experience of daily confrontations with the police from the school upward and throughout the community.
The deepening economic and social crisis has had a particularly sharp edge in the black community, where the Labour and TUC policies of cuts in wages, jobs and services have meant greater deprivation and The tightening of immigration controls has not only fed white racism but has been accompanied by tougher policing of the immigrant communities. Work permit quotas have been slashed, intimiAnti-fascist march through Blackburn last weekend met with hysterical abuse from bystanders Britain.
200 black youths and police in class: to control and contain the two million strong black population of But if some get the carrot, a lot get more of the stick. The 'Bonfire Night' battle in Leeds and more recently the confrontation between Tottenham are only the tip of the Photo: DAVE EVANS (IFL)
Increasing numbers of young blacks are growing up to find that even if they get a job it doesn't have any security, or the pay and conditions are so bad that they are not pre pared to accept it. But more and more of them have been brought up in Britain to expect equal rights and opportunities. They are not prepared to accept the second class jobs and rights forced on their parents as immigrants.
Discontent and alienation amongst black youth are thus growing apace. The ever-lengthening list of provora tions, harassment and arrests by the police, from the Carib Club to Chapeltown, has fanned this discontent into open hostility - finally leading to battles between hundreds of black youths and the police.
Given the explosiveness of the situation, it's but a short step to organised resistance in the black communities. Already organisations like the West Indian Standing Conference keep watch outside popular black clubs in North London like the Noreik, which are a prime target for police attacks. Likewise the Government is redoubling its efforts to control the youth.
We've had the 'soft touch' - with numerous community projects, police community relations officers, and even an unsuccessful attempt to recruit blacks themselves into the police force. But black youth in particular are only too aware that 'integration' is just another word attacks and police brutality have long been a part of life for blacks here. The need now is to link up this defence. A step in that direction was the call put out this week by the Asian Socialist Forum in London for a meeting of all black and left organisations following the London murders.
Oppression Organisation around self-defence cannot be seen as separate from all forms of racial oppression. The right to work and decent accommodation are crucial demands in the black community. Alongside community action, this involves the right and the means for black workers to organise special caucuses inside the trade unions and the labour move. ment to ensure that their demands are taken up despite the racism that exists within these bodies.
Solidarity with anti-imperialist struggles - particularly with those fighting the white racist regimes of southern Africa, like the two SWAPO militants now under sentence of death — can also help to undermine the racist ideas bred on centuries or Brush Imperians commation But in the long hot summer ahead it will be the organisation of self-defence which will be the key to defending black youth and the black community as a whole.
One of the great virtues of capitalism -so we are told from the cot to the grave - is is compennveness. rums compete against each other to deliver the goods at a competitive price to the consumer. The consumer is meant to be king; potentially changing the fortunes of firms by a casual toss of one brand of baked beans and not another into a shopping basket EXCEPT THAT IT DOESN'T WORK LIKE THAT.
As we showed in last week's Red Weekly, the growth of monopolies allows the giant firms to maintain or increase prices with little regard to demand. In a period of soaring inflation, combined with manipulation of the accounting and taxation system, this has enabled them to make huge profits.
Profits up Unilever has increased its profits to an annual rate of E500 million from £328m. last year. Shell's profits are up to £284 m. in the first three months of 1976 compared with £268m. in 1975. Taylor Woodrow's profits in the first quarter were up 41 per cent to £15 million. After all, capitalist firms are in business to make profits - so it's not surprising to see them organising inflation to reap the dividends Red Weekly 27 May 1976 made in the Price Code' (The Times, 17 May). So much for so-called agree ments' with the trade unions.
The careful chroniclers of The Times were also able to write two days later under the headline Price Code changes picase moustry tal tne Government would go further than even the bosses expected:
Industrialists were clearly very pleased and not a little surprised last night by the extent of the concessions which the Gov. ernment now appears to be offering on the Price Code. A view being widely expressed after the Prime Minister's remarks at last night's Confederation of British Industry annual dinner was that the Government had gone about as far as it could on prices short of abolishing the Code altogether" (The Times, 19 May).
walkinson commented on the Gov ernment's statement that it is a piece of elastic. It is our job to stretch that piece of elastic as far as we can' (The Times, 20 May). It won't be difficult Capitulate Why does the Labour Government capitulate so completely even on the pathetic Price Code? Prime Minister Callaghan, who has a certain simpleanucaness wmich leads nim sometime to express the logic of the Government's policies with a clarity avoided by other night-wing Labour leaders, spelt it out in Parliament on the eve of the impos-