Local countermobilisation is key. Numerous mobilisations, from Codnor to Bolton, have shown that UAF’s frail national infrastructure is not a substitute for the need to build local anti-fascist activist groups. Local organisation has to be build on a real united front basis where possible, drawing in the unions, minorities communities and the broader community.

Our argument for countermobilisation has to particularly draw on our historic lessons of the effectiveness of black self-organisation in the 1970s.

Local countermobilisation is not enough without democratic national coordination.

Because the EDL/SDL/WDL is organising national mobilisations in many different locations, we need national countermobilisation. However, not every mobilisation pulls out the same numbers. To be effective, we need co-ordination. But that co-ordination needs to be primarily political rather than logistical. We need a democratic national framework pulling together local and national organisations with open access at all levels and full accountability.

After mobilisations like Edinburgh, Manchester and Westminster the weaknesses of UAF have become increasingly clear. In addition to not being able to involve grassroots organisations in the black and Asian communities, it has also failed to develop a consistent, understood, shared and supported set of tactics. It is not able to act in a highly effective way as the national coordination we need.

We remain committed to building UAF and hope that it takes more opportunities to develop the potential for united front mobilisations leveraging its support in the trade unions. However we should at the same time realise that there will be well intentioned attempts to develop, supplement and supersede the UAF, reflecting the unfortunate and growing fragmentation in the anti-fascist movement.

For that reason, we realise that some groups will aim to organise independently of UAF for good reasons.

It would be an error for opposing state bans to be our priority.

In some places, UAF may be deflected from the need to countermobilise by support for state bans. We oppose campaigning for state bans because of their ineffectiveness, and we understand that they tend to deflect the movement from countermobilisation, but we recognise that the ability to agitate against state bans is currently beyond the political development of the anti-fascist movement and the working class more broadly. So our task is to stress the need for countermobilisation whether or not there is a state ban in place, and to go through the experience with activists of seeing the role of the state, as seen in the recent mobilisations outside Parliament.

The argument against state bans will be won slowly, locally and only through experience.

Countermobilisation must be used to develop united front mobilisations for social reforms.

The Socialist party makes a formally correct criticism of the SWP when it says that to confront fascism we need to agitate for demands that undermine the political success of the fascists. Both parties make a major contribution to the anti-racist and and-fascist struggles, and are developing political campaigns that relate to many of the key issues facing working people.  However, the SP tends not to raise demands that address and resolve the specific oppression of migrant workers and the black communities, and instead their focus is largely on demands aimed at blue collar white workers.

Respect can play a key role in raising demands about employment, social housing, and structural reforms to weaken racism.

Some internal tasks for Socialist Resistance.

  • - Our books committee is looking at a book on fascism, filling the space currently filled by the ‘Ending the Nightmare’ book. While that new work is underway, we should look at a small inexpensive book with some essays, including some of Trotsky’s, on fascism, Marxism and the experiences of the anti-racist struggles of the 1970s and 1980s.
  • - Because of the crisis of legitimacy facing UAF, we should be careful to show the broad and diverse strength of the anti-racist movement in the Britain, and the best experiences of coordinating the struggles. If possible, we should produce a leaflet for the mobilisation in Dudley.
  • - We should investigate a national educational day on racism and fascism to raise up the general level of debate on fascism from a narrow tactical framework to the big picture. In particular we need to look at the roots of race and racism, the changing nature of eurofascism, and the tactics used in other countries (in particular Denmark, where the growth of the fascist right has been constrained).

This post summarises the general line of a report adopted by the Socialist Resistance national committee on March 27.