 Felly, mae'n gweithio i ddweud o'r Martin Luther King a'r ysgrifennu'r ysgrifennu yng Nghymru. Mae'n gweithio'r Martin Luther King oherwydd mae'n gweithio'n gweithio'n gweithio'n gweithio'n gweithio'n gweithio'n gweithio'n gweithio. Martin Luther King was assassinated in Memphis. He'd gone to Memphis in support of black sanitary public workers. He was part of the struggle obviously for civil rights and equal rights for blacks, which still had not been achieved in that period. This group of black workers had been on strike since March the 12th when he arrived. They were on strike over wages and conditions. They had suffered discrimination and it's just an example of the kind of thing that was going on. There had been bad weather previously and the workers were sent home. But the black workers received two hours' pay for the day, whereas the white workers who were sent home were paid for the whole day. That showed still the level of discrimination that existed. In this case of course it sparked off a strike. Now Martin Luther King was assassinated by an obscure petty criminal. If you look at the guy, he's just a secondary insignificant figure. And who was behind the assassination has never really been fully investigated or discovered. But many pointed the fingers at government authorities or people up on high. In any case it was clearly a racially motivated assassination. And it wasn't the only one, I'll refer to others later on. Just days after his assassination the Civil Rights Act of 1968 was passed in the United States. That act contained the prohibition of discrimination in such matters as housing based on race, religion or national origin. On paper it established equality in these questions. Now Martin Luther King had been involved in the Poor People's Campaign which culminated in a march on Washington and a camp set up outside the White House which continued also after his death. Now he originated in the segregated south. He grew up in the southern part of the United States where they still had apartheid. Blacks couldn't go in some places where whites could go etc. But in the 50s and this would have marked also his development we have two cases. One is Claudette Colvin, a 15-year-old black girl in Montgomery who refused to give up her seat to a white person which went against the Jim Crow laws which were still on the statute books. December the same year Rosa Parks, much more famous an adult because the earlier girl, the earlier was a minor was arrested for doing the same thing. She was arrested because she was an adult of course and could be arrested for such a thing. Arrested simply for not giving up your seat to a white person. These were the conditions of that period in that part of the United States. This event led to the Montgomery bus boycott led by Martin Luther King which lasted for 385 days. That was the degree of anger which was sparked by what seemed like a small event. During this period King's house was bombed, he was arrested and he became a national figure in the civil rights movement. Just a little briefing on the Jim Crow laws these were introduced after the civil war. Although they granted slaves freedom i.e. they could no longer be treated as a possession they introduced segregation into the system. They weren't allowed the same civil rights. In effect they were disenfranchised and these laws stayed on the statute books as late as 1965. So in the 50s when all this was happening those were the laws which were in place. King said many times that he stood for nonviolent peaceful protest. He took part in the movement for black's rights to vote against segregation, for equal rights at work etc. He opposed the Vietnam War. He began to speak of a redistribution of resources i using some of the wealth to alleviate some of the worst aspects of class society. Apparently he even read Marx but he drew the conclusion that Marx wasn't for him. He didn't agree with the analysis. I'm being very telegraphic here obviously but this place is King in the category of what we as Marxists would call a reformist. Somebody who believes it's possible to gradually reform the evils out of capitalism. So trying to improve the lives of the working class people without overthrowing capitalism. Of course in the post war boom period that illusion would have been a very powerful one that you could achieve such improvements for working class people because there was such a huge development of the economy and with it came massive industrialisation. Millions of blacks for instance moved from the southern states to the major cities into the auto industry and the other industries and with it of course came jobs, wages etc. But there were some black leaders who went further than Martin Luther King. For example Malcolm X who was assassinated earlier in February 1965 he started out as a black nationalist and for separation of blacks from whites. But through the experience of the struggle observing events he eventually dropped this and he moved more and more towards a socialist outlook. He grew to understand the need for unity across the colour divide. In 1964 he came out with his famous quote which I've seen a lot of comrades have reposted on their Facebook pages and think you can't have capitalism without racism which was a big step forward in the thinking of blacks involved in the liberation movement. And I quote him in 1965 he said this I am not a racist. I am against every form of racism and segregation every form of discrimination. I believe in human beings and that all human beings should be respected as such regardless of their colour. That's a step away from the nationalism and the separatism and a recognition that the struggle has to be a common struggle of blacks and whites. He was reaching these conclusions and of course that's when he was assassinated because to have black leaders who base themselves on basically almost a kind of inverted racism blaming all white people for the ills of blacks that doesn't create a problem to the capitalist class because it helps to keep the workers divided along colour lines race lines et cetera ethnic divisions but when you have leaders of the blacks rising above that and drawing more radical conclusions that this is a working class struggle then those people start to become more dangerous not less dangerous and then there were those who went even further there's the famous Fred Hampton murdered in 1971 at a very young age he was born in 1948 that would make him 23 according to these figures he was a leader of the Black Panther Party in Illinois and he was killed by the police during a raid in December 1969 it was an open police assassination they set up a spy who drugged Fred Hampton so when the police came in he was lying in his bed with his partner they just shot him cold bloodedly killed him on the orders of the FBI now Fred Hampton went much further than Malcolm X he actually drew very clear class conclusions if you listen to the videos that are available on the internet of him speaking you'll hear him say I am a revolutionary, a proletarian he refers to the international proletarian revolutionary struggle and he says racism is an excuse used by capitalism he said we don't hate white people but the oppressor whether he be white or black he saw things in class terms and he referred to the idea that we're fighting amongst each other when in actual fact we should be fighting together he had a class position which was a product of the 1960s and the radicalization that went with it now just some context to what was happening at the time let us not forget we had the Vietnam War in March 1968 this is the same period I've just been referring to 400-500 unarmed civilians were massacred in the famous Milai massacre some of the women were gang raped and their bodies were mutilated by American soldiers this provoked revulsion in the United States and particularly amongst the youth and then we have events such as the shooting of students at Kent State University in Ohio in May 1970 four students were killed when the National Guard opened fire during a demonstration against the Vietnam War a further 10 were seriously injured some of those killed, if you look at the list were just happening to be there some were walking through the campus some were moving away some were just looking at what was happening they were shot in cold blood this led to a nationwide student strike across the United States universities were closed down, occupied previous to that, in South Carolina State College February 1968 again similar to period in which Martin Luther King was assassinated three students were shot and killed by the police while protesting against racial discrimination the result, the investigations led to the exoneration of the police and the only person charged from those events was one of the students who was shot shows you the nature of the state now this radicalized the student movement to an extreme degree at the same time as this student radicalization has taken place which is in line with what we saw in May 1968 in Italy in 1969 and across the globe in Mexico, Pakistan we have a growing radicalization of the working class growing worker militancy especially young workers and black workers the blacks were moving into the cities as I said before and becoming proletarianized and for example in 1967 40% of the United Auto Workers Union was under the age of 30 it was a very young working class very young people going into industry and in the mid-60s it's not by chance therefore that the strike levels begin to climb again in line with the statistics you have for Germany, for Italy, for France, for Britain everywhere you have the same kind of statistics appearing between 1967 and 1971 the number of workers taking part in strikes in the United States doubled and this was a consequence of the pressure of capitalism this was the boom these were the so-called golden years of capitalism of the post-war boom but see what happened between 1955 and 1967 industrial workers weekly hours worked went up by 14% not down, up workers were working longer hours corporate profits in the same period were up over 100% in those years the capitalist doubled their profits now the number of industrial workers also grew which is clearly a positive development from a capitalist from a Marxist point of view, sorry because it increases the strength of the working class the number of industrial workers in that same period I-55 to 67 went up by nearly 30% a massive strengthening of the industrial working class but output went up by over 90% so they're squeezing more surplus value out of the working class they're investing massively in technology therefore you have automation but you also have speed ups checks on breaks how hard the workers are working how fast they're working etc and the trade union leaders, the American trade union leaders agreed to all this this was all agreed in the contracts in the agreements they made with the bosses and this led to an interesting process which was one of the rank and file from the early 60s onwards you see the beginnings of a change in the trade union leaders they're getting replaced local officials are being voted out new officials, more radical, more militant are being voted in and then at the same time you have wild cat strikes wild cat strikes because the trade union bureaucracy was putting a break on the movement of the working class holding them back doing everything to try and keep social peace in 1960 there were 15 wild cat strikes in the different Chrysler plants in 1967 49 wild cat strikes in 1968 over 90 that shows you the growing rank and file militancy of the workers in an attempt to circumnavigate the bureaucracy which was holding them back what was happening to black workers wages also was part of the process in 1950 average wages of black workers were 60% the level of white workers but instead of improving through the boom it actually got worse 1955 average black wages went down to 55% of white workers wages and 1962 to 53% basically by the mid 60s the average wage of a black worker was half that of a white worker but it wasn't just wages, unemployment the rate of unemployment amongst blacks was double what it was amongst whites but the number of industrial black workers was massively increasing and this was a significant element in the situation Detroit for example had a majority black population at that time and large numbers of blacks were entering the auto industry in and around Detroit and in the period 1969-73 we see a rank and file rebellion not just against the bosses but also the trade union leaders this is what was happening on the workers front which is parallel to the radicalization taking place amongst the youth is a historical discrimination against blacks which is pushing the civil rights movement you have the growing militancy of the working class a huge reaction and a radicalization of the working class particularly the youth and the blacks but the working class as a whole growing levels of strikes combined with the reaction against the imperialist war in Vietnam and the protests against that combined with the repression that the state met it out shooting unarmed students on more than one occasion where students were shocked by they couldn't believe if you listen to the survivors of those events they say they saw police shooting into the crowd and they thought they must be shooting blanks they would never do such a thing instead they were shooting live ammunition and killed the students all of this massively radicalized the movement and explains why you had of course you had Martin Luther King who was a leader of the civil rights movement but limited himself to trying to fight for improvements within the system and then you have the much more radical layer such as the Fred Hamptons who draw very radical revolutionary conclusions about it's not about race it's about class and it's about class struggle this was what was being produced in the United States the most powerful capitalist country on the planet on one of the two big superpowers of the time so although we had the economic boom and the economic growth and all the rest of it the other side of it was that of course being a class society with all the injustices of that all these elements came together to produce a very radicalized situation in the United States and in those conditions that had been you've discussed May 68 and other movements if the French workers had taken power in May 68 this would have been followed by the workers of Italy taking power very shortly afterwards Britain in 1972 was on the verge of a general strike I remember it I'm a little less young than you are I remember my dad being on strike for seven weeks in 1972 coming home every day I had a good lesson in the trade union politics even before I joined the organization for seven weeks I was told every day what happened at the factory assembly and how the mood was going of course the end of that was that he was really angry with the trade union leaders because they sold out but that was a taste of the mood that existed at the time the country was on the verge of a general strike so you can see May 68 in France could have led to a revolution in Europe and what I've just described about the United States shows you that potential was there also in the States there's this myth that America was a bulwark of reaction I can remember in countries like Italy and France in the 60s and 70s they used to talk about the Americanization of society well they ignored that there was another side to Americanization what I just described to you could also be called Americanization i.e. the American working class rising up and challenging the system now some more general points about racism and the black question there are attempts or there were attempts in the past to find a kind of scientific justification for racism i.e blacks are inferior intellectually only good for hard labour of course there's no basis to that what so ever in actual fact there's no such thing as race when we talk about racism I know it means discrimination against people who look different but there isn't actually any such thing as a black race or a white race there's no genetic basis to it what so ever the colour of your skin or the kind of hair you have is actually a very minor difference now I've had cats over the years about black cats, white cats, ginger cats they're all cats and none of them ever say I'm not playing with you because you're a ginger cat cats don't do it and humans humans in normal conditions don't do it either if you put black children or white children to play together when they're very young their instinct is not to say oh you're black I'm not playing with you it just doesn't happen it does not happen what does happen is as they grow up in this class society the racist element where it does exist is passed on to the next generation and what is potentially a harmonious society is transformed into a society based on racial discrimination but there's a reason why they invented the idea that blacks were somehow inferior and it's not from the Roman times it's not from feudalism it's actually capitalism that creates the need to develop the idea that somehow blacks African blacks are inferior somehow why is that? because well first of all if you can divide the working class according to colour or language or religion then that plays a useful role in dominating the working class in Northern Ireland there is no physical difference really between Protestants and Catholics I can't tell a Catholic from a Protestant by looking at him or her I can tell a black from a white simply from the colour of the skin but in Northern Ireland there's no nothing nothing whatsoever and yet they've managed to successfully create a divide which led to thousands of people being killed during the troubles why the British ruling class ordered to divide divide and rule it's a classic if you look around the whole of the British empire Cyprus, nice little division there between Cyprus speaking people and Turkish speaking people India, partition, Muslims and Hindus with millions killed in the process of partition wherever you go they left little presence for the people you go to Nigeria today and you find the divisions in the society and again, they're all black in Nigeria it's not a white black division and yet there are houses who are discriminated by Yruba's and vice versa, Ebo's there have been terrible wars and killings as a result of this so a division based on language, religion or some kind of identity in this case colour plays a very useful role in dividing working class people and pitting them against each other i.e. if there's not enough jobs it's because of the immigrants it's because of the foreigners who are coming here taking our jobs etc etc and of course this is fermented by the media if you read the media the local media, little examples of girl is physically attacked or raped if the attacker is black or Muslim that adjective will be added to the report if he happens to be white and has a very English name and he happens to be a Christian maybe all those adjectives are superfluous they are not necessary it makes for shorter news report fewer adjectives the reason is it creates this idea that while the blacks are more violent they're more dangerous and they are more criminal inclined in Italy at the moment they're fermenting racism to an incredible degree the other day there was actually a report a bus in a town in northern Italy a black immigrant was pushed to the back of the bus and the driver helped in pushing him to the back of the bus now there's no laws in Italy which says that blacks have to be somewhere in a separate part of the bus that's happening and if you read the press it's a constant barrage about how dangerous everything has become I've spoken to people who say oh I used to walk down here but I don't walk here anymore because of all these blacks and I say can I ask you a question do you actually know somebody in this neighbourhood who's been physically attacked by a black no so why are you frightened of being attacked by blacks oh they're criminal they rob houses I said do you know anybody in this neighbourhood who's been burgled by a black no it's always the same and I said so what are you frightened of and are you telling me that it's safe to walk the streets when it's just Italians there's no such thing as Italian criminals there's no such thing as the mafia or the drangada which clearly was invented by the blacks who just arrived but it shows you the power also the propaganda it's a conscious policy we have the minister of the interior who is consciously promoting racism the mayor of Riaccia in the south who applied a policy of integration a very intelligent policy actually he revived the town because of the emigration of Italians with blacks from Africa and Asians and Middle Eastern people he actually revived the town creating jobs they've opened the bars reopened the houses that had been abandoned this guy was put under house arrest and now he's been expelled from the town he can't go back to his hometown the other night he slept in a car this is the mayor of Riaccia in the south of Italy so they're promoting racism as a conscious policy to divide why because of the crisis of the system in a deep crisis the deepest crisis it's ever been in in actual fact if you look at what's happening around the world and therefore the promotion of racism is a conscious policy to weaken the working class Marxists oppose all forms of discrimination whether it's based on your gender your orientation your age your language your religion you believe in or don't believe in or whatever we oppose all forms of discrimination all forms of oppression and we fight for the right of everybody to live their lives as they wish now the point is this the origins of the racism towards the blacks is in the slave trade you see initially they didn't use blacks to work on the plantations they used indentured workers whites, irish and others to sell themselves for a period of time in order to get across the Atlantic and try and hope for a better life in America now of course that was limited because eventually you'd finish your contract you'd be free they tried to enslave the local indigenous population as well the problem with that is that once a Native American escapes from slavery back to his tribe it's difficult to distinguish the slave from the non slave the beauty for the capitalists of the blacks of Africa was you bring blacks to the United States and their very physical appearance and that's connected to being a slave makes it impossible for that person to escape into freedom because they escape but they're blacks they just picked up again back to the master so with it also came the need to create the idea that they are inferior because you see human beings naturally don't like treating other human beings as if they were animals that's a general a natural tendency but class society has to brutalize human beings and make them believe that they're somehow inferior but I had the joy yesterday of watching Italian TV the national because they did badly at football so we forget about the world cup in it but the national women's volleyball team I don't know if you know them they beat China three sets two the other day and they're in the final against Serbia so Italy now is all we're in the final of the women's volleyball championship but three of the girls who play for the team are black one of them is of Nigerian parents and she scored the final winning shot apparently she's super fast when she hits the ball I was watching it and I was thinking of a few people I know in Italy who are quite racist and I thought I wonder if they support this team or not it brings out the contradictions of course when they're interviewed this week perfect Italian it's a new phenomenon of course but going back to the question of creating this idea that they're inferior they did that to justify the terrible treatment of the slaves in the United States they're not human beings they're not like whites they're below us they're on the level almost of animals the Romans didn't have black slaves the Romans were much more democratic and egalitarian everybody could be a slave white, black or whatever and they just did things like crucify them in the thousands if they're ever dead to rebel like the Spartacus rebellion but they had no concept that you are inferior because you are of a specific colour all they said was they called slaves a tool with a voice so rather nice way of calling human beings a tool with a voice he's not really human but he speaks like a human in the States they created this myth of the blacks now of course the liberation of the slaves was also part of the development of capitalism initially black slavery played a useful role for capitalism in the cotton fields played a role actually in Lancashire and in the north in the development of industry the supply of cheap and plentiful cotton worked by slaves in America but as capitalism develops slavery becomes unproductive no longer productive Marx refers to it when he explains you have to put tools in the hands of workers and you want workers who will respect the tools and treat them in a certain way and you've invested in them what interest does a slave have in anything that he does he doesn't even have a higher wage at the end of the day if he or she works harder he just produces more wealth for the boss he still owns still owned by the land owner and has no rights whatsoever but as capitalism developed in the north they moved in a different direction in the same way in a certain sense that in Britain in the past they had to provide a huge supply of labour for the cities by literally expelling the peasants and they were white English peasants who were being expelled off the land pushed into the cities capitalism requires what are called free labourers i.e. free to sell themselves on a daily basis to whichever capitalist is prepared to employ them and of course a plentiful supply of unemployed workers also helps the capitalist to hold down wages because it's a pressure on the working class and so the material base at the end of the day for the liberation of the slaves was to be found in capitalism itself which ended with the ending of slavery but as you see it didn't reach full equality I just refer to the Jim Crow laws and the discrimination which continued blatantly until the 60s but in spite of all the formal equality on paper if we look at the statistics we see that blacks are still not at the level of whites in the United States something like 13-14% of the population was in poverty but among the blacks it's over 25% unemployment amongst the blacks to this day is more than double what it is amongst the whites now some blacks have made it right to the top haven't they? Obama amazing liberation of the black people or nice people like Condoleesa Rice if you remember her or Colin Powell the black army officer you see capitalism uses racism and colour to divide the working class but there are moments when the same capitalist class which can be responsible for terrible racism such as in South Africa when the class struggle becomes so powerful that it risks overthrowing the system itself like in South Africa you see they had a problem in South Africa black and working class was like interchangeable if you were black you were working class if you were working class you were black there were some white working class but a small minority the bulk of the proletariat the people producing the surplus value were blacks and the discrimination was blatant with the apartheid system in the struggle of the South African working class in ending that system you see how flexible the bourgeois is prepared to make all kinds of concessions when it comes to equality before the law and also in promoting some blacks to become capitalists I'll give you an example Cyril Ramaphosa you know him now as the president but he used to be the leader of Kasatu the trade unions and I have a video of him speaking in 1985 at the founding congress of Kasatu I hear him speaking they're talking about the symbol of the union which had to have the wheel of industry but also a woman because women are part of the workforce and the colour red's got to be in there because red is the colour of socialism this is the guy who now is a multi-billionaire and a leader in South Africa he's been bourgeoisified he's been allowed to become extremely rich I'll tell you something you do not become a billionaire simply as the general secretary of the trade union although some of them do get some good money and it helps them on their way this guy was promoted in order to be able to say we have now blacks in the government in fact if you look at the government today in South Africa it's overwhelmingly black so you would say wouldn't you the blacks have achieved freedom but if you go down into the black neighbourhoods you will find the same social and economic conditions that existed before when it comes to health care schooling etc so equality equality before the law under capitalism doesn't mean equality that's the point we have the stress because you can be equally sentenced to death for killing somebody or you can have the right to be employed in a certain sector but if unemployment is double what it is amongst blacks to whites you're still equal in the law you're equal in the face of the law but in actual fact you're very unequal because it's capitalism capitalism is not a system that is based on true equality capitalism is a system which is based on the exploitation of labour by a minority of the population which is called the capitalist class exploits the working class and extracts surplus value from the working class and then in this society we're all equal but if mum and dad have a lot of money they can pay very very good school can't they? and if mum and dad have social problems, economic problems unemployment, single mothers without another parent to help low income etc then those children do not have they're not equal to the parents to the children of the parents who can pay for the private school I've been to a school my daughter does her music exams there and it's a private school and it costs something like £100,000 to send your child for five years to a school like that and I look at the school and I feel absolutely disgusted not that the young kids have got that I'm thinking this is what everybody should have this is what all kids should have access to and the wealth is there but they don't then I have my wife who works in the nursery in a very run down area and she tells me that the majority of the kids she deals with have special needs and they don't have the staff to deal with them children who are violent to other children children who are with obsessive behaviour, learning difficulties and those children could be helped if they had the extra staff instead what we have is a cutting of the staff because they're cutting back on spending because of the austerity now in these conditions where you already have unequal relations between blacks and whites between immigrants and local people then what you have is the poverty is generated and regenerated and it remains it doesn't go away even though on paper we have equality like in Britain you have equal wages don't you I mean nobody can employ a woman and a man and pay them different wages and yet if you look at the average wage differential between men and women not only is it still there since this crisis began it's got wider the average wages of men the last figures I saw was something like £24,000 a year and the average wages for women £18,000 it used to be £21 now how do you explain that well women mainly work in childcare that's a fact and childcare is paid for wages so although a man working in the same nursery would get the same wage you very rarely find a man working there occasionally you do cleaning and a lot of other jobs it's the same thing women because they tend to have babies and men don't the boss doesn't like to employ them in certain jobs or prefer to keep them on a temporary contract so that in six months or years time they can get rid of them and they can work unstable work some total leads to inequality in practice even though in theory the law says you're equal and that's because it's the capitalist system clearly that is to blame I have a lot of stuff here on black nationalism in America but I'm not going to go into it there's a material on the website which you can read on black nationalism which is very good which goes into great detail into the history of slavery how it developed and why the struggle against slavery the civil rights movements etc it goes into the black panthers there's a very interesting article on the American on the US website on the program of the black panther party which analyzes it in detail this is all material which if you're interested in further studying this question I would look it up if you're interested it's actually called hold on the program of the black panther party which way forward for black workers and youth and this is the one I've got is part one and it's from 2014 the document of the American Congress is called the black struggle and the socialist revolution published by the workers international league and available on their website I strongly advise you to read it and maybe hold meetings of Marxist societies based around these documents and maybe the lead off I'm giving here which is more of a general more of a general character now the question of how to fight discrimination, racism etc there's been a lot of talk since the 60s of positive discrimination of favouring blacks when there's a job comes up in a kind of trying to redress the historical injustices we as Marxist would argue that we shouldn't limit ourselves to deciding who gets the limited number of jobs you know there's ten black unemployed and there's ten white unemployed and there's two jobs you give the jobs to two blacks you haven't solved the problem for the other eight blacks you have provoked a resentment amongst the ten unemployed white who say, I mean the same condition as them, why are they getting it it doesn't help to unify it actually divides and it actually explains why some people like Trump or others can actually use this to lean on the poor layer of the white working class to try and drag them towards a reactionary position what we require is a revolutionary position which says we want a job for all of the ten blacks and all of the ten whites that's the way to stop one, divisions between people based on colour because there won't be any resentment because he's black or whatever and that means that what Marxist should fight for is not this or that small redress because think of it this way if a whole factory is going to close what's the point of positive discrimination in jobs all of them, black and white will lose their jobs if you introduce the concept of discrimination let's say half the factory has got to be sacked if you apply positive discrimination you'd have to say logically white workers first ie get the sack imagine what that would do for working class unity it would actually strengthen racism it would strengthen the right wing that is actually what has happened that is part of the explanation of what is happening at the moment with these parties because the left is not giving a serious explanation as to the nature of the crisis what it's about because it's basing itself on the reformist outlook it cannot answer the burning questions facing working class people working class people are actually facing some very dire conditions again I was in Italy in the south last week Comrade took me, took him home to his block of flats he said there should be 15 families living in this block of flats there's 15 flats he said there are over 40 families living in this building and I said how does that work he said it's the sons and daughters of the older generation who've lost their houses they can't pay the mortgage they can't pay the rent so what you have is a son comes back with his wife and kids the daughter comes back with her husband and kid and they have one family in each room when I saw that and I saw the neighbourhood I thought this is an explosion in the making this is a social explosion being prepared the problem is of course the left doesn't explain the answer of course is expropriate the millions of empty homes which exist than families that need them but they've been kept empty for speculative reasons in order to fight that you don't do it with some cosmetic change here and there you've got to expropriate the big corporations that own the housing and it's the same with the rest of the economy now in America today going back to the states we have the black lives matter we have the shooting of blacks it's much more likely you'll be killed on the streets if you're black than if you're white there's an inbred racism in the police force even though there are black policemen of course but in general the tendency will be to regard a black as dangerous you've seen the videos of black guys put your hands up in spite of that ends up getting shot if he's white less likely to happen they still have the discrimination, the racism and the de facto inequality before the law they talk about equality before the law where's the equality before the law when if a policeman turns up you're not equal if you're black you're more likely to be killed or beaten up or die in the hands of police officers black Americans have the highest death rates of any ethnic group in the United States how do you explain that? well it's the economic conditions the education the healthcare they don't have the living conditions etc some statistics from 2005 average family income 67,000 for whites 38,000 for African Americans college educated is they're 33% higher African Americans is 20% sorry of the population living in poverty whites 9% blacks 26% if you live in poverty if you go to a school which doesn't have the staffing doesn't have the funding you're more likely to end up in the wrong end of the spectrum of income in society because there is a class divide now under capitalism we're not equal because there are social and economic inequalities there are rich and there are poor those who can pay for education and those who can't and racism keeps coming back even when there are periods if you looked at Britain up to about 10 years ago you would have said look at the integration look at the multiculturalism look at how things are moving nicely in the right direction the laws are there and all the rest of it and then you have Brexit and the right wing side the nationalism that went with it which was we want to kick all the immigrants out racism comes back even where it seems that it was going down and the reason why it comes back is because it's a useful tool for the capitalist class and even if it's not there they will revive it or they will blow on the embers of racism which are below the surface and light it up once again because capitalism needs a scapegoat they need somebody who can be identified as the cause of the problems none of housing is all these immigrants now the target is of course Muslims Islam is the target and they are using the wars in the Middle East the terrorism and all the rest of it to pinpoint Muslims as the force to blame yesterday on the news there was another of these gangs that groom young girls but you notice there was a gang that was all white English who did the same thing didn't make the news headlines I thought why doesn't that one make the news headlines they're both awful they're both disgraceful human beings in the way they behave but if they're Pakistanis and Muslim they make the headlines the idea is it's a process of transforming Pakistanis into monsters they are monsters because they're Pakistanis they're monsters because they're dark because they're Muslims and therefore we have to fight them and that is provoking a division within the class itself as Malcolm X said to return to him you can't have capitalism without racism and the point is capitalism is a system which because of its very nature returns to crisis crisis comes back because of the contradictions of the economy I'm not going to give an economics lesson here I'm sure you've all discussed Marxist economics we've got to bring out the lessons of the past because what we see what we saw in America in the 60s wasn't in effect the black population, the black working class their consciousness reaching the point of understanding that it's not just blacks but it's a class struggle and in struggle itself we've seen it many times in strikes the workers come together men and women fight together against the boss not fight each other blacks and whites come together and fight the boss whatever colour he is they learn from experience that if you had a strike imagine having a strike and you say only the white workers or only the black workers are going to go on strike who would win would be the boss he'd have black legs who would be prepared to work against the strikers so our task is to build working class unity we have to explain the class interests what's behind all this with facts and figures and also understand that through class struggle racism begins to break down the opposite process begins the capitalist promote division class struggle brings workers together and the workers begin to see in the process of struggle who the real enemy is it's not your work mate that's the enemy it's not the black cleaner or the black care worker that's your your enemy it's the boss whatever colour he has in South Africa in the rising struggle against apartheid the classification on your documentation whether you are white black or coloured and one of the slogans of the rising youth movement and the black youth used to shout it they would they in the classification they would say not black not white not important that was their slogan it's not the issue it's the issue is the nature of society reformism cannot do this the left of reformists will fail to combat racism at the end of the day because racism is not fought by making appeals to people to be nice to each other it's fought by solving the economic and social problems the material basis upon which racism can thrive and if there's growing unemployment growing poverty increasing austerity and people are suffering and people are really suffering young comrades should really go into some of the working class neighbours and just talk to people just listen to the problems they're talking about and you'll realise what an explosive move exists down right down in the depths of society you can't remove racism in that environment simply by appealing to be nice it's by raising the class issues and saying we need houses for everybody jobs for everybody healthcare for everybody and highlighting the super profits which the capitalists are making they have money for certain things they have the billions for trident when it comes to the potential to destroy the whole of humanity they have billions and billions when it comes to financing an extra teacher of special needs in a nursery they don't have the money this is the society we live in we have to highlight that capitalism inevitably enters into crisis at some point that's abundantly clear now the last 10 years of crisis and it's creating greater tensions and it's seeing the rise of far-right groups based on racism and discrimination violent attacks on people of colour or on women etc and it's only a revolutionary programme which can cut across that they accuse us the Marxists of being utopian because we think we can change society the utopians are the ones who think that in a society where unemployment is growing whole neighbourhoods where the mass of the population is unemployed poverty is growing cuts in healthcare cuts in pensions people are literally going hungry food banks are on the increase all the time that in these conditions you can make some kind of wishy-washy liberal appeal against racism and think that it will work they are the utopians not us unless you expropriate the capitalist class you take the wealth which has been accumulated by the working class and use it to build the houses to build the nurseries to employ the extra teachers to improve the transport system etc etc then you are not going to fight the phenomenon if we change society gradually over time racism will die down and eventually it will disappear because it is not a natural way of being for human beings but you have to create what I would call the natural way of living together for human beings which is a social question and it means a radical change in society which means a revolutionary overthrow of capitalism and that is what we stand for