Racism has a long history in Britain. It is built into the riches and ideological foundations of the modern state. It can be traced, from the slave trade, to the Empire, to the ongoing wars in the Middle East.
At all of these junctures, the ideological tool of racism has been used to justify the super-exploitation and degradation of other people, in the interests of British capitalism. And today, it is no different.
During the slave trade, Britain acquired the land, human chattel, and profits necessary to become a mighty capitalist power. From here it conquered a worldwide empire on which the sun never set. Companies that participated in the slave trade became an important part of the industrial revolution.
As the emerging industrial revolution transformed the economy, it needed more resources and more markets. Materials such as copper, cotton, rubber, and palm oil were very important for producing manufactured goods that European industry had grown dependent on.
The rainforests of the Congo, for example, had some of the world’s best sources of wild rubber trees. So British capitalists acted, as ruthlessly as was necessary, to acquire these resources by any means necessary.
Empire turns into its opposite
As the Empire developed, so too did the British working class. From the Chartists, to the trade unions, to the formation of the Labour Party itself.
There is no doubt, as the British ruling class engorged itself on the riches of the Empire, some crumbs from the table fell down to the working class. This afforded British workers a slightly higher standard of living.
But this Empire, dialectically, would turn into its opposite and become a key pressure point to the stability of British capitalism itself: not least through the revolutionary movements that led to its formal end in the 20th century, but in the upheaval and migration that would lead its people to arrive on Britain’s shores.
Today, a powerful, multi-racial working class exists in Britain. Despite the wailing of the racists, it is more integrated and educated than ever before.
The dominant ideas of any society, however, are the ideas of the ruling class. While the most overt racist ideas of Empire and slavery have been scrubbed from their outposts, the latent force of racism remains in British society.
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This is because capitalism will use any tool it can to divide the working class. Without a serious political battle against the ideology of the ruling class, British workers are left to absorb the rotten poison that the capitalists promote everyday, through their media.
It is clear that capitalism is in crisis. Living standards are in decline. Unemployment is rising. Inflation is rising. There is an immense anger brewing in the working class. But part of this anger is being channelled in a racist direction.
For the capitalists, racism is the perfect tool to demobilise and divide the working class. This has been the case for the entire history of capitalism.
When Karl Marx analysed the working class in England, he noted how the anti-Irish racism acted as a fundamental barrier for the working class taking power. In fact, he wrote:
“This antagonism is the secret of the impotence of the English working class, despite its organisation. It is the secret by which the capitalist class maintains its power. And the latter is quite aware of this.”
The question that logically follows is: how do we overcome impotence? The answer is both simple and enormous.
Real leadership required
The working class needs a leadership that relentlessly exposes how the ruling class is using the lie of racism to keep workers divided and stop them from looking at the real culprits for their conditions.
Instead, we have had a leadership that has repeatedly followed the logic of the capitalists themselves.
This comes in the form of trade unionists who argue that migration harms British workers; or labour leaders who have justified the Empire.
But this also comes in the form of politicians and activists who say that the fight against racism is about ‘love over hate’, rather than the struggle to improve material conditions.
Racism must not be mystified as a battle of ideas or a product of human nature. It must be exposed as the most cynical ploy of the ruling class to divide us.
And to do that, we need revolutionaries trained in the ideas of where racism really comes from, and how militant mass action is the best way to fight it.
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We need class fighters who expose the lies of Reform, when they put the blame for the crumbling NHS on the migrants who come to Britain, rather than the ruling class who refuse to fund it. They refuse to fund it, so that they can justify the ongoing privatisation, and engulf themselves even further on its carcass.
We need class fighters who point out that it is the current Labour government, despite all its rhetoric of being ‘progressive’ compared to Reform, that is deporting migrants and whipping up racism in the process.
Those class fighters will not drop from the sky. They must be trained. We are already behind where we need to be in this. There is no time to waste.
Black Panther Fred Hampton on fighting racism
A lot of people get the word ‘revolution’ mixed up and they think revolution’s a bad word. Revolution is nothing but like having a sore on your body and then you put something on that sore to cure that infection.
And I’m telling you that we’re living in an infectious society right now. I’m telling you that we’re living in a sick society. We’re involved in a society that produces criminals, thieves, and robbers, and rapers. Whenever you are in a society like that, that is a sick society…
We got to face some facts. That the masses are poor, that the masses belong to what you call the lower class, and when I talk about the masses, I’m talking about the white masses, I’m talking about the black masses, and the brown masses, and the yellow masses, too.
We’ve got to face the fact that some people say you fight fire best with fire, but we say you put fire out best with water. We say you don’t fight racism with racism – we’re gonna fight racism with solidarity. We say you don’t fight capitalism with no black capitalism; you fight capitalism with socialism.
We ain’t gonna fight no reactionary pigs who run up and down the street being reactionary; we’re gonna organise and dedicate ourselves to revolutionary political power, and teach ourselves the specific needs of resisting the power structure, arm ourselves, and we’re gonna fight reactionary pigs with INTERNATIONAL PROLETARIAN REVOLUTION. That’s what it has to be. The people have to have the power – it belongs to the people.
From Fred Hampton’s speech ‘Power Anywhere Where There’s People!’, delivered at the Olivet Baptist Church in Chicago, Illinois in April 1969.
