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We should all ‘stand up to racism’ now the Tories are on the offensive

Organising a conference against racism is crucial with an increasingly reactionary government introducing vicious legislation against refugees and migrants and ignoring the unequal impact of Covid, writes DIANE ABBOTT MP

THIS government is pursuing a broad-based racist offensive that is almost dizzying in its scope and pace.

While Enoch Powell and his followers only talked about “sending them back,” this is government is doing just that, including deportation flights carrying those who were born here and others who are the victims of modern slavery and people-trafficking.

This country helped to draft the international laws regulating conduct at sea, yet this government is now pursuing an illegal policy of pushing back desperate asylum-seekers in the Channel.

Scandalously, the Home Secretary now wants immunity for the Border Force if it kills or injure anyone on a Channel crossing.

Black and Asian communities have suffered hugely disproportionately in the pandemic, with a death toll up to four times their peers.

But, just as the government refuses to apologise for its overall catastrophic response to the Covid-19 crisis, it has never even mentioned this impact on ethnic minority communities.

It is also clear that it has never once considered any policies that might mitigate the situation.

As well all the long-standing issues of discrimination and racism in every area of life from cradle to grave — from education, to jobs, pay, housing and access to healthcare — this government has increased state harassment through increased use of discriminatory stop and search and the Prevent programme, which is clearly targeted against the Muslim community.

It has done nothing to halt the surge in hate crime.

Its sole policy contribution to these issues is to simply to deny that institutional racism exists at all, although we see the evidence all around us.

This all matters to the wider labour movement. In the first instance, many workers, members of trade unions and members of the Labour Party, are part of these communities and deserve unity and support in the face of these attacks.

As the TUC, the Runnymede Trust and others have repeatedly shown, black and Asian workers and others from ethnic minorities tend to be lower paid, undervalued and given the worst job conditions in terms of tasks, overtime and so on.

But the flip side of that argument is also true. A labour movement that fails to come to the defence of ethnic minorities is playing with fire, and risks its capacity to represent all its members.

Solidarity cannot be partial or discriminatory — it must be universal.

Currently, we see how brutal and wholly inappropriate policing has been extended from something routinely suffered by youth in the black and Asian communities now to women engaged in a peaceful vigil.

Legislation currently before Parliament billed as curbing the rights of extremists to cause disruption can and ultimately will be used against trade unionists.

If a strike or picket is not causing at least some disruption to the employer, then it is probably not effective.

Ultimately of course, this issue of unity through solidarity has throughout history been an existential one for the labour movement itself.

Recently we marked the anniversary of the Battle of Cable Street. The Jewish community in the East End rallied against the fascists and defeated them because hundreds of labour movement activists, from the Labour Party, the Communist Party and others all came together.

That is unity through solidarity. Tragically, we know from history that when that was not done in Germany, the fascists came to power and exterminated millions of Jews and everywhere abolished all types of workers’ organisation, including trade unions, killing their leaders.

So, the question of unity through solidarity against racism is a vital one, just as it has always been.

That’s why I will be attending the Stand Up to Racism conference this weekend and am delighted that there is such a broad array of speakers, national and international, with representatives from a great number of ethnic minorities as well as many of our leading trade unionists.

The conference will address many of the issues that specifically affect ethnic minorities.

All of them can and should inform the wider labour movement.

Want to know how the Black Lives Matter movement was decisive in defeating Trump? Well, there might be some useful lessons for us here as we take on our homegrown Trump in No 10.

How has policing been used to spy on communities, demonise them and prevent their lawful protest? The session on the Policing Bill will be invaluable to activists and leaders.

This applies right across the board. We can also confidently predict that learning the lessons from the struggles against racism will place an increasingly important role for the wider labour movement for some time to come.

This is because living standards for the overall majority of ordinary people will get worse, not better over the next period.

The Economist magazine recently showed that average household living standards have fallen in 2020 and 2021. It projected more falls in the next two years, producing the longest decline in living standards since the 1970s.

This is a direct result of government policy, whether it is the labour and skills shortages they have created, or bulldozing our main gas storage facility, or the privatisation of the energy companies, the hike in National Insurance rates and the public-sector pay freeze.

The list goes on and on and it should be obvious that Boris Johnson is not trying to build a high-wage economy — but in fact the opposite. We already see how Unite and PCS members are vilified in the press for fighting for better their pay and conditions.

Protests, demos, disputes and strikes are all likely to feature in the next period as the drop in living standards bites. The government is preparing for all this with a slew of reactionary and authoritarian legislation, as well the Health and Care Bill which will exacerbate the crisis in the NHS.

So we must prepare too. Prepare to learn from each other and defend each other. Solidarity.

To register for the Stand up to Racism conference visit www.mstar.link/SUTR.

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