Andrea Enisuoh: Reverse the fear

[Militant International Review, No 53, September-October 1993, p. 16-18]

Andrea Enisuoh asks, what can be done to defend black and Asian communities from racist attacks?

The murder in April of Stephen Lawrence by a gang of white thugs produced renewed calls in the black and Asian community for something to be done to stop racist attacks. Bernie Grant MP declared that the black and Asian community “will not allow our young people to go on being murdered. Every community has the right to defend itself in law. If the police won’t defend us, we must defend ourselves”. (The Voice, 27 April, 1993). Calls for black self-defence were made in the black press and supported by local race monitoring groups. Dev Barrah of Greenwich Action Committee Against Racial Attacks (GACARA) said: “We have to reverse the fear so that ordinary decent people can walk the streets”. Since then, in television and radio discussions and in public meetings, the call for self-defence has been raised. All agree that something has to be done to defend black and Asian communities. The question rarely concretely addressed, however, is what? How does a community ‘reverse the fear’? How can the effective defence of black and Asian communities be organised?

Racial violence in Britain is at an all-time high. Some cases have been met by protest meetings, pickets and demonstrations. These are an important part of the struggle against racism. A show of strength against racists can help to isolate them. Protests can also serve as support for black and Asian communities in the local area.

However individual demonstrations are invariably not enough to effectively stem the flow of racist attacks. Consistent community-based campaigns, involving local people, trade unionists, tenants associations and community organisations, are also needed.

The murder of Stephen Lawrence hit the headlines. Yet there are thousands of racist attacks that take place daily and go almost unnoticed. A substantial number of these are focused around the home, with families being verbally and physically attacked and harassed by racists from their neighbourhood. How, for example, in these instances, does a community ‘reverse the fear‘? Can institutions such as the police, the courts and local authorities, combat racist attacks?

The black and Asian community have always been open to every avenue that could possibly protect them from attack. Even now support is growing for the proposal from several Labour MPs for legislation making racial violence a criminal offence. However this legislation on its own would never be enough to protect black and Asian people.

In many cases of assault, harassment and even murder, the local police refuse to accept that they are racially motivated and are not ‘normal’ crimes. The south London area of Greenwich, for example, has become known as Britain’s racist murder capital after four killings in just two and a half years. Yet Stephen Lawrence was the first recorded racial murder victim. How would the existence on the statute books of a criminal offence of racial violence change the attitude of the police? The decision in July of the Crown Prosecution Service to drop charges against two teenagers accused of murdering Stephen Lawrence will inevitably increase the growing feeling that the police are incapable of protecting black and Asian people.

Despite paper policies and glossy advertising campaigns declaring that ‘racial harassment is a crime’, councils have also not been capable of effectively stemming the flow of racism. Bristol council for example recently had to pay out £10,000 compensation to a family who had endured eleven years of harassment. Despite reporting this to the council on numerous occasions, nothing was done.

Some councils have adopted policies of evicting tenants guilty of racial harassment. Other councils offer ‘victims’ the opportunity to be rehoused. But neither policy on their own can stop racist attacks taking place.

Many black and Asian families do not want to be uprooted and rehoused. Moreover this policy can also lead to the formation of ghettoised housing. It can have the effect of encouraging local racists to step up their activities to achieve an all-white estate.

Alternatively, evicting a racist tenant without a community campaign to explain why, can result in a backlash. The community must be involved in uprooting racists every step of the way. Any individual victim of harassment must be defended by as strong a force as possible and not left to feel isolated. In any community struggle against racism the main aim must be to isolate the racists.

The impotence of the police, courts and councils to deal with racial harassment on the estates was highlighted in The Independent magazine recently, which recounted the case of a family in Greenwich, the Js, who had suffered 12 years of harassment from two white families in their area. Constant racial abuse culminated in the family being attacked in their home with baseball bats. On previous occasions when the Js had called the police they had been told nothing could be done until someone was injured, even though the white families had, according to the local housing office, been the subject of numerous complaints from other tenants.

After the assault, injunctions to keep the peace were issued against the racists but also against the Js! The harassment continued. “It is terrible”, said Mrs J, that her children know “that nobody, not their parents, the police, courts, nobody can protect them. So we’ve got to sell up”. (The Independent, 12 June 1993). They had been driven from their home.

So what could a community campaign have done that the police, courts and council didn’t? Firstly it could have served to isolate the racists with a campaign of leaflets, meetings etc. to show the strength of feeling against the racist families’ actions, identifying them and monitoring their activities.

When the racists’ workplaces, if any, were discovered, the trade unions there could have been approached to discuss what action they could have taken against the racists in their midst. Concrete support could also have been organised, rotas to defend the family, telephone trees, modelled on the experience of the anti-poll tax campaign’s ‘bailiff busters’, that could have sprung into action when the attacks happened. Whereas one neighbour eventually came to try to defend the family a strong body of neighbours could have been organised. Such community pressure could also have served to force the police to act.

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In the case of the Js the racists were known to the family. But what about attacks that take place in the streets, where the perpetrators are not known to the victims? This was the situation, for example, facing the Bangladeshi community in the Drummond Street area of Camden, north London, in April 1992, when a gang of white racists, armed with hammers and knuckledusters, rampaged through the area, eventually being confronted by local Bengali youth. But this was not an isolated attack. There had been a 40% rise in racist attacks in the area in the preceding two years. In such a situation is there a case for community defence groups or patrols to be organised? While patrols could have a role to play, again this would have to be as part of a broad campaign involving the mass of the community. Only the community controlling the actions of such groups would make them more than simply vigilantes, settling personal grievances or acting on individual prejudices. This was a feature of the ‘anti-crime’ vigilante groups studied by the TV programme Panorama (2 August, 1993). They included the recently jailed ‘Norfolk Two’, who actually abducted someone who they thought, mistakenly, had stolen their property!

Moreover, the police would respond heavily to the activity of such patrols. Attempts by Asian youth in Newham in the early 1980s to organise escorts to protect school students from persistent racist attacks, were met with arrests. Similarly, in the Camden case above, it was four Bengali youth who were charged with grievous bodily harm! Eventually, the ‘Drummond Street Four’ as they became known, were acquitted in June this year after a long campaign. Only the pressure of mass community support for such activities could compel the local police and the courts to accede to another force effectively ‘policing’ the area.

A sufficiently well-organised and broadly supported local community campaign could therefore play a dual role, The community could organise an effective campaign against the racists that they led, organised and controlled. But also it would act as a check on the police. In itself it could exert enough pressure to force the police to act in cases of racial harassment and attacks.

The anti-poll tax movement, with a well-organised structure resting on the broad support of millions of non-payers, which ultimately defeated the poll tax and brought down Thatcher, showed what can be achieved by a community based campaign. This was despite the active hostility of the Labour Party leaders to the non-payment campaign and the inertia of the trade union leaders over the issue.

Yet despite the present inactivity of most of the national union leaders in mobilising to defeat racism, anti-racist campaigns, including local community defence campaigns, must still strive to win the trade unions, locally and nationally, to be part of the fight.

In the current period the role the Labour Party and the trade unions can play in the struggle against racist attacks may not be immediately apparent. But we must never forget the potential power of the organised working class, uniting in the trade unions millions of workers, black and white, men and women.

The cases of Stephen Lawrence, Rolan Adams and others show that not all racist attacks take place in the home or are part of a constant campaign against one family. The family of Stephen Lawrence claimed that before his murder neither they nor he had experienced racial harassment, let alone racial violence. Racist gangs can and will attack individuals at any time, unless they are so isolated in society at large that the fear is indeed ‘reversed’.

This means organisations such as Youth against Racism in Europe (YRE) building a powerful campaign that can show the strength of the anti-racist movement not just in one community but nationally. But it also means building a movement that can provide the socialist alternative that is necessary to stop the spread of racist ideas and eradicate the rotten economic and social conditions in which racism breeds.