Honorary Proletarian

On Saturday I went up to Campsfield, the immigration prison near Oxford, for the regular demo in solidarity with detainees that has been held there every month since the place was set up in 1993.  There were only fifteen demonstrators, which I’m afraid rather bears out what I’ve said below about environmentalists.  It’s only once a month and it’s half an hour on the bus.  Come on, guys.

Campsfield was set up fourteen years ago by the Tories - the traditional party of bigotry and inhumane opprtunism - but it is maintained by a government purporting alliegance to Labour, the traditional party of the oppressed and disadvantaged.  Where is the party to which the statement that “people are suffering” was a call to action rather than a calculation of poltical advantage?  A visit to Campsfield drives out of the window all notion of a “balanced” view of the good and bad things this government has done.  It has done good things - that I don’t contest - but those government ministers who have decided to lock up innocent people behind razor wire for the “crime” of coming to Britain while being Black, and those who have gone along with it, are fundamentally bastards.  Anyone who can tolerate Campsfield and the other detention centres throughout Britain has surrendered his or her soul to Toryism.

This, however, cannot mean a rejection of the struggle through the established labopur movement, which seems in this case to have produced such appalling results.  Only the united forces of the basic organisations of the basic oppressed class in our society, that is the unions, and moreover the unions in politics, can effect “fundamental and irreversible change” in that society.  One union backing some non-Labour candidates is (in the right circumstances) a legitimate tactic, but it isn’t a strategic solution.  Only our united efforts to either force the bastards out of out party, or (in the last resort) start a new party in which the bastards will not be welcome, can have a significant long-term effect.  Let’s face it - we’re in political for the long term.  all the attempts of the Left in recent years to go for short-term “breakthrough” solutions have gone off at half-cock and come to nothing, except leaving the remains of a few Left organisations as debris along the road.  Let’s not make the same mistake again - all of us or none, comrades.