Working class unity means anti-racist unity: no compromise with racist state power

There is a real danger of class reductionism in some left responses to the recent racist riots.  This trend isn’t just apparent in Britain but also in Germany where Sara Wagenecht’s new ‘left’ anti-immigration party is doing well in regional elections. In this article rs21 members make the case for an anti-racist politics that combats all forms of oppression and exploitation.

With the sole exception of the British Communists, who completely oppose the system of “quotas” and “controls” for Commonwealth immigration, all other political parties have capitulated in one or another way to this racialist immigration measure.

Claudia Jones, The Caribbean Community in Britain (1964)

Of the many Marxists jostling for position in Highgate cemetery next to Marx’s memorial, Trinidadian communist Claudia Jones is nearest, her grave set at a diagonal angle, so close as to appear almost part of the original ensemble. Jones was a West Indian communist active in Britain, instrumental in founding the Notting Hill carnival in 1959 not just as a celebration of cultural diversity, but as an instance of working-class community self-defence against racist attack. Their closeness expresses the unified nature of the class struggle and the fight against racial injustice, two causes that the contemporary iteration of the Young Communist League (YCL) have argued are in fact contradictory, in a recent and deeply misjudged article. 

The mobilisations against the recent racist riots have been strong and unified, despite real differences of orientation and opinion within broad community groups, antiracist organisations and anti-fascist networks. Important discussions are ongoing around the nature of these recent attacks, debating the ways in which years of state racism led by mainstream politicians and the media have laid the foundation for the recent conflagration, the riot as spectacle drawing in onlookers, and the complex relationship between regions affected by deindustrialisation coupled with a brutally uneven austerity, and islamophobia and anti-migrant racism. Nevertheless, a language of framing racist attacks as ‘legitimate concerns’ or ‘protests’ has been roundly rejected by most of the left as adding fuel to the fire of far-right political formations such as Reform UK and the racist political consensus in mainstream politics.

The YCL has broken with this consensus in its recent editorial. Their “answer” to the riots is the same answer as Reform UK: migration controls, a capitulation to state racism. That as self-described communists, the YCL differ in no way to the mainstream and far-right political parties in their prescriptions is surprising. Their insistence on framing the racist riots as “protests” lends dangerous credibility to the murderous outbreaks of violence in a way that even Starmer’s messaging has avoided. 

The article is shot through with a “both sides” argumentation, firstly in likening the racist riots to July’s events in the Harehills district of Leeds concerning racialised populations: “The murders in Southport were promptly interpreted in a similar style to the Harehills child removal: an act of racial injustice to be opposed”. Framing the rioters actions as a white response to ‘racial injustice’ explicitly adopts a far-right narrative of white Britons as under threat.

Secondly, antiracist activists are presented as ‘just as bad’ as those spreading the initial disinformation about the Southport attacker: “the official anti-racism lobby began their own efforts of misinformation and deception, further raising tensions”. As the recent events unfolded, yes, some misinformation coursed through existing and newly created antiracist networks, yet this must be understood as a function of the fear created by the racist violence, not used as some gotcha moment to own the ‘woke left’. 

That the YCL rail against what they construct as ‘identity politics’ is nothing new, but the way in which a coherent identity of minoritised groups articulated as a political force is de facto blamed for racist mobilisations is troubling to say the least:

“the aggrieved identity group this time was not an ethnic or religious minority, but white British people, the majority population of the UK, now acting with the same sense of collective, identity-based grievance as minorities have”.

Despite their decrying of identity politics, the YCL piece ends up being a valorisation of a white identity politics, the article positing “constructing a unified national vision” and legally requiring migrants gain a “functioning knowledge of local social mores” as possible ways forward. Within the current political arena such statements clearly strengthen ideas of ‘British values’ as some cohesive culture which migrants must learn, their supposedly inherent difference unable to be squared with an ill-defined British identity.

In fact, so wedded are the authors to representing the rioters as frustrated working class subjects, that the word ‘racism’ is not used once in relation to them throughout the article. This is an approach to constructing an idealised ‘working class’ that we have become familiar with through right-wing Brexit arguments framing racist migration policy as responding to working class concerns. Just because a ruling class instrumentalisation of racism has created a situation in which racist rioters act seemingly spontaneously to threaten the lives of migrants, Muslims and people of colour, does not mean that we are to treat them as simple victims of manipulation. In the moment that they threaten violence towards minoritised communities they represent a group to be opposed by the full force of antiracist and antifascist militancy. 

The YCL’s analysis that in accepting unchecked migration we are accepting global inequality differs from right-wing arguments solely through their use of the word ‘imperialism’ to describe this situation. A refusal to recognise colonial legacies while buying into myths around migration’s negative impacts exposes the poverty of their vision of ‘class unity’, one divorced from the recognition of a multi-racial working class. Similarly the authors’ differentiation between refugees and economic migrants comes straight out of the encoding of ‘undeserving’ and ‘deserving’ migrants in racist migration law.

The YCL speaks of “extraordinary” levels of “mass migration”. However, despite the hysterical rhetoric around migration we have become so accustomed to in the West, the fact of the matter is that a majority of people in the world remain in the areas they were born in. Those who are forced to flee conflict or seek economic opportunity elsewhere also often do this in adjacent countries within their home region. And within the pattern of global movement, the mobility of citizens of rich, Western/Global North countries contrasts starkly with citizens of the poorest countries which bear the brunt of global capitalist exploitation and imperialist wars, and are most threatened by instability caused by climate change, including extreme weather events that also have direct impacts on food security and the spreading of disease. While we in Britain and elsewhere in the West enjoy maximum movement around the world, the people who are most impacted by the consequences of imperialist and capitalist economic, foreign and climate policies directed by our governments are less able to leave. 

Those who do are forced to take some of the most deadly migration routes in the world – because it is almost impossible for many citizens of the Global South to obtain visas and other travel documents, which is unthinkable for those of us with British, European and American passports, used to travelling the world at our pleasure. These factors illustrate that the distinction between a refugee or an ‘economic migrant’ will erode further and become increasingly meaningless as we face the realities and challenges of the future. It is not an anti-imperialist stance to deny the factors that dictate who can and cannot move around the world freely, and to pull up the drawbridges in response.  

This illustration of unequal mobility across the globe alone goes a long way to debunk the YCL’s claim that “A free market ultimately eliminates restrictions and duties not just on commodities, finances, and services, but on human movement as well.” However, even when only taking a closer look at the realities of labour migration in Britain, it is obvious that the capitalist system does not allow ‘unrestricted’ movement for work purposes either. The state manages migration, through mechanisms such as the Shortage Occupation List and the ‘Points-Based Immigration System’, to achieve the ‘right’ kind of labour migration, based on what they have identified as the needs of British capital. In its winning 2024 election manifesto, the Labour Party pledged to work on a new ‘controlled’ labour migration policy alongside Skills and Industry bodies, which continues to limit the agency of people wanting to move, and putting the deciding factor of who deserves to live here in the hands of bosses. The state also further limits who can come through labour migration by attaching conditions to visas, such as No Recourse to Public Funds, the Health Surcharge, Minimum Income Requirements for spouses, and limits to bringing dependents such as children.  

In many ways these are old debates between parts of the left differing in their relation to the idea of the nation-state and its role, and a trust or a mistrust in the exercise of its power. Yet more recently and closer to home, the multi-racial working class is precisely a collective subject fought for and created by decades of struggle, such as community self-defence in Notting Hill, the Grunwick strikes and tireless antiracist agitation in workplaces, unions and organisations that has left its mark on the entire left. 

An important contemporary example of the dynamics between class and migration status is delivery riders. For years, riders have been organising in their Unions to demand better pay and conditions. During the pandemic, as demands for takeaways soared due to COVID19 lockdowns, riders and other hospitality workers were at the forefront of exploitation as they were exposed to COVID19 often without adequate health and safety measures by unscrupulous companies that wanted to keep their profits up while restaurants and bars were shut. Their organising was accompanied by protests across the country, including in cities such as London, Sheffield, York and Wolverhampton. Now delivery riders once again have become the focal point of interest for the newly elected Labour government, as they promised a ‘blitz’ of immigration raids, including at takeaways, to find undocumented workers. These examples show that migrant workers are an integral part of the working class. Union work led by riders must be supported, as must community efforts to organise anti-raids networks to better protect those that run the risk of being targeted by state violence in the form of immigration enforcement officers, detention and deportation. 

In writing “[t]he left made a foolish investment in trying to become the illustrious champions of the oppressed rather than the vanguard of the working class”, the YCL caves into the divide and rule tactics that are the preserve of the ruling class. In contrast Lenin wrote:

“that the Social-Democrat’s ideal should not be the trade union secretary, but the tribune of the people, who is able to react to every manifestation of tyranny and oppression, no matter where it appears, no matter what stratum or class of the people it affects”

There can be no class unity without recognising the oppression experienced by its members. Capitulation to state racism in calling for migration controls emboldens racists. Rather we should be redoubling efforts to organise the antiracist response, coupled with a revolutionary socialist politics addressing the continued dominance of neoliberal capitalism.

We do well to remember the legacy of Claudia Jones and her antiracist vision of British communism, in viewing antiracist action and support of the self-organisation of oppressed communities not as some optional extra for the left, but as at the very heart of the history of our movement and continuing struggle.

Antiracist support for freedom of movement is non-negotiable, and this includes removing ourselves from the racist political consensus concerning immigration. People’s lives were not better when there was less immigration, but rather when the left was stronger, and we were winning, and the only way towards this state of affairs is a rejection of divisive appeals to racist state power. 

Our response will be one of solidarity, working hand-in-hand with and in communities that have been targeted, building broad coalitions, and arguing for a diversity of antifascist tactics in both mass mobilisations and confronting the far-right wherever they mobilise.

Class unity means antiracist unity: smash fascism, open the borders.

The rs21 Antifascist Coordination Committee