In the first part of this article two weeks ago we established that it was the economic need for labour that led to the transport of millions of blacks from Africa to the New World, where they became alaves. It was also a labour shortage in post-war Britain that led to the migration of blacks from the West Indies and the Indian sub-continent to the imperial homeland.
Black immigrants came attracted by propaganda advertising the colonial motherland as a haven of economic opportunities and advance, and they were filled with illusions. They were not to know that their colonial masters really wanted bodies to fill the lowest jobs those jobs which the indigenous labour force would not fill during At the march against racism on 4 July, some of the IMG contingent appeared to be shouting the slogan Natondi Front is a Nazi front. We knew this was an IS slogan, but were surprised to find the IMG also supports it.
Fascism feeds on existing chauvinist and racist ideas in the working class: This slogan appéals to precisely those ideas: the content of anti-Nazi sentiment was not so much class conscious opposition to fascism as British patrio tism. The war against Nazism was fought by the working class giving full support to British imperialism. ine siogan today appeals to the worst, and not the best, traditions of the working class movement.
This point could be made clearer by considering the likely response to this slogan if the left raised it in Ireland. The people of the Falls Road and the Bogside would not be fooled; the content of this slogan would be quite clear to people who remember that the IRA was denounced in the war as Nazi traitors, and that the same people who were supposedly "anti-fascist' fully supported British imperialism against the Irish people.
The slogan "National Front is a Nazi front' is a chauvinist slogan, and presupposes that the only element in the present rise of fascist groups is a specitically antı-black racısm. unis Is not true. Racism itself is part and parcel of the national-chauvinist and malechauvinist ideology which is the real basis of fascism. To attack only a specific form of racism is to attack only the appearan ces and to ignore the real problem.
At present it appears that the fascists are gaining support on the basis of racThe colonised turned 'coloured" immigrants found themselves only employable as unskilled workers. although most were skilled; they were paid less than white workers though doing in reality the same work; they found themselves the victims of unscrupulous capitalist landlords who charged them exorbitant rents. Everyone gained from the black immigrant except himself, who simply found that he had exchanged the conditions of colonial oppression for those of capitalist oppression in the very heart of imperialism.
But the post-war boom which had created the conditions for the migration of black labour was beginning to falter by the mid-1950s. communities, and blacks were blamed for the effects of the Tory Government's economic policies.
Prejudice White prejudice became increasingly manifest. In Nottingham for instance, after a period of sporadic assaults upon individual blacks, white working class mobs armed with razors and bottles made a mass onslaught on black residents in the St Anne's area of the city. In Notting Hill, black homes were attacked by white mobs armed with petrol bombs, chains and axes.
The economic recession and the fears and insecurity of white worknot want!' nounce the slogan "Keep Britain white"?, said Osborne, 'should answer the question, do they want to turn it black? If unlimited immigrants were allowed we would ultimately become a chocolate coloured Afro-Asian mixed society. That I do Under the impact of the economic depression, immigration con- sion. trols specifically directed at black la bour were brought in. In 1961 the Tory Government introduced a Commonwealth Immigration Bill black immigration control has since become a generally accepted aspect of state policy. It is in part a reflection and a consequence of the economic failings of the bourgeoisie, and also a reflection of the susceptibility of the white working class to racist propaganda during periods of economic reces-