BY CELIA PUGH AND CAROLINE BELLAMY
LONDON - Two thousand people gathered May 1 in Brixton, a
south London community, in response to the rightist bombings
here over the last few weeks. The determined and noisy marchers
then marched to central London to link up with 3,000 others at
a trade union-organized May Day march.
The previous night a nail bomb had exploded in a Soho district pub frequented predominantly by gays, killing three people and wounding 68. Thirty-nine people were injured April 17 in a nail-bomb attack in Brixton, an area with a large Black population. A similar bombing April 24 wounded five people in Brick Lane, the heart of the Bangladeshi community in Tower Hamlets, east London.
Police say they received telephone calls claiming responsibility for these acts from four rightist groups, including Combat 18 and the White Wolves. Combat 18 is described in the press as having members in the British Army and links with loyalist paramilitaries in Ireland. The police have been widely reported as having agents in Combat 18.
On May 2 police charged a 22-year-old man with responsibility for the three bombings. The police claim that he acted alone and had no connection with the rightist groups.
Militant reporters talked with residents of Brick Lane the day after the attack there. Groups of young people and others congregated on corners of Brick Lane, still cordoned off by the police. Hira Miah was working in a music shop when the bomb went off outside. He explained that the area, like Brixton, is racially mixed. "They are trying to use bombs to divide us, but they won't succeed. These bombs will just bring us closer together and start a fightback in the community," Miah said.
Fights against racist attacks and cops
Miah recalled the organized defense and demonstrations
against a series of brutal racist attacks in 1993. Police
attacked a vigil of Bengali youth outside the hospital where 17-
year-old Quaddus Ali was being treated following an assault.
Police charged nine youths with taking part in the vigil they labeled a riot. Miah participated in protests against these racist attacks. This included a 50,000-strong demonstration through Tower Hamlets in March 1994 organized by local youth and community groups and backed nationally by the Trades Union Congress.
After these actions, racist gang attacks lessened, Miah said, but the police increased their harassment of local Asian youth. "I was getting stopped about three times a week. After the riots they stopped our cars, saying they were checking for weapons." Miah said that the police have not stopped him since the Stephen Lawrence report. An investigation into Lawrence's murder by racist thugs exposed police racism and inaction to bring the killers to justice.
Donna Melody, who is white, was born and raised in the area. She was taking her young daughter to Brick Lane just before the explosion. "The government puts words into other peoples' mouths," she said when asked what she thought of government laws to restrict immigrants and refugees, scapegoating them for deteriorating provision of hospitals, schools, and housing. "I think these racist bombs are disgusting. It's wrong to tar all white people who live in areas like this with the same brush."
The day of the Brick Lane explosion local Labour Member of Parliament, Oona King, who is Black, blamed the bombing on a "white backlash" against the Stephen Lawrence report.
The May 1 march from Brixton painted different picture. As demonstrators made their way to central London, people waved, cheered, and hooted car horns indicating the massive isolation of these rightists. Isaac Joseph, who lives in Brixton, joined the march. "This is my first time at a protest," Joseph said. "I saw the march go past my window. I told myself `I should join them, we can make a difference!' "
On May 2 another 2,000 people joined a rally and vigil in Soho organized by gay rights groups. Among the speakers was government minister Paul Boateng. A police representative was cheered when he reported they had charged a man with the bombings, but there remained a mood of anger among the crowd.
Some on the May 1 march expressed concern that the police were trying to use the bombings to attack democratic rights. Phelim MacCafferty, a student originally from Northern Ireland, noted, "They may try to bring in methods they have used in Ireland, like taking away our right to remain silent. We'll see more police harassing people in Soho, Brixton, and Brick Lane."
Pretext for curtailing rights
At a rally in Brixton on April 29, left wing Labour MP
Kenneth Livingstone had called on the government to apply the
"same methods as we have used against terrorism in Northern
Ireland."
In recent years the police have increased street patrols and advocated greater use of street surveillance cameras by businesses and local councils. According to The Observer, there are now 1 million such cameras in use across the United Kingdom. These measures are endorsed by some leaders of community organizations in Black and Asian areas, who also call for rightist groups to be banned.
The Southall Monitoring Project, an antiracist group in west London, is organizing with local mosques and temples for 100 arm-banded volunteers to patrol the area and report anything suspicious to the police.
Labour home secretary Jack Straw appealed on BBC Radio 4 for people to inform the police of suspicions about workmates, neighbors, or acquaintances who may be members of rightist groups.
In a May 1 editorial the London Times argued that "members of every minority must now realise the police are their protectors."
Echoing this theme Prime Minister Anthony Blair said May 2 that the police response to these bombings would help defend "what it means to be British." He used the same speech to justify NATO's bombing of working people in Yugoslavia.
Paul Galloway, Communist League council candidate for Levenshulme ward, Manchester, said the rightists gain "oxygen for their actions from daily news of NATO raining bombs on working people in Yugoslavia, to the government stepped up scapegoating of immigrant workers with the new restrictive asylum laws. The fact these attacks take place is then no accident. They are an inevitable result of the crisis of capitalism."
Galloway pointed to the way the youth on Brick Lane had won trade union backing for their march in 1994 as the best way to respond. (See statement on page 14.)
Celia Pugh is a member of the Amalgamated Engineering and Electrical Union. Caroline Bellamy is a member of the Transport and General Workers Union.