Blackburn: councillors, mosques and activists unite against EDL

Local councillors, the Lancashire Council of Mosques, the Bishop of Blackburn and a host of trade union activists are all urging local residents to come out and show unity against the racist English Defence League on Saturday 2 April.

Racist

The racist EDL – which has links to the British National Party and other fascist groups – wants to bring its poisonous message to the Lancashire town on that day.

But Blackburn & Darwen United Against Racism supported by UAF, Blackburn Trades Council, Blackburn College Students Union and the Youth On A Mission organisation have called a celebration of multicultural Blackburn on 2 April, to show that the racist EDL is not welcome in Blackburn.

The organisers say:

'On that day people from all sections of our community will be uniting in a public & peaceful celebration of our intent to live our lives, free from hatred, racism, intolerance and bigotry.

We do not wish to see our town become the venue for the latest display of EDL intimidation and violence, which is the hallmark of all of their public activity. Please come along and join in our celebration. There is far more that unites us than divides us.'

Mosques

Lancashire Council of Mosques this week urged Muslims and non-Muslims alike to join the multicultural celebration event and show their opposition to the EDL. They said:

'We encourage all people of all backgrounds to come out and attend the celebration of multicultural Blackburn being held in Sudell Cross on 2 April. We particularly call on the mosques to encourage their congregations to actively come out and support this event.

It is important that we demonstrate to the country at large that the vast majority of hard working and decent people in Lancashire abhor the poisonous and divisive messages of the EDL and that there is no place for the views they propagate in our communities.'

Backing

The list of local politicians, faith leaders, trade union activists and others backing the event includes: Lancashire Council of Mosques, Bishop of Blackburn Mr Nicholas Blackburn, Sir Bill Taylor, Michael Hindley leader of Hyndburn Council, Lancashire County councillor and former MEP Lancashire East, Kate Hollern leader of Blackburn with Darwen Borough Council, David Foster leader of Blackburn and Darwen Liberal Democrats, Councillor Mohammed Khan, Councillor Tony Humphrys, Councillor Pat McFall, Councillor Dave Harling, Councillor Jim Shorrock, Councillor Salim Sidat, Councillor Andy Kay, Councillor Faryad Hussain, Councillor Abdul Samad Patel, Councillor Maureen Bateson, Councillor Eileen Entwistle, Councillor Naushad Surve, Councillor Mike Johnson, Peter Billington Lancashire TUC, Shaukat Hussain chair Labour Party local government committee, Karen Narramore secretary Unison East Lancs branch, Peter Dales chair Unison East Lancashire Health branch, Simon Jones secretary Blackburn with Darwen National Union of Teachers, Paul Hogan assistant secretary Blackburn with Darwen National Union of Teachers, Anjum Anwar director of Womens Voice, Phil Riley secretary Blackburn Labour Party, Craig Hammond chair University & College Union Blackburn branch, Ashley Whalley secretary University & College Union Blackburn branch, Ian Gallagher Blackburn & District TUC, Gareth Roscoe secretary Unison BwDBC Local Government branch, Hansa Canon Unison black members officer, Pat Maudsley Blackburn Labour Party, Frances Bradley senior Unison steward, Dave Bradley Unison steward, Frank Davis Unite senior union rep Crown Paints, Bob Wellham Unite senior union rep Crown Paints.

UAF

New anti-fascist network set up

The unity conference of anti-fascist activists held in Nottingham on Saturday 27 March resolved to create new national anti-fascist network based on a class-struggle approach. Representatives from campaigns which attended were nominated to serve on the committee, and other campaigns that gave their support for the conference but were unable to attend will be invited to send reps too.

Contact the new network via the Nottingham group on NottmStopBNP@yahoo.co.uk.

This network will build nationally, in cooperation with others when possible but if necessary independently of the the UAF, against BNP and EDL mobilisations; and share political material that can be used to counteract more effectively the EDL and the BNP across the country by dealing on a working-class basis with the social issues which the BNP and EDL feed on.

Over 50 anti-fascists attended the conference. Campaigns in several Midlands towns and cities, Yorkshire, Greater Manchester and Merseyside and London areas, and a number of trade union delegations, including from the RMT London Transport Region.

The conference opened with speeches from the president of NORSCARF (North Staffordshire Campaign against Racism and Fascism) on EDL activities in Stoke and from a representative of the Notts Stop the BNP campaign. Workshops were held on: combating the EDL; campaigning against the BNP; and working in the trade unions. Resolutions drafted by the Nottingham group were discussed and adopted after a number of minor amendments.

An emergency motion was also passed condemning the arrests made at the protest against the EDL’s provocation in Bolton on 20 March.

Workers' Liberty

Minister tells unions to stop boosting the BNP

Caroline Flint, minister for Europe, fears 'feeding a climate of intolerance'

Labour officials fear rise of far-right in North-west, Yorkshire and Humber regions

A minister has warned Labour MPs and trade unions they will play into the hands of the British National Party if they continue their campaign against companies they claim recruit "foreign workers" to undercut pay levels.

Caroline Flint, the minister for Europe, has told parliamentarians and unions that they risk giving an "unintentional boost" to the BNP's prospects at the European Parliament elections in June. Labour officials fear the far-right party could land seats in the North-west and Yorkshire and Humber under the proportional voting system.

Unions and many Labour MPs are convinced that engineering contracts are being handed to firms which hire foreign workers because they can be paid less than under industry-wide agreements covering British employees. A strike over the issue at Total's refinery at Lindsey, Lincolnshire, last month was followed by walkouts around Britain.

Ms Flint said: "After the debate in recent weeks about foreign workers and EU law, the danger is that it will be misused at every opportunity by those who don't share our progressive values. And no amount of campaigning by anti-fascist groups, however important, will undo the damage if we unintentionally boost the BNP's campaign in Labour heartlands by feeding a climate of intolerance."

Writing in the Labour modernisers' journal Progress, she said: "If in Britain we make EU workers into scapegoats, or open the door to the BNP to stir up that feeling, what message does it send to the other EU member states where thousands of British people work?"

The issue is highly sensitive in Labour circles because the unions are demanding that Gordon Brown honours his 2007 pledge to create "British jobs for British workers." He insists he meant ensuring these workers had the skills to land the jobs available – not curbing "foreign" job-hunters.

In an attempt to head off further protests from unions, ministers are launching a campaign to stress the benefits of working abroad. "Europe's open market – freedom to live and work anywhere in the EU – is not a one-way street to our constant advantage," Ms Flint said.

Some 10 per cent of all the 3.5 million jobs in the UK were as a result of trade with the EU, she said. Non-British EU citizens made up less than one in 20 of the workforce in Britain, while 1.6 million Britons lived in other EU countries – more than 200,000 of them in work. "The difference is that EU residents in Britain are younger and have higher skills," she said.

Ms Flint added: "EU membership, including free movement of workers, has been good for British families and companies and we must vocally support it."

Independent

The BNP is no friend of British workers

The BNP is trying to exploit the protests in Lincolnshire for its own racist ends by turning an issue about contracts and jobs into a racist one.

Everyone should be alert to the dangers of this protest spiralling out of control, as the BNP would wish, setting worker against worker rather than tightening employment rules to ensure that employers cannot use one group of workers to undercut another – of whichever nationality or race they may be from.

It is also vital that people are not fooled by fascist propaganda. Their policies would crash the British economy. Millions of Britons depend on foreign-owned firms for the jobs. If the BNP got their way and all non-whites and foreigners were booted out of the country then why wouldn’t all these foreign-owned companies pull out as well?

Despite the announcement of 2,500 job cuts this week, the steel company Corus still employs 24,500 people in Britain. When the BNP kick its Indian management out of the country they would be throwing these people onto the scrapheap.

Then there are the hundreds of thousands of British workers who rely on British companies winning overseas contracts. If it’s “British jobs for British workers” then will the BNP support the American aviation industry withdrawing all work from British Aerospace and Rolls Royce and giving it to American companies?

And finally, what about the millions of Britons living and working abroad? If the BNP kicked out everyone in Britain who they did not like why wouldn’t other countries do the same?

We live in a complex and interwined global economy. As we have so graphically seen during the recent financial collapse what happens in one country quickly affects another.

What we need is for workers to enjoy the same rights and conditions across Europe and for people to be paid the rate for the job in the country they are working in. This, together with proper trade union organisation of all workers – British and “foreign” – and not racial scapegoating is how we stop exploitation of workers and undercutting of wages. The BNP is no friend of the British worker.

HOPE not hate

Barring the BNP

Amendments to the employment bill are vital in empowering trade unions to keep fascists out of their ranks

Tomorrow, MPs have the chance to strike a blow for social justice and represent society's abhorrence of racism and fascism. Amendments to the employment bill are coming before the Commons to restore to trade unions some of the rights lost during the long years of the Thatcher-neoliberal consensus (remember that?).

The central amendment, backed by the trade union group of MPs and the campaigning anti-fascist magazine Searchlight, seeks to reverse a decision in the Lords that restricts the right of unions to exclude or expel active fascists from our ranks.

The European court of human rights has found that the 1992 Tory trade union and labour relations act is in violation of the right to freedom of association under the European convention on human rights. Workers should be free to join a trade union without sanction, and so too should the trade union be free to choose its own members.

This amendment is vital if unions are to be able to exclude British National Party activists and other active racists from membership. As the economy slides into recession, experience teaches us that racists will most likely step up their activities and try and blame social problems on migrants or black people generally.

Trade unions are a bulwark against this poison. Our aim is to fight for social justice for all working people in unity. We will resist any effort to set workers against each other.

That is why active support for fascists and racists is, and should be, incompatible with trade union membership. Trade unions should be free to use their own democratic procedures, without state interference, to control the right to membership. Amendment NC6 will simply repeal Section 174 of the 1992 act, giving trade unions back their right to act against active racists and ensuring that UK law is in compliance with European standards.

Other amendments are scarcely less important if the industrial relations playing field is at long last to have a semblance of balance. Currently, the duties placed on trade unions to provide employers with notice of ballots and industrial action place are onerous, costly and excessively complicated. They expose unions to applications for injunctions by employers to prevent industrial action taking place, even where a clear majority have voted to support the action. A new clause will introduce greater fairness by cutting the "red tape" that unions face. Employers would be required to supply trade unions with information they need to comply with notice and balloting requirements.

All workers should also be protected from suffering detriment or being sued as a result of their taking part in industrial action, other than appropriate deductions from the worker's wages. A further amendment will mean that all workers have the right to take official industrial action free from the fear of dismissal or victimisation.

The International Labour Organisation has repeatedly found that UK law is in breach of international human rights treaties by failing to provide this protection. The effect of one amendment would be to establish that dismissals made in anticipation of, during or after lawful industrial action would be void unless the employer can show that the reason for the dismissal was unconnected.

Regulation currently bars employment agencies from supplying agency workers to carry out duties normally performed by a worker undertaking lawful strike action. A loophole in the law, however, means that this duty does not apply if the agency does not know that the agency worker is replacing a worker taking industrial action. A further amendment would close this loophole.

These are all modest measures, which perhaps, now that the days of deregulation as a panacea are past, MPs can finally adopt.

Guardian

Reinstate Section 18 - Join the campaign to allow unions to expel fascists

The House of Lords has recently altered a section of a Government Bill that would have allowed trade unions to expel BNP members and other fascists from their ranks. In doing so, the Lords have actually made the situation for trade unions even more difficult. Under the revised Bill, trade unions will not only find it more difficult to remove fascists but individual BNP members will actually be afforded more protection than any other trade unionist.

Section 18 of the Employment Bill was introduced in response to a European Court of Human Rights ruling that upheld the right of ASLEF to expel a BNP member from its union.

However, we now find ourselves in an even worse situation. A legal opinion on the Lords amendments concludes: "If the revised version of section 18 comes into law, I am convinced that it will become more difficult than ever for trade unions to expel BNP members. It will also be an opportunity for the BNP to pick publicity fights with trade unions, and also to waste trade union funds."

Trade Union Friends of Searchlight (TUFS) is launching a campaign to get MPs to reintroduce the original wording when the Employment Bill returns to the House of Commons this autumn.

• We believe that fascism is incompatible with the ethos of trade unionism. Trade unionism is built upon the concept of solidarity whilst the BNP seek to divide people on grounds of race, colour and religion.
• We believe that trade unions should have the right to exclude members of the BNP and other fascist parties from their membership.
• Unions should not be liable for any financial loss incurred by fascists if they are quite separately disciplined, overlooked for promotion or even sacked by employers after the union itself has taken action, as the Lords' amendments now state.
• We call on MPs to either discard the Lords amendments or introduce new wording that is favourable to unions.

To support the campaign to Reinstate Section 18 click here.