Anti-Racism

When in our predecessor paper Workers’ Action (no.117, 1978) Colin Waugh wrote about Marcus Garvey he noted, I think rightly, that Garvey is a figure known now more by reputation than by belief. In the recent Black Lives Matters demonstrations, “Garveyism” as an entire political outlook has certainly been marginal. But “Garveyite” beliefs persist. His legacy is probably more readily accessible to people in the popular consciousness via Roots Reggae and Hip Hop. Garvey led for a short period the largest black organisation of its day, the United Negro Improvement Association And African...

Intro speeches — Video and audio — from 15 December on "After the US election, which way for the left?" by Ruth Cashman, Workers' Liberty; Thomas Harrison, New Politics Editorial Board (personal capacity); and Robert Cuffy, Guyanese socialist based in New York, member of DSA and the Socialist Workers Alliance of Guyana. A discussion on the results of the US election and tasks facing class struggle socialists. Trump and the Republican Party continue to resist the result of the US election; what impact will they have? We heard about what the left and social movement activists are doing to defend US democracy and develop class struggle responses to the pandemic, jobs and social crisis.

The chair, co-secretary, and various other members of Bristol West CLP have been suspended for allowing a motion to be heard condemning the suspension of Jeremy Corbyn. After one branch passed the motion, the unelected regional director of the Party advised the chair against the motion being heard at the CLP. The chair nonetheless called a meeting which first voted to hear the motion, by 94 to 59, and then passed motion 99 to 80. No debate was heard on the motion itself, reportedly to ensure the Equality and Human Rights Commission report on Labour and antisemitism itself could not be...

Traven Leyshon, a socialist and trade unionist in Vermont, spoke to Sacha Ismail from Solidarity on 3 November, polling day for the US presidential and congressional elections. This is a very tense country now. There’s a widespread perception among the Trump supporters that there’s going to be violence from the left. They expect their homes and cars to be vandalised after the election if Trump wins, and in general rioting in the streets “from the other side”. It’s a deep paranoia. I guess it goes along with fairly widespread acceptance of conspiracy theories, and it’s been fed and built up by...

One hundred years ago, an arts movement was forming in a mainly-black district of New York City. Later known as the Harlem Renaissance, it was primarily cultural but also inescapably political. Literature, poetry, jazz, theatre, sculpture and more articulated the lives and demands of African-Americans no longer willing to be grateful that they were no longer enslaved. O black and unknown bards of long ago. How came your lips to touch the sacred fire? How, in your darkness, did you come to know The power and beauty of the minstrel’s lyre? Who first from midst his bonds lifted his eyes? Who...

While black workers were fighting against the “colour bar” and about a year after the Notting Hill riots, Roy Barker directed Flame in the Streets (1961). Shop Steward Jacko Palmer (John Mills) argues for the rights of Gabriel Gomez (Earl Cameron) a black worker in his factory, but then has to confront his own prejudices when daughter Kathie (Sylvia Simms) falls in love with a black man, Peter Lincoln (Johnny Sekka). Despite its occasional clunky dialogue, it is a hard-hitting and powerful film. Earl Cameron was one of the prominent early black actors in British film and TV and died only this...

This story of colour bars in the UK railway and bus industries begins after the Second World War, when Britain had a labour shortage and people moved to Britain in increasing numbers from Caribbean countries and elsewhere. The National Union of Railwaymen (NUR, predecessor of the RMT) declared in 1948 that: “we have no objection to the employment of coloured men in the railway industry” and that “coloured men had been satisfactorily employed on the railways over a long period”. But although the top of the union was getting it right, in some areas the grassroots was not. In 1950, white workers...

This article by the Algerian socialist-feminist Marieme Helie Lucas, responding to the beheading of French teacher Samuel Paty by an Islamist assailant on 16 October, was first published on the Feminist Dissent website. We republish it, with the author's permission, to promote discussion. Assassinations by decapitation or by the sword – which are highly symbolic of all Muslim extreme-right organisations (Al Qaeda, the Taliban, GIA, al-Shabab, Daesh, Boko Haram, etc.) – are not a new phenomenon in France. Several cases have already happened in recent years. It points at the will of the...

On 7 October, Osime Brown, a young man jailed under “joint enterprise” law, will return to his family home on his release from prison, rather than being taken to an immigration detention centre. This win follows many street and online protests demanding his freedom. But Osime’s fight is still on: the order to deport him to Jamaica (which he left at the age of 4, and where has no support network) still stands. No date has been announced, but Osime still has this threat looming. Campaigners are running a “Twitter storm” on 6 October, and ask supporters to keep signing and sharing the petition...