Charles Clarke published a “List of Unacceptable Behaviours” that applies to non-citizens both in the UK and abroad (!). It includes: “writing, producing, publishing or distributing material; public speaking including preaching; running a website” to express views which the government considers will “foment terrorism”, “justify or glorify terrorism” or “foster hatred which may lead to intra community violence in the UK”. This is rich, coming from the British imperialists who are daily fostering “intra-communal violence” in Iraq and who wrote the book on racist divide and rule from the Indian subcontinent to the Near East. This draconian measure could be used against any organisation on the left, or anyone who opposes the blood-soaked government’s role in Iraq, or Israel’s subjugation of the Palestinians.

The government proposes to award itself the power to close down places of worship, ie mosques; to deport and exclude foreign-born imams whose presence in Britain the Home Office decides is “not conducive to the public good”, and to slap “control orders” on British imams if they don’t toe the government’s line. Muslim cleric Omar Bakri Mohammed, who is currently in Lebanon but has been legally resident in Britain for years and whose family lives here, has been banned from returning to the country. This is an outrageous attack on the democratic rights of a British resident, which we oppose. Likewise we vehemently oppose Blair’s proscription of the Islamic organisations Hizb ut-Tahrir and al-Muhajiroun, just as we condemn the attacks on Muslim clerics and mosques. These are part of a blatantly racist vendetta against all Muslims and a cover for a major assault on the democratic rights of the whole population.

We Marxists are irreconcilably opposed to the ideology and social programme not only of Islam but of all organised religions, which are steeped in reactionary, anti-woman and anti-gay bigotry. Contrary to the rantings of the Islamophobic press, such prejudices are hardly unique to Islam, but are intrinsic to every organised religion, not least the Christian churches. It is difficult to imagine the Daily Mail howling with such vehemence against “preachers of hate” such as Pat Robertson, the American Protestant fundamentalist who recently called for the assassination of Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez. The British establishment and state is based on Christian (Protestant) bigotry. Rest assured, one preacher of hate who will not be facing either deportation or house arrest is the Reverend Ian Paisley, who has made a political career out of fomenting hatred against the oppressed Catholic minority in Northern Ireland and backing murderous Loyalist terror gangs who work under the protection of the British imperialists.

The fight against racism and chauvinism is vital to the unity, integrity and fighting capacity of the working class as a whole. More than a century ago, Karl Marx noted that the colonial enslavement of Ireland by Britain and the chauvinism inculcated by the British rulers was “the secret of the impotence of the English working class, despite its organisation”. Today the oppression that was first visited on the Irish — “shoot-to-kill”, internment without trial, no-jury courts — is being brought home to Britain with a vengeance, not only against minorities and immigrants but against everyone the government sees as an opponent. The key task is to forge a multiethnic revolutionary workers party that will be steeled in the struggle against racism, chauvinism and every manifestation of oppression, in the fight to overthrow capitalist rule.

We reprint below our 21 July statement, issued following the London attacks.

* * *

Following criminal London terror bombings:

Down with US/British imperialist occupation of Iraq!

Defend Muslims against Labour's racist witch hunt!

Within hours of the horrific London bombings that killed over 50 people and injured hundreds, Tony Blair seized on this atrocity as a pretext to escalate the "war on terror". Let's be clear: these bombings were a criminal act of indefensible terror. Like the attack on the World Trade Center and the bombing of commuter trains in Madrid last year, the perpetrators share the same mindset as the imperialist rulers, identifying the working class and the whole population with the policies of the capitalist exploiters and oppressors. The bombs were aimed not at Bush or Blair, who were in Scotland for the G8 summit, but at the multiethnic working people of London: areas such as Edgware Road, which is overwhelmingly Arab; Aldgate, the heart of the Bangladeshi community; Kings Cross and Russell Square, through which hundreds of thousands of ordinary people of every race and ethnicity travel everyday.

Bush and Blair, whose savage occupation of Iraq has cost the lives of an estimated 100,000 people, self-righteously condemned the terrorists for taking innocent lives. Behind their crocodile tears for those killed and wounded in the London bombings they seek to deflect the justified outrage and sympathy of the population for the victims and their families in order to reinforce their rule at home and abroad. As Guardian journalist Seumas Milne noted, even to link the bombings to Britain's role in Iraq or Afghanistan, which is obvious to millions, can get you denounced as a "traitor"; to question Blair's assertion that the bombings were an attack "on our way of life" is to be branded "an apologist for terror".

For millions around the globe, British imperialism's "way of life" has meant untold terror. Kurds in what is now Iraq, a country manufactured by British imperialism, were bombed from the air while Arabs were shelled by the British colonial overlords in 1919-20. The 1917 Balfour Declaration set the scene for carving the state of Israel out of the homeland of the Palestinians. The bloody partition of India under the Labour government of Clement Attlee ushered in communalist slaughter on an unprecedented scale. This laid the basis for murderous religious and ethnic conflicts that persist to this day, as well as the poverty, destitution and desperation of countless people from the Indian subcontinent to the Near East to Africa.

Millions in this country took to the streets in protest against the impending imperialist slaughter of Iraq in 2003 and Britain's role in the brutal occupation of Iraq cost Blair in the last elections. In that context, London Mayor Ken Livingstone's prominence in the demonstrations protesting the war on Iraq made him an ideal candidate to lead a patriotic "unity" crusade against "terrorism". Addressing the crowd at a 14 July vigil for the victims, flanked by leaders of all the main religions, Livingstone intoned "you see the world gathered in one city, living in harmony, as an example to all". Livingstone's speech could have been written by the Socialist Workers Party (SWP), who was in the vanguard of this "unity" chorus. Their 7 July statement on the bombings proclaimed: "London is a centre of peace, the most multiracial city in Europe and a global centre of opposition to the war and occupation of Iraq and Afghanistan".

This is a shameless and grotesque denial of the reality of life for London's working class and poor, especially immigrants and minorities whose daily grind means long hours and pitiful pay while being routinely vilified by the racist press, the government and police. Since September 11, police dragnets have rounded up more than 600 foreign nationals under "anti- terrorism" legislation, the overwhelming majority of whom were later released. The handful detained, on no charges other than being "terrorist suspects", are confined in Britain's own Guantánamo — Belmarsh prison — or else electronically monitored under "house arrest".

To be Muslim is to be suspect. No sooner had bombs ripped through the Underground than a further wave of racist attacks was unleashed. Muslim organisations received 30,000 hate-filled e-mails; mosques had windows smashed and one was firebombed. In Nottingham a Muslim man, Kamal Raza Butt, was murdered by a gang who shouted "Taliban" before beating him to death. In London, the putative "city of peace", the fascist BNP put out a leaflet with a picture of the bombed bus, declaring that people should now "start listening to the BNP". Muslims fear an even more severe racist backlash now that the police say the bombings were supposedly carried out by British Muslims.

The government is planning more round-ups, more deportations and more sweeping police-state measures. A range of new offences will be created for what are essentially "thought crimes", such as "acts preparatory to terrorism", which might mean visiting "terrorist" websites; "indirect incitement", which includes "glorifying the acts of suicide bombers" as well as "attacking the values of the West"! While aimed most immediately at Muslims, the "war on terror" is designed to strengthen the capitalist state's machinery of repression, to be imposed with a vengeance against anyone the government perceives as an opponent as most recently demonstrated by the mass arrests outside the G8 summit. But the ultimate target is the multiethnic working class.

Today, Blair and Livingstone have the audacity to salute the heroism of the Tube workers, firefighters, ambulance drivers and others who put their bodies on the line to help the victims of the bombings. But, for years the government has savaged the living, working and safety conditions for these and other workers. And when the unions have fought back, like the firefighters did on the eve of the Iraq war, they were branded the "enemy within" and threatened with the full force of capitalist state repression. Last summer, Livingstone — the boss of transport workers in the capital — called on London Underground workers to scab on their own strike. And greed for profit and the policies of the government pose the biggest threat to the lives of passengers. The 1987 Kings Cross fire, the 1999 Paddington rail crash and other rail disasters have claimed far more lives than any terrorists. Now, the government is trying to scrap the legislation — introduced after the inferno in Kings Cross took 31 lives — which mandated stricter fire regulations!

For class unity of the multiethnic working class!

It is a sign of the times that we have to point out today that London is a class- divided city, not to mention the seat of power of the blood-soaked British ruling class. Despite Britain's industrial decline, the City is still a hub for international capital. Share prices tumbled the day of the bombs, which in its own way shows that the workforce in the Underground and buses has tremendous social power — the City banks and stock exchange are dependent on the transport system. It is this social power that must be brought to bear in a class-struggle fight in defence of immigrants, minorities and the unions themselves against the racist "war on terror". As revolutionary internationalists we took a side in the war, calling for defence of Iraq, without giving any political support to the Saddam Hussein regime. So too must the proletariat be mobilised in defence of the Iraqi peoples against the savage British and US occupation forces through class struggle against the British imperialist rulers at home! All US/British troops out of Iraq now! Down with the racist "war on terror"! Full citizenship rights for all immigrants! No deportations! For trade union/minority mobilisations against fascist terror!

We vehemently oppose the appeals for the "unity" of all classes, which only serves to strengthen the hand of the imperialist rulers by binding the working class and oppressed to their very exploiters and oppressors. Not so the Socialist Party which blatantly appeals to mobilise the proletariat behind the so-called "war on terror", calling on the unions and the Stop the War Coalition to organise a mass protest on the slogan "no to terrorism, no to war". This dovetails with the politics of "anti-war" Labour MPs like Alice Mahon who opposes Blair's invasion of Iraq, from the standpoint that it is not in the best interests of British imperialism at present, while arguing that it's a diversion from the "war on terror" at home.

As Marxists we oppose terrorism as a strategy, even when it derives from real, if misguided, anti-imperialist impulses and targets genuine institutions of state repression — which the London bombing clearly did not. Substituting individual acts against the symbols of imperialist exploitation and oppression is directly counterposed to the task of mobilising the working class for the revolutionary overthrow of the capitalist system. But the Socialist Party's declared opposition to "terrorism" is nothing more than an appeal to mobilise the proletariat behind the government's "war on terror". Placing an equals sign between the imperialist powers and the Islamic terrorists, the Socialist Party is in fact capitulating to British and US imperialism, who constitute the mightiest and most dangerous terrorist forces on this planet. This is not particularly surprising coming from an organisation which prides itself on not calling for British troops out of Northern Ireland now — a call which is the most elementary act of opposition to British imperialism.

Class independence of the working class is the precondition for any genuine socialist opposition to imperialism — both against imperialist war and attacks on the working class and minorities at home. But the whole premise of the SWP-built anti-war protests is based on peddling another version of "national unity" — between the working class and oppressed who oppose the occupation of Iraq, and a more "rational" wing of the ruling class that believes British imperialism's interests are being damaged by acting simply as a "pillion passenger" behind the Bush White House. For the reformist SWP, the solution lies not in the overthrow of capitalism but in persuading the British government to break with Bush. An SWP statement (13 July) argues: "There has to be a dramatic reverse in policy, at home and abroad. Pulling the troops out of Iraq will begin to drain the swamp of bitterness that nurtures terrorism", adding that "the majority of people in the US have turned against Bush's war — we must intensify the pressure on the British government to break from him as well."

It is ludicrous to suggest that Britain can somehow "opt out" of the world system of imperialism, short of workers revolution and the establishment of a workers state that expropriates the capitalist class. It is downright grotesque to blame the alliance with the US for British imperialism's brutality. Although today reduced to a decrepit junior partner of the US, when they did have the economic and military clout the British imperialists wrote the book on racist divide- and-rule and ruthless exploitation of their colonial "subjects". The "spirit of the Blitz" in World War II that has been invoked almost daily since the terrorist bombings in London is a persistent Labourite myth that all classes were united behind King and country in a common defence of British "democracy". Far from a war for "democracy", for the British imperialists this was a scramble to protect their imperialist "interests" — among which India was a prized possession. Thus they denied India its right to independence and even caused a famine in Bengal, while the Labour Party played a vital role in whipping up patriotic "unity" at home. And contrary to the main myth propagated about the "democratic" allies, it was the Soviet Red Army that smashed Hitler's fascism, at a cost of well over 20 million Soviet citizens' lives.

Moreover, the British imperialists hardly need any lessons from the Americans on police-state repression, having inflicted it for many years on the oppressed Catholics in Northern Ireland. Similar to today's anti-Muslim hysteria, "anti-terrorism" campaigns of the 1970s led to outrageous frame-ups of innocent people such as the Birmingham Six, the Maguire Seven and the Guildford Four, who were wrongly convicted in a wave of anti-Irish hysteria following civilian bombing atrocities in British city centres.

Imperialist hypocrisy and Islamic fundamentalism

The British press is in a lather about the fact that this "democratic" country could produce "home grown" Islamic terrorists. Ken Livingstone stated the obvious when he said: "I suspect the real problem was that we funded these people as long as they were killing Russians. We gave no thought to the fact that when they stopped killing Russians they might start killing us" (Daily Telegraph, 20 July). For "we", read the British imperialists who, together with the US and the Pakistan authorities, pulled off the largest covert operation in the CIA's history throughout the 1980s to boost the most extreme Islamic reactionaries, including Bin Laden, for a jihad in Afghanistan against the Soviet Union. The SWP, the Socialist Party and most of the so-called socialist left were in the camp of the imperialists against the USSR. We hailed the Soviet intervention in Afghanistan, noting that this was a progressive act by the Stalinist bureaucracy that offered the possibility of extending the gains of the 1917 Russian Revolution to the Afghan peoples, particularly to the hideously oppressed women. Following counterrevolution in the Soviet Union, when imperialist funding to the Islamists dried up, the latter turned on their erstwhile backers, most dramatically in the criminal attack on the World Trade Center. Counterrevolution in the former Soviet Union gave an enormous boost to the forces of religious reaction around the globe, while also leading to a "one superpower world" in which US imperialism and its allies feel they have free rein to ravage the semi-colonial world.

The perpetrators of acts such as the London bombing, whoever they may be, demonstrate the mindset typical of religious zealots who believe they have a God-given right to exterminate all non-believers. Islam has no monopoly on this outlook: it parallels that of Christian fundamentalists who bomb abortion clinics in the US; the Protestant bigots who justify "ethnic cleansing" against Catholics in Northern Ireland; and the Zionists who seek to "cleanse" the Palestinians from what they deem to be the Jewish "holy land". Terrorist attacks in the name of nationalist or religious forces tend to be aimed at the indiscriminate slaughter of as many of the ordinary, multiethnic working-class people as possible. It is unlikely you would find the remotest representative of the upper classes of this country on the London Underground or buses. Moreover, two of the bombings were in heavily Muslim areas. So whoever perpetrated these attacks, the message can only be that Muslims should go back to their "own" countries.

In Britain Islamic fundamentalism has grown, nurtured by international factors as well as the prevalence of Islamophobia and economic decline. In 2001, Asian youth in Oldham, Bradford and Leeds had to fight pitched battles to defend their homes from fascists who, backed by the police, laid siege to neighbourhoods. In these former textile towns, the factories once provided a degree of racial integration, but economic decline and factory closures has increased the polarisation between rich and poor and led to a level of racial segregation which has been compared to the American South before the civil rights movement.

For the imperialist rulers "Islamic terrorism" has become the surrogate for the war against "Godless communism", the new enemy against which they seek to rally the population in support of imperialist terror abroad and increased state repression at home. Our purpose is to fight to infuse the working class with the consciousness that it has the class interests and the social power to eradicate the system of capitalist imperialism. The 1984-85 British miners strike, among whose most stalwart supporters were blacks and Asians, gave a palpable sense of how class struggle can unite all of the oppressed behind the power of the proletariat. We seek to forge a multiethnic revolutionary workers party which can take this power forward to victory through proletarian socialist revolution which alone can lay the material basis for ending racism, oppression, exploitation and war.