Over two thousand took
to the streets in protest against rising racist attacks in the north
and attended the anti-racist rally at Belfast City Hall on Tuesday
27th of January. Members and supporters of Organise! joined our
fellow workers in condemning racist attacks and in calling for action
to confront racists and fascists. The following is the text of a
leaflet produced by Organise! and handed out to hundreds of those
present at the rally.
“Racist
attacks, and recent organising by British fascist groups in working
class loyalist areas, are set against a campaign by ‘respectable’
politicians and media to demonise and criminalise immigrants. The
term “illegal immigrant” has joined other racial slurs,
becoming a general term of abuse for foreigners and people from
ethnic communities in Northern Ireland, Britain and the Irish Republic.
As yet another pregnant woman was targeted by racist thugs in South
Belfast Tony Blair spoke of the growing numbers of women immigrants
coming to the UK as “maternity tourists” to exploit
“our” strained and under-funded NHS (so who’s
responsible for the under-funding, eh Tony?).
Anarchists believe in equality between all people regardless of
where there ancestors may be from, what colour their skin is, or
where they were born. We are struggling for a world with no borders
were people are free to travel the world and settle where they wish
– this is not a freedom that should be extended only to capital
and wealthy elites who, supported by nation states, continue to
subject humanity to exploitation, domination and coercive authority.
Today Fortress Europe, with border controls, armed guards and concentration
camps is alive and kicking. This has brutal consequences for those
seeking escape from persecution – often fleeing western sponsored
oppressive regimes. Institutionalised racism is occurring in our
own backyard. All forms of public transport from Belfast to Dublin
are regularly searched by immigration control and garda carrying
out racist government policy and questioning, harassing, detaining
and barring entry to ‘Ireland’ from the north on the
basis of skin colour. Refugees are shamefully interned in our own
local concentration camp at Maghaberry.
Governments utilise racism deliberately to divert working-class
people’s anger away from the real causes of their problems.
Problems such as poverty, housing shortages, and unemployment have
all been blamed on immigrants. Racism is used by capitalism as a
tool in dividing the working class and weakening class unity, collective
action and class struggle, because this threatens their privilege
and authority.
The real ‘spongers’ and ‘parasites’ are
not immigrants but the tiny boss class who live off other people’s
labour, sweat and toil. Immigrants bring a wealth of experience,
culture and make a contribution to society and the economy, often
suffering harsher conditions and exploitation than ‘native’
working class people. We must also remember that millions of working
class people have migrated from Ireland – north and south
– in search of a better life, fleeing inequality, injustice
and poverty, over the past couple of hundred years.
In confronting racism we must build class unity. We reject cross
class alliances simply because there can be no common interests
between workers and the bosses. We need to expose and attack the
institutions which are legitimising racism in our society, we need
to stand up against racist bullies and fascists carrying out attacks
on people from ethnic minorities. Central to this is the need to
physically and ideologically confront fascism and the building of
opposition to the system of wage slavery and exploitation which
promotes racist scape-goating and the criminalisation of immigration
.
Our goal is social equality and freedom for all people. Racism is
motivated and perpetuated by greed, promoted by those in power,
and is festering in ignorance and misplaced fear. We demand a world
free for travel for humanity, not the exploitation of global capitalism,
a world free from borders and controls on our movements. We seek
to abolish governments, which create and maintain division on behalf
of a few wealthy and powerful people, in favour of autonomous, self-governing,
communities which co-ordinate their efforts through de-centralised
federations. Doing away with capitalism, bosses and politicians
and returning the control of work to those who produce the wealth
of society, the working class.”
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