Socialist Resistance

An archive of socialistresistance.org, 2002–2022

Wide choice of allies available for the left

Socialist Resistance no8  |  page 27

This is scanned newsprint, not web text. The original PDFs carried no text layer at all, so every word here was read off the page by OCR. Expect dropped opening letters, run-together words and wrong characters. There was no contents page to cut the paper up by, so the articles were found from the size of their headlines: a headline may carry its kicker, and where an article ran beside a boxed panel a few lines of the neighbour can appear. The scanned issue is the authority; this text is here so the words can be found at all.

I was interested to hear that as part of Alan Thomett's explanation of his resolution to the Socialist Alliance he said that

"The proposal is aimed at anti-war activists, including Muslim activists who have moved to the left during the campaign" [Socialist Alliance calls for realignment of the left; Socialist Resistance June 2003].

Not problematic in itself, perhaps, until we see that the article fails to affirm the importance of an orientation towards Black and ethnic minority communities more generally or of support for self-organisation in these communities.

It does seem that some in the Socialist Alliance have a fixation with one faith-defined community rather than seeing the wider picture (in opposite ways to the AWL).

Surely if we reach out to the Mosques, we must also be reaching out to the Temples, Black churches and synagogues.

More importantly, we need to build strong links with the secular movements and organisations in those communities.

Anyone who listened carefully to the excellent intervention of Immam Said Ahmed from Preston at the conference (see Matthew Caygill's article below Alan's) would realise that he would probably share my concerns about this and also, incidentally, that he felt the need to point out to conference that the Muslim Association of Britain does not represent all Muslims. Membership Standing Order form YOUR BANK DETAILS: Bank Name Address Your account details: Sort Code Account Name Account Number Please pay the sum of (write in words and numbers) On the day of And on the same date every month thereafter, unless cancelled or amended by me in writing.

Of course it is vitally important to recognise the importance of Islamophobia at the present time. Socialists have a duty to combat this and to support and link up with Muslims who are fighting back against it. Nevertheless, it is clear that Islamophobia is not the only aspect of racism that is on the rise and anti-racist resistance takes many forms across many communities as coverage elsewhere in this edition of the paper makes clear. Surely "potential partners for such realignment" will come from a richer variety of movements.

David Landau, London ST TH W

IRDERER