New Communist Party of Britain | Opposing Racism and Fascism

The ruling class is not inherently racist but has always used racism to divide and weaken the working class. When any worker suffers abuse or discrimination because of their race, religion, gender, sexuality or for any other reason, the class as a whole is weakened and it is the responsibility of the whole class to combat racism and all other divisions of the class.

This is why the New Communist Party does not support separate organisation for workers of different colour, religion or gender. The class must stand united on the basis that an injury to one is an injury to all.

Currently the organised working class, the trade unions, are taking a lead in combating racism at work and in the community.

At a national level NCP primarily supports Unite Against Fascism (UAF) while continuing to support all the other anti‑fascists and anti‑racist organisations. Locally comrades support whichever anti‑fascist/anti‑racist body that is working effectively in their locality and encourage unity in action among such groups and have found that the most effective campaigning against neo‑Nazi organisations like the British National Party is done at a local level, door‑to‑door. The BNP, in its election campaigns, tries to exploit issues that concern the local working class and to sow division by falsely claiming that black and immigrant communities receive favourable treatment from the state. Experience has shown that these tactics must be combated by anti‑fascists and anti‑racists taking up these lies and countering them with the truth at a local level.

The NCP has long supported Searchlight, the anti‑fascist magazine, known over the years for its consistent campaigns against neo‑nazis and racists in Britain and abroad. Comrades actively supported Searchlight’s work in exposing the fascists and helped mobilise support for its broad campaigning work as well as the efforts of the Hope Not Hate campaign that Searchlight set up in 2004 to build up the work amongst the labour movement and the wider community.

Personality clashes and arguments over future direction led to a damaging split within Searchlight in late 2011 which left Gerry Gable, one of the original founders, in control of the magazine and its website and Nick Lowles in control of the Hope Not Hate campaign which became a separate organisation.

Though we avoiding taking sides in the blame game that followed comrades active in the anti‑fascist movement continued to co‑operate and give practical support to Searchlight to ensure the survival of the magazine. That has now ended.

Last year Searchlight began publishing a number of one‑sided reports on the Ukrainian crisis that elevated the reactionary Ukrainian politicians and the neo‑Nazi movements behind them who launched coup in February 2014. It now consistently portrays the Putin government as a supporter of far‑right movements in Russia and across the European Union.

Comrades who had previously helped Searchlight clearly could no longer continue to work with Searchlight and the Central Committee agreed that we should amicably severe links with Searchlight.

All the major trade unions have become involved in broad anti‑fascist campaigning and have provided hundreds if not thousands of volunteers to do this door‑to‑door work.

This fills the gap left by the Labour Party, which in many areas has given up door‑to‑door canvassing.

New Communist Party members and cells should become involved in active local anti‑fascist and anti‑racist campaigning wherever they can and should support their trade unions in this.

The BNP in recent years has suffered a complete rout at the polls due to the successes of the campaigning tactics mentioned above. But is has not disappeared. From being effectively bankrupt last year it has recovered solvency through generous donations and through scaling back its activities and expenditure.

We have seen the emergence of the Islamophobic English Defence League that has used the demonisation of Muslims as a thin veneer for general racism. Its active supporters are very loosely organised former football hooligans, squaddies and veteran neo‑Nazis. Their main agenda is to engage in street fighting and they will pick on any likely target. When they fail to find one, they fight each other. This has totally sabotaged efforts by their leaders to claim they are not racist.

They pose no threat to the state but they do terrorise minority communities and give police and local authorities justification for rigid social control measures that affect all political activists.