Though Cowards Flinch

Protest march in 2009, taken by Sarah Wrack

Today in Barking, Youth Fight for Jobs organised a march to call on the government to provide jobs, to stop the cuts that would see £500 million slashed from the civil service and its pension fund, and to oppose the BNP’s racist message, which interferes with real solidarity and a fightback.

YFJ is largely supported by the Socialist Party, so a lot of the people on the march were from the SP. However, there was a lively contingent of about thirty from the Day-Mer community group, including families. The NUT branches of Waltham Forest and Lewisham also sent along contingents to the march.

In the event, the march was lively, receiving a warm welcome – including from a Unite Against Fascism stall outside Barking Tube station. The march attracted a lot of interest. While we passed, leaflets were distributed to all bystanders about meetings in Barking in support of a ‘national day of action’ on Thursday 18th of March, protesting cuts inflicted on higher education and other sectors.

Impetus and awareness will have been built by this march, which takes place in a key area. Nick Griffin will be standing in Barking at the next election, and with the unpopularity of the Labour government, Labour MP Margaret Hodge will be in for a four way fight between the Lib-Dems, Tories and the BNP.

None of this is helped by the fact that Hodge herself is not above making incendiary comments about immigrants.

Such an attitude is likely only to generate support for the sentiments the BNP thrive on. It certainly won’t act to build a concerted movement capable of showing workers there are better ways to demand housing and oppose cuts, and explaining, while at it, that the BNP are racist cowards who vote for the same cuts as Labour, Tories and the Lib-Dems.

The third function of the march was to bolster the spirits of the people who attended.

A dose of high spirits was heartening in a week where PCS were on strike, due to cuts announced by the government. The RMT signallers have balloted for strike. We’ve seen BA pilots commit to seven days of industrial action, and British Airways admitting that they want to break the strength of Unite, the union which represents their pilots.

Cars beeping and people giving the thumbs-up sign out of their car windows was encouraging. Even when people were initially hostile, having received leaflets and been informed that the march wasn’t anti-immigrant, stiff debate got across our point about the need to fight for public services and welfare, and to stand together with immigrant communities to do it. People didn’t always agree, but it was obvious we’d got them thinking.

Our attitude was summed up in the speech, after the march, by one of the Day-Mer marchers – that we needed solidarity, that each colour or nationality or race fighting for what it could get would only make it easier for the government to cut spending in the areas that need it most, the areas with least political clout.

In-fighting amongst workers would make it easier for bosses to hire cheaper staff and fight unions. It would make it easier for crime to drive a wedge between people instead of inspiring solidarity in neighbourhoods.

The key work is still to be done in Barking, but I was happy to lend a hand to the local activists, to get people talking about the issues that should decide the next election in Barking, and should thereafter be used to unite the labour movement to fight for key demands around jobs, housing and education.