The online edition of Socialist Worker carries news of a march to stop the BNP. Martin Smith and Weyman Bennett acting on behalf of Love Music Hate Racism tell us that it has called a national demonstration against the Nazis in London on Saturday 21 June with a message “stop the BNP now”. LMHR is calling on all other anti-racist groups, trade unionists and progressive political parties to support the protest.
As Ernest Mandel once remarked “the victory of fascism expresses the inability of the workers’ movement to resolve the structural crisis of late capitalism in its own interest and to its own ends”. He was writing at a time when many more millions of workers in Europe were organised in unions and parties but his essential point is clear. To effectively resist fascism socialists have to rely on the strength of the organised working class to defeat it and that includes working with social democratic organisations and their supporters.
That can even mean working with organisations with which one has had strong disagreements. Trotsky, describing the Russian experience of the united front and Kornilov’s attempted counter revolution, writes that “the Bolsheviks did not content themselves with a general appeal to the workers and soldiers. The Bolseviks proposed the united front struggle to the Mensheviks and the Social Revolutionaries and created with them joint organisations of struggle. (The Struggle Against Fascism in Germany p102-3).
Criticising the policy of the German communist Party he wrote: “to say to the Social democrat workers: “Cast your leaders aside and join our “non-party” united front means to add just one more hollow phrase to a thousand other.”
These are pretty clear pointers to an honest approach to building a genuine united front. You openly approach the organisations that represent sections of the working class and propose practical tasks around which you can successfully collaborate. It does not require any level of political agreement other than opposing the fascists but it does oblige the socialists to acknowledge that no single organisation has hegemony over either the anti-fascist struggle or the united front. The agreement has to be severely practical and transparent.
As several contributors to the recent post-election discussions have remarked there are a number of issues of immediate concern around which there are real opportunities for collaboration. Rolling back the small advances of the BNP is one such opportunity and the experience of the German left’s failures is one from which we should learn.
Liam redux 
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