Belfast anti-racist rally report

national | rights, freedoms and repression | news report

Wednesday February 25, 2004 20:14

by Al - Organise!

NO HUMAN BEING IS ILLEGAL SUPPORT IMMIGRANTS

Over two thousand took to the streets in protest against rising racist attacks in the north and attended the anti-racist rally at Belfast City Hall on Tuesday 27th of January.

Members and supporters of Organise! joined our fellow workers in condemning racist attacks and in calling for action to confront racists and fascists. The following is the text of a leaflet produced by Organise! and handed out to hundreds of those present at the rally.

“Racist attacks, and recent organising by British fascist groups in working class loyalist areas, are set against a campaign by ‘respectable’ politicians and media to demonise and criminalise immigrants. The term “illegal immigrant” has joined other racial slurs, becoming a general term of abuse for foreigners and people from ethnic communities in Northern Ireland, Britain and the Irish Republic. As yet another pregnant woman was targeted by racist thugs in South Belfast Tony Blair spoke of the growing numbers of women immigrants coming to the UK as “maternity tourists” to exploit “our” strained and under-funded NHS (so who’s responsible for the under-funding, eh Tony?).
Anarchists believe in equality between all people regardless of where there ancestors may be from, what colour their skin is, or where they were born. We are struggling for a world with no borders were people are free to travel the world and settle where they wish – this is not a freedom that should be extended only to capital and wealthy elites who, supported by nation states, continue to subject humanity to exploitation, domination and coercive authority.
Today Fortress Europe, with border controls, armed guards and concentration camps is alive and kicking. This has brutal consequences for those seeking escape from persecution – often fleeing western sponsored oppressive regimes. Institutionalised racism is occurring in our own backyard. All forms of public transport from Belfast to Dublin are regularly searched by immigration control and garda carrying out racist government policy and questioning, harassing, detaining and barring entry to ‘Ireland’ from the north on the basis of skin colour. Refugees are shamefully interned in our own local concentration camp at Maghaberry.
Governments utilise racism deliberately to divert working-class people’s anger away from the real causes of their problems. Problems such as poverty, housing shortages, and unemployment have all been blamed on immigrants. Racism is used by capitalism as a tool in dividing the working class and weakening class unity, collective action and class struggle, because this threatens their privilege and authority.
The real ‘spongers’ and ‘parasites’ are not immigrants but the tiny boss class who live off other people’s labour, sweat and toil. Immigrants bring a wealth of experience, culture and make a contribution to society and the economy, often suffering harsher conditions and exploitation than ‘native’ working class people. We must also remember that millions of working class people have migrated from Ireland – north and south – in search of a better life, fleeing inequality, injustice and poverty, over the past couple of hundred years.
In confronting racism we must build class unity. We reject cross class alliances simply because there can be no common interests between workers and the bosses. We need to expose and attack the institutions which are legitimising racism in our society, we need to stand up against racist bullies and fascists carrying out attacks on people from ethnic minorities. Central to this is the need to physically and ideologically confront fascism and the building of opposition to the system of wage slavery and exploitation which promotes racist scape-goating and the criminalisation of immigration.
Our goal is social equality and freedom for all people. Racism is motivated and perpetuated by greed, promoted by those in power, and is festering in ignorance and misplaced fear. We demand a world free for travel for humanity, not the exploitation of global capitalism, a world free from borders and controls on our movements. We seek to abolish governments, which create and maintain division on behalf of a few wealthy and powerful people, in favour of autonomous, self-governing, communities which co-ordinate their efforts through de-centralised federations. Doing away with capitalism, bosses and politicians and returning the control of work to those who produce the wealth of society, the working class.”

From the pages of Working Class Resistance#4, bulletin of Organise!