and Unite Against Fascism (UAF) is an important step forward in terms of bringing forces together.
We certainly need national organisation, we need key principles and demands to fight for everywhere. But our enemy is not like the Government going to war.
The BNP organises locally, on our streets, our estates, our workplaces, even our schools if it gets the chance. So we need local campaigns which know the local issues and produce their own local material.
A top-down approach is a disaster and has already led to rival campaigns in some areas where a local organisation often based upon the local trades council have been sidelined.
819 AGA Protests as French National Front leader Le Pen came to visti BP chief Nick Griffin The challenge to socialist organisations, to Respect and to campaigns for migrant rights is to challenge the fundamental idea of immigration controls
This means building an alternative to New Labour-a workers party based on socialist principles. Respect is not that nor does it currently have that as an objective. Whether Respect can become that and whether Socialist Resistance wants to make it so is another debate. But the fascist threat certainly lays a serious responsibility on socialists organised inside Immigration:
Almost every piece of BNP agitation takes up the question of immigration.
Where there are no asylum seekers and new immigrants, they talk about the threat of them coming.
They talk about settled Alan Thornett The Green Party in England and Wales has scored some success in recent years, winning two Euro MPs and increasing its representation in local councils.
The Greens' tactic has been to evolve to the left in order to capitalise on disenchantment with New Labour and the growing awareness of environmental issues.
Recently the party has wisely moved further to the left, in advance of the general election, to compete more effectively for the left of Labour vote.
The Greens' mini-manifesto "Peace and Progress" published on March 18 contains a call for troops out from Iraq - after two years of equivocation.
They know Iraq
Green will be a major concern in this election Party and need to define themselves against the Liberal Democrats on the issue. They also oppose to the proposed EU constitution, something else they have dithered about for several years.
The left turn of
FREE the British Greens also extends to social policy. They are against privatisation and in favour of limited re-nationalisation, at least of the public utilities.
They promise more social provision and a progressive tax system, a policy that puts them well to the left of Green Parties Europe-wide.
Yet at the same time they seek to appeal to the rightists who favour "green capitalism" or some small-scale, localised version of free enterprise reminiscent of early capitalism and impossible to reconstruct.
While the British Greens have been adopting a left stance their counterparts in a number of European countries have moved in the opposite direction after being drawn into government.
There are currently 169 Green MPs in the various national parliaments in European countries. Their highest numbers are in Austria 17(465,000 votes -9.5%), Finland 14(223,000 -8%), Germany 55(4 million
8.6%), Italy (911,000 votes) and Sweden 17(246,000 - 4.6%)*
The Greens are also in governmental coalitions in Hungary, Portugal and - most importantly - in Germany where they have their strongest party in Europe with 60,000 members.
They are the red/green coalition partner, with the Communist Party, to Gerhart GO NOT
# backed the NATO bombing of Serbia - a move highly controversial at a Green Party conference, but one which the party eventually supported.
Four years later the German Greens were instrumental in sending German troops to Iraq. Without their votes the decision to deploy the main German force the would have fallen but their position in coalition would have come to an end.
In 1997 in France, the Greens won seven seats in the National Assembly and took a ministerial position as part of the 'plural left'. They helped to prop up the social democratic government of Lionel Jospin as it brought in a range of anti-working class
legislation including wholesale privatisation and deregulation. While the Greens in Britain have not been faced with governmental coalitions, at local government level they have been prepared to jump into coalitions with the Liberal Democrats or even the Tories if they could gain some short-term advantage Bllar
from it. They scandalously formed a coalition with the Tories in Leeds last June when they won some additional council seats. The opportunistic politics of the Green movement are there for all to see - in Britain and across Europe. *The number of MPs for the percentage vote varies according to the particular electoral system, of which there are wide variations within the proportional system. Britain is the only European country with first past the post.
On their results in 2001, on the basis of any other electoral system in Europe, the Greens in Britain would be in Parliament.