A WORKING CLASS VIEW FROM MERSEYSIDE Unity!

AS THE smoke clears around the Suites Hotel on the outskirts of Kirkby following the 10 February protest against refugees being housed there the tasksofr anti-fascists is becoming clearer. Lazy sloganeering and disdain for the 500 or so local men, women and children who came to intimidate other disadvantaged and marginalised workers with similarly rare accents and, crucially, different coloured skin is no help in understanding what happened and why.

Whether the, now notorious, video posting apparently showing a white Year 11 schoolgirl being sexually harassed on her way home from school by a young (but significantly older) man ultimately leads to police action is still in question although we now know that following arrest, he was released without charge.

If it turns out an offence was committed, it will be rightfully condemned and the guilty party punished. If guilty, he should reflect on where his action led.

Nevertheless the manner in which the film has been cynically manipulated and the local community exploited has produced complex dilemmas for the left and the labour movement on Merseyside and it is going to need more than a romanticised notion of ‘scouse exceptionalism’ to turn this around.

Within hours of the crowds dispersing sa ‘Refugees Welcome Here’ demonstration in central Liverpool was arrnaged for the solidarity is understandable and welcome such events cometimes miss the point and risk obstructing a solution to the problem of hostility to regugees and migrant workers. in those circumstances is a both a tactical and strategic error if our object is to isolate the fascists and win among working people an understanding of the causes of mass migration.

The anger and searing alienation that was evident that Friday was palpable – if not wholly rational in its expression. Residents of the proud Kirkby community – an overspill estate from the Liverpool slum clearances might be right to be furious about an incident of alleged attempted child sexual exploitation but they’re manifestly wrong to deflect that anger towards innocent, frightened refugees from north Africa and Afghanistan.

These are people who don’t want to be abandoned in low-budget rooms occupying the Knowsley hinterland – boxed in by the M57 motorway, A580 East Lancs trunk road and a busy industrial estate – any more than many of the locals evidently want to have them there.

Those baying for violence against the people in the hotel – and against a modest group of anti-fascists shielding them – could have legitimately directed their physical and metaphoric volleys at the rotten economic system that brought poverty and harms the life-chances of people across the Borough of Knowsley and vast swathes of our city region.

From what I witnessed, having spent a nervous, undercover 15 minutes amongst them, very few in the mob were organised fascists or committed racists – even fewer would describe themselves as such.

In considering the correct response to a threat new in character and scale, we should acknowledge that it’s wrong that people are dumped by the Home Office while asylum applications take forever to be processed.

The environmental, military and economic push factors displacing so many from Middle Eastern war zones or regions devastated by climate change needs to be better explained.

Committed anti-racists and anti-fascists in working class communities need to make sure that rational and informed discussions take place in every factory, office, Post Office queue, on the bus and in the pub.

It’s hard going countering casual and racist scapegoating but such practical discussions, like explaining Marx’s ‘wage robbery’ theory of surplus value or how the ruling class rule, are vital. But if we’re going to do it well it needs to be done in communities – town by town, estate by estate and street by street –not by shouting through megaphones into an echo-chamber of already committed progressives from across the spectrum of the left who happen to have a Saturday afternoon to spare.

PETE MIDDLEMAN IS CHAIR OF THE NORTH WEST TRADES UNION CONGRESS