Fascists Surge, Reformists Mourn
The following originally appeared on 3 June 2013 on bolshevik.org.
On bank holiday Monday at the end of May [2013], several hundred anti-fascists,
including members of the IBT, watched in frustration from behind a wall of cops as an English
Defence League (EDL) demonstration (at least twice as large) marched unhindered through the heart of
central London, where fascists rarely venture. Only a month earlier, in Brighton, we participated in
the disruption of the annual far right ‘March for England’ on St. George’s day. It
is an ominous sign that the EDL, which had been losing members and influence after suffering a
series of defeats across the country, was suddenly able to mobilise over 1,000 supporters in London
and twice that number in Newcastle two days earlier, as well as making an appearance (albeit with
mixed results) in towns across the country the following weekend. We were also at Westminster on 1
June [2013], as the declining BNP was met with more successful opposition, although they were
protected by a clearly pre-planned police operation that arrested over 50 anti-fascists.
The surge in support for the EDL was sparked by the killing of soldier Lee Rigby in Woolwich on
22 May [2013] by two men citing retribution for British army attacks on Muslims abroad. Fascists and
other racists have seized on the murder to step up violent assaults on Muslims:
“As participants in an English Defence League (EDL) march in Whitehall were
recorded giving Nazi-style salutes, Faith Matters, which monitors anti-Muslim hatred, said the
number of incidents in the past six days had risen to 193, including ten assaults on mosques. The
figure compares to a total of 642 incidents in the previous 12 months—meaning the last week
has seen a 15-fold increase on last year’s average of 12 attacks per week.”
—Independent, 28 May 2013
Rigby, a soldier in Britain’s imperialist army, has been treated in the bourgeois media
(and even by much of the left) as an innocent civilian. Politicians have whipped up patriotism and
paranoia about ‘terrorism’, while attempting to distance themselves from the rise in
fascist support. The hypocrisy of the bourgeoisie and its media lackeys is ultimately an expression
of the requirements of British imperialism. In April [2013] the brutal stabbing of 75-year-old
Mohammed Saleem, whose family had received threatening letters from the EDL, received far less media
coverage than the Woolwich incident.
London mayor Boris Johnson and others have absurdly denied that Rigby’s killing had
anything to do with British intervention in the Middle East, despite the statement of one of the
perpetrators, Michael Adebolajo, at the scene: ‘The only reason we have killed this man today
is because Muslims are dying daily by British soldiers’ (Telegraph, 24 May 2013).
Marxists do not advocate attacking individual soldiers in response to imperialist atrocities, but
the charges of ‘terrorism’ must be seen in the context of Rigby’s own willing role
in those crimes. He served a tour of duty as a machine gunner in Afghanistan, where the British army
has been responsible for the deaths of thousands of civilians. It was recently revealed that the
Ministry of Defence intends to obstruct investigations of unlawful killings by British occupation
forces in Iraq between 2003 and 2008.
Islamic reaction has been fuelled by British/US/NATO aggression in the Middle East and North
Africa. While we endorse neither the ideology nor the methods of Rigby’s executioners, we do
solidarise with the victims of imperialist occupation. We call for class-struggle resistance to the
military adventures of ‘our’ rulers, including strikes against the production and
shipment of arms. Every victory won by the British army in the Middle East will embolden the ruling
class to commit further crimes abroad, which is why Marxists call for the defeat of British
imperialism.
Since Rigby’s killing, public support for the military has risen, and there has been a
dramatic spike in donations to the charity Help for Heroes. This support for ‘our boys’
is echoed by those on the left who downplay the significance of the fact that Rigby was a
professional soldier, not a civilian, mirroring the horror expressed by the bourgeois press that
sometimes chickens come home to roost.
Unite Against Fascism were predictably among the worst offenders, proposing to start the
demonstration against the BNP ‘with a minute’s silence in memory of Lee Rigby’
(uaf.org.uk, 31 May 2013), but others were not so different. Workers Power suggests that it was
somehow worse that women witnessed the event:
“This is a horrific act, committed in front of ordinary civilians, women and
children. We sympathise with the family of the victim and those traumatised by witnessing such
appalling scenes.”
—workerspower.co.uk, May 2013
Left Unity’s Kate Hudson takes an approach tinged with pacifism and religion:
“We deplore the brutal murder of an unarmed British soldier in Woolwich yesterday.
Our thoughts and prayers are with his family. Acts of violent retribution against individuals can
never be justified as a response to the crimes of states and governments.”
—leftunity.org, 23 May 2013
The Socialist Party equates the attack on Rigby with indiscriminate attacks on civilians:
“The Socialist Party completely condemns this attack just as we condemned 7/7,
9/11, and all similar attacks aimed at indiscriminate slaughter. The victim of this latest killing,
while one individual rather than many, appears to have been selected possibly only because of the
“help for heroes” t-shirt he was wearing.”
—Socialist, 29 May 2013
While class-conscious workers take no satisfaction in Rigby’s death, we do not mourn a man
who, according to his own family, wanted to be a soldier all his life. As a volunteer defender of
British imperialism, he was in a very different category than the civilians killed by the 7/7 London
bombings of 2005. The sympathy expressed for Rigby by various self-proclaimed revolutionary
organisations is paralleled by their refusal to side militarily with the victims of imperialist
attacks (see ‘Libya and the
Left’, 1917 No. 34).
During periods of economic crisis and high unemployment, the army often succeeds in recruiting
heavily among the working class, targeting schools and deprived communities—sometimes
described by the left as ‘economic conscription’. But those who volunteer for the army
are not part of the workers’ movement. At the time of his death, Rigby was working as an army
recruiter, signing up cannon fodder for the bosses.
Rigby’s death has provided reactionaries with a pretext for advocating increased state
repression, as demonstrated by Theresa May’s proposed ban on internet access for
‘extremists’. Such laws will inevitably be used against whichever ‘enemy
within’ the authorities decide to target—today Islamic fundamentalists, tomorrow the
left and trade unionists. Marxists, by contrast, seek to defend democratic freedoms and to extend
full citizenship rights to all residents, regardless of their religious beliefs or immigration
status.
Divisions and the absence of revolutionary perspective in the anti-fascist
movement—particularly the pernicious role of the SWP front, Unite Against Fascism (UAF), which
often seeks to avoid direct confrontation and willingly co-operates with the police—has made
it easier for the EDL to grow. It is necessary to crush the fascists while they are still relatively
small—by uniting the left, immigrants, and particularly trade unionists in militant
mobilisations to physically prevent the EDL, BNP and their ilk from spreading venomous hatred.
Westminster also illustrated the potential for increased state repression against anti-fascist
protests. We call for the dropping of charges against all arrested anti-fascists.
To imagine that the agencies of the capitalist state can be relied on to prevent fascist attacks
is a dangerous illusion. In the final analysis, the raison d’être of fascism is
to provide bourgeois shock troops in times of crisis, supplementing the army and police. The fight
against fascism—like the fight to resist austerity attacks that contribute to the sense of
hopelessness and despair that fuels the growth of the far right—requires determined action by
all those oppressed by capitalist rule. Ultimately, bourgeois reaction can only be defeated by
uprooting the social system that produces it, and that requires the creation of a revolutionary
workers’ party, capable of leading the working class to power.