Giving succour to the racists

antrim | rights, freedoms and repression | opinion/analysis Monday August 24, 2009 13:56 by Davy Carlin - WSM {PC}

Giving succour to the racists.

The DUP’S Sammy Wilson has recently accused anti racism groups of exaggerating the scale of racism to access public funding. Mr Wilson stated that ‘these charges of racism were always coincided with the holding out of the hand for more money for the organisations which were dealing with the issue’ and referred to the situation as ‘an anti racism industry’.

This statement comes not long after more than 100 Romanians where forced to flee their homes due to racist intimidation and attacks in South Belfast.

Mr Wilson is known for not holding back about his views and recently as Environment minister he had made it clear that he believed that humans where not responsible for climate change. Yet given that Mr Wilson is now the Northern Ireland Finance Minister, attacking what he calls the ‘Anti Racism industry’, this particular rant is alarming on a number of points.

Firstly by suggesting that anti racism groups are exaggerating the scale of racism this is in effect giving succour to the racists. In fact even before the forced removal of over 100 Romanians from Northern Ireland the scale of the racist attacks had been increasing year on year.

Mr Wilson’s remarks have been received with glee by not only racists but also by some of the micro fascists groups here, which has even seen some of them promoting the ‘debate’ on Mr Wilson’s remarks on their web sites. For them it just another avenue for their hatred to be aired, albeit this time sparked by the comments from our newly appointed Finance Minister!

Secondly what is interesting here is that given the huge peace funding society that we live in, Mr Wilson has chosen to attack some of the most vulnerable within society.

Therefore it can be asked, is this ‘sector’ being singled out for a reason?

Sammy Wilson’s words on the ‘Anti Racism Industry’ in fact attacks those immigrants who seek a better life for themselves and their families, it attacks those who seek political asylum away from persecution, and it attacks those who come here to do the jobs many of our locals will not do.

Yet given the fact that the anti racism groups are segmented it means that each of them have to fight for the little scraps that are given from the table. Secondly given that they need funding to secure their existence little can be done to rock the boat when it comes to activist agitation on the issue of racism.

In fact, as seen in recent time such groups can in fact come out and condemn actions by local anti racism activists who seek to mobilise and defend against attacks.

This was the case when a spokesperson for the travelling community Derek Hanaway attempted to condemn the actions of the local anti racism and anti fascist’s activists who sought to support and defend the local Romanian community at their time of need.

This when little or no support was coming from the relative statutory bodies, in fact, it was only with that initial intervention from such grassroots activists that the statutory agencies where then moved to react.

While such anti racism groups should rightly be entitled to full funding, we as Anarchists will focus our attentions and have that debate within communites as to how united grassroots trade union and community action is the way in which to begin to tackle such racism and racist attacks.

While we will challenge and confront racism and any emerging fascist activity in words and deeds, we will also continue to challenge that that gives it rise.

That means working within and with working class communities to challenge the social and economic deprivation, the unemployment, the unfit housing, the poverty and alienation, which is increasingly growing in our working class areas as the recession really bites in.