 So the reason that we've decided to have this meeting is of course in response to the earth stopping Black Lives Matter movement that has really gripped the world over the last few months. We find ourselves or sorry we found ourselves once again, reading the words that a black man has been killed after an altercation with the police something that I know I've read many, many times before. George Floyd is just one of many victims of police brutality of racism and I would say of capitalism as a whole. But we also saw huge protests erupt in the UK. We saw thousands of people overwhelmingly young, both black and white on the streets protesting against police brutality. And one of the main slogans of the protests was the UK is not innocent. And I think that the reason it was so popular here is simply that the video the horrific video of George Floyd dying at the hands of that police officer matches up to the experience of black people in the UK as well. And there's a pain in that video and a pain more broadly that is felt deeply in that video in him people can see a father they can see a brother, they can see anyone close to their lives. But I also think on another level, but the vile undignified ending to George Floyd's life serves as a metaphor for the crushing weight of the capitalist system, the crushing weight of class society, which oppresses us all, but doubly oppresses black people and in fact relies on their subjugation. So the point of this discussion, which is a political discussion is not simply to describe racism. I'm sure everyone here agrees and recognizes the oppression that black people face. What we need to understand is how to fight for black liberation and how it's ultimately dependent on the liberation of the working class as a whole and in its entirety. Firstly, as Marxists we do not deny or downplay the racism that exists in society or within the working class as a whole. What we do is explain in a materialist manner where that racism comes from. I think in general we're taught that racism is a bad thing, slavery was bad, but in large it's just accepted as a part of life. It's just presented as this natural product of humans where we just learn or there's something innate in us that views other people that we don't recognize with a fear or with a hatred. But I would say that this is not a lens through which you can understand racism, you can understand oppression, history or human society by extension. And to be specific, we have to look at the origins of black oppression and how race relations particularly in Western countries will talk a lot about Britain and America. And these are countries where there is huge systemic racism inbuilt into the institutions and explain where that comes from. And it comes from slavery, it comes from the existence of chattel slavery. So slavery has existed throughout history in various different societies, but it's understood most commonly and I'm sure the slavery that you might think of when you first hear the term is of the barbaric episode in which humans were brought from West Africa and transported to plantations in America and the Caribbean. And I just want to start with a really basic point that obviously from that system is where we can trace intergenerational poverty that still exists today. Housing segregation, a lack of access to proper education, but also cultural attitudes that perceive black people as dangerous, as violent and intelligent. But another thing that you're taught when you grow up is that racism is more about these cultural attitudes, right? It's about when someone's called a racial slur or someone is judged or thought to be stupid or just lesser than another person due to the color of their skin. It's kind of centered around prejudice. That's how we, I think, most commonly understand racism. And all of these things clearly are part of the day to day struggles that a lot of black people and other people of color have to contend with. It has a huge impact on their day to day life and their experience. But I think it goes a bit deeper than just these cultural attitudes and that the racism that black people face is woven into capitalism and it has an economic part to it. And that's because the racism that black people face and black oppression more generally was necessary for the development of capitalism, which I'm going to go on to explain now. So in Britain in particular, lots of companies that participated in the slave trade were a really important part of the industrial revolution. And for the rising bourgeoisie, this kind of new class at this time, the slave trade played a really pivotal role in the expansion of the global market. Having said that, much of Britain did not see firsthand the nature of slavery. So a lot of Britain's wealth came from trade rather than an internal economy that was dependent on the labor of slaves, which was actually the case in America. And this difference, although it seems kind of slight, is quite important, I think, in how racism has manifested in slightly different ways between Britain and America. So the ideological defense of slavery and racism, therefore, was intensified in the American states, and that was in part due to the physical presence of the plantations. Initially in America, indentured servants of European and African descent were not considered a separate. This racialization came into being when the ruling class discovered the usefulness of categorizing labor based on skin, because it started to atomize the laboring class and fostered such deep-rooted divisions that we are still living in that aftermath. And it makes sense, right? I think most people would agree that clearly racism in America is at such an intense level. And that's because they had to justify to the whole population and the whole laboring class that these people were so much lesser than that they should physically be in that bondage in a separate way. And we can see the consequences of that to this day. But there was a specific event I would like to highlight called the Bacon's Rebellion in 1676, during which indentured servants, both black and white, joined up together to fight against their system of bondage. And seeing them united in that way along race lines caused alarm for the ruling class quite simply. And after that we saw a real conscious effort and a real conscious implementation then of race-based discrimination. You see the state begin to promote the idea of the white race because it divided the laboring class and it stopped them, it prevented them from uniting together to get rid of the exploitation that they were already suffering. So this is a really important element to the Marxist analysis of racism and a materialist analysis to what racism is and where it comes from. And obviously particularly today we're talking about the origins of black oppression and anti-black racism. So although slavery had existed for a long time before that, here we saw it become racialized. And Marx actually said that, you know, in a draft for Capital, he said that slavery takes on its most hateful form in a situation of capitalist production. And I want to bring this up because I think there's a lot that Marx said about slavery and that is maybe less known or less understood in general, because Marx did pay attention to slavery and a lot of slave movements, because he understood what its development meant for the whole of human society. And he also understood how crucial the abolition of slavery would be in terms of the abolition of capitalism and the overthrowing of capitalism, which is obviously ultimately our goal. And the reason for that is the smashing of slavery was a necessary precondition for the development of capitalism on the American continent. Because this would in turn lead to a strengthening of the movement of the working class. And this is a quote, a really important quote from Marx that I'm going to read now. He says that, in the United States of North America, every independent movement of the workers was paralyzed so long as slavery disfigured a part of the republic. Labor cannot emancipate itself in the white skin, where in the black it is branded. And I think that that last bit is probably one of the most important things Marx ever said about race, that labor cannot emancipate itself in the white skin, where in the black it is branded. And it's on that basis that we agitate and fight for the complete unity of the working class along race lines as the only way to fight for black liberation and the liberation of the working class more generally. And there's different ways that that takes place obviously Marx actually saw and recognized slave revolts of which there were many as extremely important in this in this time as well. So this is another quote from Marx he says, in my view the most momentous thing happening in the world today is on the one hand the movement among the slaves in America, started by the death of Brown, and the movement among the slaves in Russia. On the other, he says, I've just seen in the Tribune that there was a new slave uprising in Missouri, naturally suppressed, but the signal has now been given. And Marx also reported in several articles and was keen to report on mass meetings that were actually organized by British workers by the British working class, who were organizing to try and prevent the British government intervening in the civil war the British government was trying to intervene on the side of the south of the southern land owning class in America that wanted to keep the slave system and British workers in some cases organized to try and try and prevent that. I think that's, you know, the most basic form we often talk about of solidarity of internationalism in that sense. And Marx reported on this in several of his articles and the journalism that he's doing at the time. So the reason I wanted to, you know, bring out these quotes of Marx so early on is because it summarizes the position that Marxist take towards the question of racism, and beyond that all forms of oppression, that the liberation of any oppressed group under capitalism is dependent on the whole of the working class, uniting to uproot that system at its base. Obviously doesn't mean that you ignore racism or any individual struggles. In fact, I would say that history has shown that the best way to overcome prejudice or backward ideas in the working class is through the class struggle is through the movement of the workers coming together. CLR James, who is a famous black, black Marxist, actually wrote about how racial prejudice that now stands in the way will bow before the tremendous impact of the proletarian revolution. And that will in turn be formed by the role that black and oppressed layers of the class will stand up to take. He said, and I quote, in Africa in America in the West Indies on a national and international scale, the millions of Negroes will raise their heads rise up from their knees and write some of the most massive and brilliant chapters in the history of revolutionary socialism. So this is how we approach the question, first and foremost, with unwavering faith and knowledge that is the international working class that will destroy racism at its root. A lot of these talks around black liberation and racism tend to have a focus on America, and that is understandable. I mean, I want to talk specifically about Britain because we're in Britain, and I'm going to come on to that a bit later. But I don't think we can ignore America or the role of the civil rights movement in America, because it had a huge impact on Britain and has a huge impact. A lot of American civil rights leaders, anti-racist leaders had a huge impact on the movement beyond just America's borders. And, you know, as explained earlier, the physical presence of plantations means that racist ideas towards black people are really powerful and strong in America. And I think, you know, in particular, there's been a conscious dehumanization of black men and women and children. And it's right to use that word, I would say, that, you know, they are not viewed as humans, but rather as threats. And this kind of criminality that is associated with black people in particular was necessary after slavery ended to help facilitate the mass incarceration of black people that took place and the kind of prison system. There's a good documentary called 13th on Netflix, which deals with the 13th Amendment in the American Constitution, which prohibits slavery apart from basically in prisons, which has been a huge part of the American system for a long time. But I'm not going to talk about that too much. I want to now just briefly comment on the civil rights movement in America and what we can learn from that. Because I think clearly it's a movement that has to be studied as anti-racists and, you know, people fighting for black liberation, we have to look at what that movement did and what it achieved. And from it we received incredible figures such as Fred Hampton and Malcolm X and even Martin Luther King and various others. But I do want to make the point that these figures and these individuals were born out of a really intense period of class struggle, really, that was taking place in America. And many of them towards the end of their lives, towards the end of their political lives, were drawing anti-capitalist conclusions. So Jay Edgar Hoover, who was the head of the FBI, he actually called the Black Panthers, which was the party that Fred Hampton was most involved with and leading, was one of the leading members, sorry. He called the Black Panthers the greatest threat to American democracy at that time. So I want to kind of examine why that is the case. Why did he view the Panthers as such a threat? Because Fred Hampton was only 21 when he was assassinated. And simply I would say that the American establishment were terrified of a leader that was trying to unite people and was trying to unite the working class. Because that's exactly what the ruling class is afraid of. And I want to quote him in full to show why, to give a bit of indication as to what exactly they were scared of. So Fred Hampton says, we've got to face some facts that the masses are poor and that the masses belong to what you call the lower class. And when I talk about the masses, I'm talking about the white masses, I'm talking about the black masses and the brown masses and the yellow masses too. We're going to fight racism with solidarity. We say you don't fight capitalism with black capitalism, you fight capitalism with socialism. And I think, again, you know, I mentioned earlier a lot of Marx quotes and described them as a summary of the Marxist position towards racism. That is also a very clear summary of the Marxist position on how to fight racism, not with black capitalism, but we fight capitalism and socialism. And I think the reason I bring this up is because in America, there's no, you don't have a Fred Hampton day. But what you do have is a Martin Luther King day. And they kind of celebrate him and they take his I have a dream speech and they reel it out and they try and, you know, remind everyone that the American dream is a real thing. And, and yeah, we do, you know, we do have some racism and everything. But, you know, true anti racism is telling young black kids that, you know, they can be part of the American dream. They can be anything they want. You can even be the president now. They've seen that we've had the first black president. So anything should be possible in America. But that clearly doesn't match up to people's lived experiences that clearly doesn't mean anything to any of the working class black or white in America. And also in the case of Martin Luther King, I would say is a slight crude kind of appropriation of his legacy. I mean, I don't want to focus too much on Martin Luther King. But I will just say this, he made his I have a dream speech in 1963. He was assassinated in 1968. Within those five years, his political ideas did develop and he said much better things than I have a dream. In fact, two weeks before his murder, he said, if America does not use her vast resources of wealth to end poverty and make it possible for all of God's children to have the basic necessities of life. She too will go to hell. And this was a speech he was giving at a strike of sanitation workers in Memphis. And also towards the end of his life he was he was organizing a march for unemployed people at that time. But there's also a better quote by him where he says, you can't talk about solving the economic problem of the Negro without talking about billions of dollars. You can't talk about ending the slums without first saying profit must be taken out of the slums. And then he says you're tampering and getting into dangerous ground because you're messing with folk then you are messing with captains of industry. He says it really means that we are saying that something is wrong with capitalism. There's various other quotes, but the reason I wanted to bring this up is so many anti racist leaders of this period towards the end of their life. They were beginning to draw anti capitalist conclusions, including even Martin Luther King. James Baldwin is another figure who spoke about the need for socialism in America. And of course we have Malcolm X who I think stands above Martin Luther King in some respects and stands above some of these other figures from this time as reaching anti capitalist conclusions on a much clearer basis. It's a great shame that his life was cut short in the way that it was. And we do have to compare in some respects, because at least in my education, I was taught that Martin Luther King was the good guy and Malcolm X was the bad guy and he was the violent one. And, you know, now in my in my Marxist education, I see I see things in a slightly different way. Malcolm X obviously famously, you know, there's lots of Malcolm X quotes by any means necessary about the need to defend ourselves and and and you know he wasn't as taken with non violence in the way that Martin Luther King was. As I said I think he had clear political views towards the end of his life and the main thing that I want to highlight that he'd reached the idea that he'd reached was that he no longer defined the struggle for black liberation as a racial conflict. And I'm going to quote him now to prove to you that this is what he said so he says, it is incorrect to classify the revolt of the Negro as simply a racial conflict of black against white, or as purely an American problem. Rather we are today seeing a global rebellion of the oppressed against the oppressor, the exploited against the exploiters. Again, I'm going to say this summarizes our position. This is why we have titled today's talk Marxism and black liberation, because we cannot speak of black liberation without speaking about the overthrow of capitalism. Now, I do want to talk a bit about Britain, because we are in Britain and as I said earlier I think it is spoken about less frequently in these sorts of discussions. And there's there's some reasons for that part of it is because you know we didn't have the same mass civil rights movement in the way that it took place in America. But obviously we've had black struggle exists in the UK and as we've seen in the protests that I was talking about earlier, there's a burning anger amongst young people and young black people people of color but the working class as a whole against the state and it's and it's perpetual and it's role in racism and racist ideas. I mentioned kind of education earlier and how you know Martin Luther King is the good guy and Malcolm X is the bad guy. And, you know, we're taught about the civil rights movement in America but we aren't taught about black struggle in the UK. And the British establishment I would say have done a great job in upholding a very misguided sense of superiority on this matter. You know, oh we abolished slavery first aren't we the good ones on this, which is obviously a sham and a complete lie that there was no laws in this country against racial discrimination until the race relations act in 1965. So this is the American Civil Rights Act was in 1964. So this is a year after America. And even with that act it was incredibly weak and people of color in Britain could be legally denied housing and employment due to the color of their skin until it was updated in 1968. As Marxist we know that so-called legal equality does not translate into genuine material equality, especially not under capitalism but the legal element of this I think is a marker of something significant. But also more recently in terms of police violence, sorry this is just a shout out to the chair if he could send me the minutes on my phone I'm already saying it, sorry. So even more recently in terms of police violence, one of the biggest events I think that I'm aware of, you know, more recently or that I'm more conscious of I suppose, before the current Black Lives Matter protest was the killing of Mark Duggan in Tottenham, which sparked riots in 2011. But even that event, which I suppose came or might have seemed at the time as relatively spontaneous, kind of spontaneous protests at a racist murder, even those events I would say had roots in something deeper. So the estate that Mark Duggan grew up on, so Mark Duggan was killed by the police, and the estate that Mark Duggan grew up on had actually had a similar riot in 1985, which was the result of years of police brutality to the Black community and that specific incidents were sparked by a woman's flat being looked through by the police and during that event she had a heart attack and died, and then her son was arrested on suspicion of driving a stolen car, but the car wasn't stolen. Hence it sparked this kind of protest. And then you know 20 or 25 years later we've seen new, you know, these protests again taking place on the same estate. And the reason I'm bringing up this this up is to kind of draw a link between today's Black Lives Matter protests, because obviously they also happened on a small scale in 2014 around the killing of Mike, the killing in Ferguson of Mike Brown. And now we're in 2020 and we're seeing Black Lives Matter on the streets again. But I would say we're seeing this movement return on a much higher scale. Because yes, these cases and these protests come about because of the injustice of one person of one individual who's been wronged by the state, but it's built on years of anger and disgust at how the system treats us. And this is an important distinction for us to make because the movement today is much more political. And because people learn from the way that they're treated. And some people try to depoliticize this, which in my opinion is not the way forward. But when people stand together from all walks of life, overwhelmingly young, and chant things like who do you serve and who do you protect, which was a really big chant, particularly in America, you know that something has changed, because the capitalist work very hard to make the state to seem above class struggle. And that involves the police and the whole judicial system. But now, more and more we're seeing the state lose its veil of independence, who do you serve is a class question, which side are you on. And that is very significant and that must be amplified in these protests and I would amplify those those questions in these protests. So, the British media, as I kind of said, and establishment love to report on racism in America, but refuse to, you know, address the horrific atrocities that exist here. So coming back to this question of education, we're taught about the Montgomery bus boycotts, and we know about Rosa Parks, but we know little about a man called Paul Stevenson, who led a bus boycott in Bristol. And this boycott drew national attention to racial discrimination that was taking place in Britain. It was a boycott of the company's buses by Bristolians that lasted for four months, until the company backed down and overturned a color bar that had been implemented was preventing black people from working. And as a result of the and then, you know, again, this wasn't the only thing that Paul Stevenson did in 1964. Stevenson achieved national fame when he refused to leave a pub until he was served. And that resulted in a trial. And all of these campaigns were, you know, quite instrumental in paving the way for the first race relations act that I mentioned earlier that took place in 1965. There was also a British version, if you will, of the of the Black Panther Party, but they were a lot smaller and, you know, didn't have the same impact on the US counterpart. But, you know, a lot of people in Britain were inspired by the civil rights movement Malcolm X and various others came to London and did speeches and of course that had an impact on different groups trying to imitate and create a similar situation here. And there's a particular trial called of the mangrove nine, you know, kind of a group of people who were accused of inciting a riot at a protest or something like this, and they were eventually all acquitted. And the trial was the first one to ever acknowledge behavior motivated by racial hatred within the Metropolitan Police. And these are all events that I never really heard of and you think why do we study about civil rights in America, but not in the UK and it's because the ruling class is the same with anything why don't we study about any of the working classes history is because they don't want us to know our history they don't want us to to see the benefits of class struggle and what can be achieved when we do unite. Another example is, of course, we're taught about the KKK in America, but there were also groups in Britain who openly terrorized and assaulted black people in the 50s and the 60s. The Teddy Boys is a kind of group that, you know, you know, weren't all it wasn't like all racist but it had sections to it that terrorized black people. And particularly in the 50s there were, you know, nights of violence, which saw white like mobs in their hundreds going through the streets of North Kensington, you know, screaming at black people anyone they could find. And also in this period in London in the 50s saw the presence of Oswald Mosley who was trying to kind of make his return back into politics. And one of a kind of kind of one case I just want to bring up really quickly is the case of a man called Kelso Koshrain, who was murdered in on Southam Street in 1959. Obviously, the police just described as a scuffle didn't look into it no one got charged. But it was a it was, you know, he was he was attacked by, you know, a white mob and a racist attack and nothing ever happened. But it kind of acted as a bit of a turning point in terms of race relations in that period in that in that in that period and in that part of London. And out of this is actually where Notting Hill Carnival was born. Because there were so many victims I mean people were running around this this neighborhood, and they would literally throwing Molotovs into black homes right that the kind of intense horrific violence that even today or just earlier on in this discussion I was saying was more American than it is British. Of course that's existed in this country as well because Britain is a capitalist imperialist state it's not divorced from racism in any way and we have to tell the truth on this in every in every case that in every way that we can. And after this particular person's murder in 1959 we saw the beginnings of trying to organize events to celebrate Caribbean culture in the face of this racism and against the kind of. Yeah, the racial violence and atmosphere that had kind of been created in this in this situation and this was the forerunner for the Notting Hill Carnival and actually Claudia Jones was quite involved in this. She was a member of the Communist Party in the US a black woman who was then forced to come to the UK and she was, you know, involved in that creation and I didn't even know that I didn't know the roots of one I've grown up and I've lived in London for the last 10 years or so. And the roots of that are to overcome racism in the area and now it's a huge working class celebration that obviously black and white people take part in and is an important date in your calendar if you're a Londoner anyway. So I really wanted to just take some time to reference these events because the British state does attempt to bury this history. I mean I saw a debate on the BBC recently titled does Britain have the same systemic racism as the US which again is revealing of their attitude towards this. I think that the ruling class are happy for you to talk about racism in one respect, but once it's connected with class, and once it's connected with the need to overthrow capitalism that's when it becomes a problem because that's when you're brought up to their power and their system. Recently in the news I've seen a few stories about a black barrister who was mistaken for being a defendant I think three times in one day. And you see this in other spaces, academics and universities are often mistaken for porters, black academics, or in university such as Cambridge and Oxford I've read about, you know, black students complaining, you know that they're assumed to be workers rather than students and various other things. And the reason I bring this up is because in the last 20 years we have of course seen the emergence of a black middle class in the UK. And I want to make the point and explain that all black individuals and those black individuals can of course be victims of racism attacks both verbal and an occasionally physical, as well as isolated incidents of discriminatory behaviour that take place against middle class black individuals. However, this is racism as suffered by individuals, and we need to understand the difference between that and the systemic way in which racism takes place. And that racism as suffered by individuals does not equate to or explain why income poverty rates for black Africans in the UK is at 45%. The poverty rate does not exist because of the racism of individuals, it exists because the oppression of black people is part of the capitalist system. And we can also apply this to the pandemic, right, and the high bane death rate due to coronavirus. It's the combination of being both black and working class that caused the higher death rate amongst Bane people. If you think of staff in the NHS, care workers, bus drivers, cleaners, are all typically low paid and in precarious working conditions and these were the people on the frontline without adequate PPE. Structural racism means that if you are a Bane worker you are more likely to take up jobs in these sectors. The result is that the relative death rate amongst working class Bane communities will be higher than its white counterpart. Now that is not because of individual actions, clearly that is the result of a systemic, systemic problem and a systemic situation. Institutionalised racism that has denied housing, employment and most recently with the Wind Wash scandal, even citizenship, is what needs to be uprooted to combat racism on its final expression, right, which is in this individual way where, you know, a white co-worker might assume a black person is a cleaner. And that can, you know, there's different scales to it, you have that, you have someone perhaps shouting a slur a black person or in the most extreme violence and the violence or the murder of someone such as Stephen Lawrence. But the point is that all these acts flow in the final analysis directly from the capitalist system, which then expresses itself to greater or lesser degrees. But ultimately I would, you know, again make the point that it is the black working class whose lives are quite literally the ones in most danger. I'll just come to an end because I'm coming to the end of my time limit by saying that I think the labour movement can and must become a vessel for the energy around black lives matter. And the energy that young people are feeling, the hatred that people are feeling against the state and everything that, you know, again, like I said, the UK is not innocent, all of the chance coming out of these protests. Because as Marxist we understand that the state is organised violence, right, is institutionalised exploitation and oppression, and the state is organised and it's armed. And we can win and have in the past one certain victories, even on the question of police violence, right, you could argue in some instances it's possible to get some police officers charged and that might feel like justice, you know, in a case where a police officer has been violent towards someone. But I don't think that that is enough. Right. And the main point is if we want to beat them then we need to be as organised as they are. Because if we are organised and put it simply there's more than us than there are of them. And what the working class has is the entire economy in its hand it can shut down anything it could paralyze the world. Even if Black Lives Matter was to coordinate itself on that basis, right, to organise a general strike across nations, it would strike a blow that no amount of riot gear can protect. The images you see of those police officers in America but also increasingly in the UK militarise and trying to prevent the protesters from speaking about what they want. If we mobilised and we organised, there's no force on earth that could stop us achieving what we wanted to. With the power of the whole working class, both Black and White, that is how we fight back a fundamental break with the capitalist system. And that is the masses entering the stage of history that would be us taking control of our lives and that would be Black liberation, which is only possible through a revolution. So I'll leave it there and implore you to join us in that fight as the only way to make this possible. Thanks.