'Hands off my mate' heart b L National Front (FN) and the
The struggle against racism has been one of the most important elements in the youth mobilisation in the two years. Racist violence is mainly initiated last against Arab youth on the feeble pretext that they much noise in the towns or cafes. Such violence is being met by mass demonstrations. This pattern of events is beginning to repeat itself on a day to day basis.
The main characteristic of these developments is that they mainly involve young people. Anti-racist demonstrations led by ranks of young students are now a common sight. The determination to do someracists is mainly expressed within the schools and the colleges, where students spend three quarters of their time.
This mobilisation is not a superficial phenomenon. It also receives a fair amount of media coverage. The daily newspaper, Liberation featured an article on youth last March, entitled 'From the Bof generation to the Pote generation' (1) in a reference to the badge 'Touche pas a mon pote' (Hands off my mate) launched by the organisation SOS-Racism at the time of the march against racism in December 1984.
Gilles ROBIN
What has made the media break with the image of young people as passive and apathetic? To answer that question you only need to go into some schools today and see all the young people wearing the hand-shaped Touche pas a mon pote' badge and discuss it with them. Not only do they label themselves anti-racist but they are also prepared to take action over it. For example, a few days after a racist murder had been committed in Menton meetings were organised in many schools, with one minute's silence, debates on racism and in some cases demonstrations were held in the streets to get 'their hands off our mates once and for all'
•
Is the badge just a passing fashion or does it represent something more profound occuring amongst youth? The success of this anti-racist symbol cannot simply be explained by the fact that a handful of show business personalities and some members of the intelligentsia wear it.
For a start, the anti-racist mobilisation did not begin with SOS-Racism. There
DROIT DE MON pou "The right to vote for my mate' 14 had already been two national marches against racism in December 1983 and December 1984 which brought the first refutation to the theoreticians of the 'bof generation (the generation of apathy). The idea of the first march was conceived by Toumi Djaidja, the organiser of SOSMinguettes whilst he was in hospital following an attack by the Lyons police. It was the youth of the town of Minguettes on the outskirts of Lyons, together with the reverend Father Delorme, who organised it. (2)
The second march entitled 'Convergence '84' , organised around the slogan 'France is like a moped, to go forward it needs a mixture. Youth on mopeds criss-crossed the whole of France before the final convergence in Paris on December 1.
Anti-racist activity has been growing among young people for the last two years in a context where racial hatred has, due to various factors, become more and more systematised and legitimised. The issue of racism is increasingly polarising political life in France. Some parliamentary deputies have been demanding a debate on immigration in the national assembly (parliament). In a situation where the National Front is becoming a force on the political map, the structuring of a national movement against racism and fascism raises the stakes enormously.
The increase in racist violence and incitement of course stems from the economic crisis. The effects of this deep-going and long-term crisis have provoked disarray and malaise among certain sections of the population. For wide layers of youth, whether or not they are in school or college, the future is bleak. The consequence of the crisis for most young people is the impossibility of getting anywhere immediately or indeed of even conceiving of a future career in the long term. Many training courses today simply do not cater for such aspirations. Youth are either forced to retrain in the short term or to be content with unskilled work. The
'public works' (TUC) schemes introduced by the government, which employ young people on derisory wages in boring work only help to institutionalise the precarious situation of employment which already exists.
The goal of the bosses and the bourgeoisie lies precisely in expanding such precarious jobs. All the speeches about work flexibility try to make out that this idea will improve the quality of life by extending leisure time. In fact, this policy represents an attempt to create a reserve army of labour for which women and youth are the guinea-pigs. Such a system of rapid turnover of labour creates a permanent lack of job security. This results in even deeper divisions among youth sparked off by the contradictions between the minority of youth who have been able to get training and a stable job and this reserve army of labour.
Such an explosive situation among youth provides a feeding ground for demoagogery and oversimplificaton of the problems. Despair resulting from the lack of a future and from the absence of any short-term solutions can feed ideas that the responsibility for unemployment lies with immigrants. National Front slogans such as "Two million unemployed equals two million too many immigrants' which are also endorsed by other bourgeois political groups in a more modified form, open the way for racist violence. Such notions encourage and even legitimise this violence. These views may not drive everyone to phyiscal violence but Le Pen's racist equation between unemployment and immigration does have many passive supporters amongst the youth in the context of social divisions, lack of job prospects and the vacuum which results. In the eyes of the younger generation the traditional political scene appears, and to a large extent actually is,
The bof generation usually refers to the generation of the late 1970s who were considered to be less political and more apathetic than those of previous generations.
See. International Viewpoint No 56, 2 July 1984.
International Viewpoint 17 June 1985
rossilised, stale and unattractive The a san attractive. The vacuum amongst youth is evidenced by the limited attraction to them of political organisations. The reformist parties, who have no credible solution to the crisis have great difficulty in attracting young people. The workers movement and its traditional organisations no longer appear as a reference point for struggle. The period of the 1970s is a long way away and nowadays the rate of unionisation of young people and their participation in political parties is very low.
The question is, given that the organised workers movement has little attraction for young people and is not a reference point for their struggles, and given that bourgeois political figures have failed to unite around common political goals — is there a real danger of a growth of the far right amongst young people?
For the moment the electoral successes of Le Pen have not given rise to regular appearances by the FN at the
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International Viewpoint 17 June 1985 school gates or in the universities, school although they do have a presence in the marketplaces.
However, even if the main danger at present is not a huge wave of youth joining the National Front, this organisation is nonetheless capable of latching on to the exasperation of young people who reject the policies of the traditional political parties but who want to fight on certain issues related to their work or studies. This was clearly in evidence at the time of the vast mobilisations of the right against the Savary laws, introduced by the then socialist minister of education, and proposing very mild changes affecting the private
Catholic education lobby, during which extreme right activists tried to organise within that movement.
On occasions the far right really know how to use the potential for revolt amongst young people against laws and institutions and against the state, and they do not shrink from al youth summer camp
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1090 WIEN proposing to go and do battle with the police, as was the case in confrontations in Paris in 1982.
Having said that, such developments are still marginal. But the university student milieu is characterised at the moment by a certain mistrust of
Marxist ideas compared to a few year ago. Such attitudes come out in the form of anti-Communist propaganda which is already common in law departments, for example. Propaganda about the 'politicians' or those who want to control or 'manipulate' people always gets a certain hearing. The National
Front have realised that in order to build up its electoral base around issues like unemployment they need some kind of network. In the town of Roubaix they have set up an unemployed committee and have gained a real influence in areas of high unemployment such as Perpignan, where the National Front obtained its highest vote in the bye-election. This method of operation is mainly effective in places where openings were left by the inactivity of the trade union organisations, usually at times when they were most strongly tied in the with the policies of the Mitterrand government before the withdrawal of the French Communist Party (PCF) from it last summer. Right attacks workers' movement
The danger of a possible growth of the extreme right amongst youth lies precisely here: in the networks (unemployed committees, youth centres etc) that would give credibility to the demagogery of the National Front and Le Pen's propaganda. It is those sectors of youth most affected by the ravages of unemployment that would be liable to turn to this organisation, if it had the means to really extend activities such as those in Roubaix.
Finally the growth of the audience for Le Pen has resulted in the dawn of new hopes for several small far right groups who are trying to take advantage of the new situation. For example, in November 1984 the Revolutionary Nationalist Movement (MNR) organised a meeting in Paris that attracted 600 relatively young people and they are waging a campaign against international communism.
Elsewhere, local FN members are often less anxious to preserve their respectable electoral image than they are to put the ideas of their programme into practice immediately, that is to attack the workers movement and its institutions. The Revolutionary Communist League (LCR - French section of the Fourth International) and the Revolutionary Communist Youth (JCR) have already been the target of such activity; through being physically prevented from attending meetings on New Caledonia at Nantes university; through threats against LCR comrades
15
in Quimper; or through FN members infiltrating a meeting addressed by Alain Krivine in Caen, with grenades in their pockets. Other oganisations have also been threatened, for such is the inherent logic of the growth of the far right.
An anti-racist sentiment already exists amongst the youth and therefore the far right, if they want to make any headway amongst this layer will have to deal with the undeniably broad based response. There are already several examples of this type of response. In every town that the National Front leader has set out to hold a meeting, protests have been organised, and this has been the situation since the 1983 municipal elections. Something approaching this might have been expected in the 1985 cantonal elections especially in the towns where Le Pen had already been. In fact it turned out better than expected. This time most of the demonstrations against Le Pen's meetings that took place were bigger than the meetings themselves. Youth challenge the racists
On February 13, for example, in Belfort, 600 people demonstrated following a joint call from the Movement against Racism and for Cooperation between Peoples (MRAP), the CGT [Communist Party dominated union], the PCF and the LCR. Also in that same town, 1,400 people attended a meeting addressed by, among others, Roger Hanin, actor-producer of the film Train d'enfer (Train to Hell) which tells the story of the murder of a young Algerian by Legionnaires in a train one year ago. In the town of Apt, one thousand people demonstrated against a fascist meeting at which only 150 people were present. In Quimper, 250 people gathered to heckle the
National Front service d'ordre (advance guard). In Le Mans one thousand demonstrators responded to an appeal put out by the JCR and the LCR, organisations of Arab workers in the town and Senegalese students. In
Pointoise, 400 people came out with the JCR, LCR and about ten immigrant youth organisations. There are several examples that are just as significant and which show that there is a very real possibility of a broad anti-fascist mobilisation.
The composition of these demonstrations is in general young, with a number of school students turning up in groups, having seen leaflets put out in their schools. Examples such as this give a real measure of the impact the campaign is having. Basically any anti-racist or antifascist leaflet put out at the school gates, is read straight away and always provokes a response, rather than being ignored as often happens on other issues.
This situation has sparked off the beginnings of a political revival amongst
16 youth, and has led to a greater awareness amongst many young people about the need to combat the far right. It is important to examine what the real driving force behind these mobilisations is, because they constitute an actual cutting edge among the youth which could continue beyond the parliamentary elections in 1986.
The anti-racist movement which began to develop on a national level in 1983, was not the work of any political organisations, unions or even of the traditional anti-racist organisations like MRAP or the Federation of Immigrant Workers' Organisations (FASTI). What was new about this movement, from the beginning, was that it was led by young second-generation immigrants largely of Arab origin.
These young people were making their entry onto the political arena for the first time and wanted to set up an ongoing movement. The youth collective was a structure which came out of the December 1983 march based in the suburbs of the large towns which aimed to organise young people against racism and for equal rights between French and immigrants. A series of demands such as for the right to vote for immigrants were advanced at the time of the two national anti-racist demonstrations in December 1983 and 1984. But several problems arose in the structuring of an ongoing and united movement that would centralise all the different local antiracist organisations.
The breadth of the mobilisations nationally was not merely a product of the organisers' willpower. It was also due to the originality of the movement which escaped the social control of the traditional organisations. What possible credentials for initiating and leading a campiagn could the PCF present when
Murdered by the racists ... (DR)
1.ё....
it puts forward a policy of quotas aimed tra simor at limiting the number of immigrants in each town and demands the strengthening of police powers? Similarly, the Socialist Party, subordinated to the policies of the government could not have directly launched such a movement. At the end of the first anti-racist march in December 1983, Georgina Dufoix, minister of social affairs was given a very cool reception by the demonstrators. On the second march in 1984, the socialist input was weak and any presence from the government was non-existent.
The JCR took part in the preparation of the 1983 march from the beginning. Although mistrust of political organisations still runs very deep among the youth because of the absence of any serious intervention in the fight against racism by these organisations, the JCR were nevertheless able to initiate, along with the march organisers, anti-racist committees and to organise various activities (days or weeks of action against racism, actions against Le Pen, replies to racist aggression etc.
SOS-Racism emerged out of the march in December 1984. This movement met with an unprecedented response when it put out the hand-shaped badge entitled 'Hands off my mate' . SOS-Racism managed to get the support of a whole array of show business personalities. Nearly two million people are wearing the badge and many of those are young people. It is the largest mass progressive movement of youth for ten years.
For the anti-racist movement to develop a firm basis equal to its media image it is important to build up active anti-racist committees on the basis of 'Stop racism'. Such committees could avoid the problems of two separate movements developing with the young second generation immigrants who have a long experience of campaigning on the issue on the one side and on the other, those who have just begun to be mobilised and who are developing their awareness, prompted by the sale of "Touche pas a mon pote' badges.
Unite and fight
The gains of the 1983 and 1984 actions could be broadened and could get a second wind from the establishment of SOS-Racism. The concrete context of such an enlarged movement should be to call on those who buy the badge to take action as Harlem Desir, a leader of actions taken following a racist murder, did. An anti-racist rally is to be held in Paris on June 15 and this could bring together hundreds of thousands of people. This will really make Le Pen and his mob sweat!
The JCR is involved in building this movement and in organising anti-racist committees that could, on a local level in the schools for example, bring together several hundred young people to do something about the
International Viewpoint 17 June 1985
racists. Many of these youth have, in the last two years, built up a certain experience in the anti-racist area which has helped them to make the correct response to the appearance of this new youth radicalisation.
What sort of intervention is required today? How can a revolutionary youth organisation be built in the context of such a mixture of anti-racist actions, including revolt against racist violence and propaganda and an often very clear rejection of political organisations and traditional politics. These are the sorts of questions that revolutionaries have to address. Having the correct programme and orientation, organising a systematic response to racist and fascist aggression', to quote the resolution adopted by the fifth congress of the JCR in March 1985, whilst at the same time taking part on a day to day level in the construction of an anti-racist movement, all this should allow the JCR to acquire vital experience for their development. Such an orientation does not mean either that the JCR should blindly follow the perspectives of the leaders of SOSRacism, without sometimes making their own choices.
This radicalisation around anti-racism is bringing a new generation into politics. This generation did not know about the major struggles of students that marked the closing years of the 1970s. Following the last two anti-racist marches, several youth who had previously only been interested in anti-racism became, in a matter of a few days, real mass activists, taking the lead in preparing action. The possibilities of this movement also lie in the fact that anti-fascist sentiment forms the basis of the slogans being taken up by the youth in the demonstrations, it is not merely a distant memory of the period of May 1968.
The youth mobilisation is in some ways occupying ground, on issues like the right to vote for all immigrants or the struggle against expulsions, of issues of concern to the whole labour movement. The working class is not of course completely absent from these mobilisations. For example in December 1983, participants in the first march expressed their solidarity with the largely immigrantled strike in the Talbot-Peugeot car factory by sending an impressive delegation to the factory. The emotion expressed in this meeting and the participation of sections of the trade unions and immigrant workers organisations shows that a coming together of the two movements is possible. Moreover, the sales of the celebrated SOS-Racism badges goes on in the workplaces where they are sold both by young workers who have always refused to join the union and by activists in the traditional trade union movement. This shows that when the youth reject the unions and the traditional workers' parties that does not mean that they are expressing a complete lack of interest in all activity and all forms of struggle in the workers' movement.
International Viewpoint 17 June 1985