Our attempts to link the antiracist struggle in Britain to the country’s colonial past and imperialist present were regularly dismissed as theoretical, writes Tariq Mehmood [photo credit: Getty Images]
In the late 1970s and early 1980s in the UK, I often told my antiracist white friends from the British Left, “If you don’t organise within white working-class communities to combat racism, we could face the threat of racist pogroms in this country 40 years from now.”
I wasn’t alone. During that time, Black organisers — we used the term ‘black’ politically to unite Afro-Asian people in the UK around shared struggles — engaged in ongoing debates with representatives of the white left.Â
We were concerned with how white leftist groups were primarily organised within our communities, viewing us as easy recruits for their agenda.Â
Whilst we appreciated the solidarity, we knew the real battle was within white working-class communities which were being fed a relentless stream of racist and imperialist propaganda.Â
How right we were.
Like much of the UK, my home town of Bradford was a hotbed of debate.
The Left was made up of many groups: the International Marxist Group — who’ll lead you straight into the library and never let you leave; the International Socialists — who’ll take you out of the library and into the pub; the Workers Revolutionary Party — who don’t know what a library is, they think it’s a fancy name for a pub; the Revolutionary Community Party — who only read books directly from the police infiltration manual, and the Communist Party — who are so wrapped up in Euro-communism that they’ve forgotten libraries even exist. Meanwhile, don’t ask Militant Tendency about the Labour Party, they’ll hurl Labour’s Clause 4 at your head before you finish the question.
All too often, however, these groups failed to confront their complicity in imperialist narratives.
Just like today, where a few camouflage support for Zionism, in the 1970s and 1980s, some of them dismissed the right of the colonised and the oppressed to take up arms, such as was the case in Northern Ireland.
These positions led us to question their genuine commitment to dismantling the imperial state or standing up against systemic racism.Â
Far-right pogroms in the UK: A new normal?
Our attempts to link the antiracist struggle in Britain to the country’s colonial past and imperialist present were regularly dismissed as theoretical.
As Neem Malik, an activist in the Midlands, recalls, “The white left thought they knew best for us. They dictated how we should organise and what slogans to mobilise under. Even now, with the rise of Islamophobia, they continue to underplay just how dire the situation is.”
Their paternalism was even manifested in their chants.
While we marched with slogans such as: “Black people must unite — here to stay, here to fight; Black people have a right — here to stay, here to fight,” those on the white left would chant, “Black and white — unite and fight,” as if we were treated equally in society and leftist spaces.
As British Blacks, we needed to address our own challenges before uniting on their terms.Â
Subscribe Now and Listen to our Podcasts OnAs Amrit Wilson, activist and author of the groundbreaking book Finding a Voice, says “The white Left had a straight relationship with us Black organisers. They were interested mainly in recruiting us or giving us leadership. There were many occasions when we urged them to organize against racism in white communities rather than give us leadership. But they mostly ignored our pleas.
“As a result even while we fought the vicious gendered racism of the State and the patriarchies of our communities, shaped as they were, by the legacies of feudalism we found ourselves confronting the racism and sexism of the largely male white Left. There was also of course the sexism of the heavily male-dominated Asian youth movements and then there was ‘white feminism’ whose sisterhood involved erasing our experiences of racism.”
Phill Griffin, an activist from the 1960s, argues that the current rise of the far-right in the UK cannot be blamed solely on the left’s collective failure to organise against racism in working-class communities. “The reality is, they didn’t organise in working-class communities full stop.”
The phenomenal rise of racism in Britain today is therefore not solely the fault of the Left, but rather the continued — and intrinsic — policy of British imperialism. However, had deep-rooted antiracist organisations formed in working-class communities back then, we might not be facing today’s harsh realities.
If history has taught us anything, it’s that failing to confront racism at its roots — both in the streets and in imperialistic foreign policy — leads to dire consequences.Â
As I argued in my last article for The New Arab, the rise of far-right ideologies mirrors the failures of the past. The question remains: can we catch history by the wings and defeat signs of pogroms, or will history continue to kick us up our backsides?
Tariq Mehmood is an award-winning novelist and filmmaker. He was one of the leading defendants in the case of the Bradford 12 in 1981.
He co-directed Injustice, the ground-breaking film into deaths in British Police Custody and the writer of its follow-on, Ultraviolence. He is currently making a film on the Bradford 12. He wrote his first novel Awaiting trial: Hand On The Sun, Penguin 1983. He has since written a number of novels, the latest being The Second Coming, Daraja 2024. He is also an Associate Professor at the American University Of Beirut, Lebanon.
Follow him on Twitter:Â @TariqMehmood000
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