The visit of Paul Boutelle, the Socialist Workers Party's vice-presidential candidate, to Britain helped to pose the question of Black Power on a wide scale. He helped to clear up some of the misconceptions and, in some cases, pure ignorance which has hindered a proper socialist appreciation of the question.
He concluded his two-week speaking tour with a rally in Hyde Park on June 9th at the speakers' corner, where many immigrant organisations hold regular meetings. The mainly Black audience of several hundred heard Boutelle describe the conditions that face the Black population of the U.S. He also outlined a history of the liberation struggle over the past [illegible] years and explained the role Black nationalism had played in that struggle.
"The United States is today the main enemy of all mankind," he said, "Not only does it show it in Vietnam where it carries on a criminal war but it shows it in its policies toward Black Americans." It is a racist country, he said, "just as England is a racist country - I've been travelling this country for the past two weeks talking and listening to people, and I don't see much [illegible]"
THE SAME ENEMY
To loud applause, he told the crowd: "You've got the same problems we've got. It's the same rotten system. We've got the same enemy. British imperialism is the front-man for American imperialism - the junior partner. It's not as strong as it once was. Once they used to say that the sun always shone on some part of the empire - now the sun has difficulty finding it!" "When you struggle against racism in this country you are helping us in America, because you are fighting against one of America's main allies."
He drew roars of approval from the audience when he referred to the case of Michael X, who had been one of the first people arrested under the race relations act passed by the Labour Government. "I understand they put our brother Michael X, otherwise known as Michael Abdul Malik, in jail for saying that 'white people were monkeys, devils and bastards.' Well, if white people did not behave like monkeys, devils and bastards, then we wouldn't have to call them that."
Speaking of the election campaign in the United States, he said he was sorry Robert Kennedy was assassinated. "I really mean it", he stated as his audience laughed, "Assassination and individual acts of terrorism don't solve anything. In fact they are used as a pretext by the ruling class to take action against its opponents. It's the system that has to be destroyed. I'm especially sorry because Kennedy was not allowed to be exposed as a phoney for all to see, as I'm sure would have happened very quickly after his election."
BLACK POWER IN THE U.S.
The audience, amongst whom were most of the leaders of the Black Power militants in London, were especially interested to hear Boutelle's comments on the Black Power movement in the United States.
Although the Black Power tendency was still, in most areas, a minority in the Black community as a whole, it was the most important development in America, he stated. There are a wide range of different tendencies in it from extreme nationalists and cultural groups to S.N.C.C. and the Black Panthers whom he identified with, he said. But the movement as a whole, he went on, "is basically a growing and healthy movement." He informed the audience that the large majority of Black people in America still voted for the Republicans and Democrats.
To counter this, he stated, "we in the S.W.P. advocate the formation of an independent Black political party - it's part of our campaign."
Boutelle's visit was most timely, coming at a time when there is greater receptivity to Black Power ideas in the Black community as a result of the recent upsurge of racism in Britain. As a result of the lack of a left alternative to Wilson appearing in the Labour movement, big sectors of the organised working class have become frustrated at a time when their living standards have declined. This is the basic explanation for the support Powell received from the dockers and Smithfield porters. Black people are quickly losing any illusions they may have had in the ability of the traditional parties in Britain to solve their problems or to counter the discrimination they suffer in education, housing, jobs, etc. The creation of the Black Alliance movement is a sign that the Black immigrants have learnt the lesson that they need to unite and come together to form organisations capable of fighting on a militant programme.
Although conditions are very different from the United States - the non-white population there is a much higher proportion of the population and is much more homogeneous than in Britain— there is an increasing interest in the ideas of Black Power and the experience of Black people in the U.S. Many leaders of the Black Power tendency in this country are very anxious to see if they can apply the experiences of their Black brothers to local conditions.
BLACK POWER IN MARXIST TERMS
Boutelle's visit came some months after the visit of Stokely Carmichael which had a big impact in the Black community. However, Boutelle was the first Black Power spokesman from the United States who has attempted to define Black Power in marxist terms. At the same time he related Black Power to the traditional radical left.
Boutelle's speaking tour took him to the main industrial centres: Birmingham, Sheffield, Glasgow, Nottingham, Newcastle, etc. In many of the towns he visited there are large immigrant communities. He also visited about a dozen colleges and universities where he aroused great interest among the many colonial students resident in this country.
In Nottingham, at a meeting sponsored by INTERNATIONAL, he spoke to nearly 100 people, among whom were the main leaders of the militant section of the Black community.
In Glasgow, he addressed another meeting sponsored by INTERNATIONAL at the trades council hall. The 90-strong audience was mainly made up of members of various marxist groups. Some of them received a lesson in the principles of marxism from Paul.
At a meeting in Edinburgh University his barbs against the Queen provoked the SCOTTISH DAILY EXPRESS to publish an editorial denouncing him. He had referred in passing to the Queen as being a "parasite who should be put to work washing floors." This rather upset the ultra-Tory and fanatically royalist SCOTTISH DAILY EXPRESS.
At Newcastle University a quickly organised meeting of the Socialist Society received good support - 130 people in the middle of exams - with coverage on television and in the local radio and press.
At Sheffield, while speaking at a teach-in on student power, Boutelle received a taste of the sectarianism which infects elements of the left in Britain. He was attacked by Nick Spence, of the KEEP LEFT Young Socialists and the Socialist Labour League, who accused Boutelle of "confusing the Black working class and playing into the hands of the Black capitalists" and encouraging apartheid. Spence proposed that the only way ahead for the Black workers was a unity with the white working class.
S.L.L. IGNORES CHALLENGE
Boutelle was able to show his challenger didn't even have an elementary knowledge of the Black struggle in America, pointing out that the idea that Black people should hold back until such time as the white working class moved was reactionary. Boutelle announced that when he had first come to Britain, he had challenged the Socialist Labour League to a debate on the topic of Black Power, but they had chosen to ignore his challenge.
Boutelle's first London meeting was at the Caxton Hall and was sponsored by the International Marxist Group, which supports the Unified Secretariat of the Fourth International. The crowded meeting, which was chaired by Tariq Ali, heard how the S.W.P. used the election campaign to promote the ideas of socialism.
News of Boutelle's visit to Britain spread rapidly through the Black community and Boutelle's final rally in Hyde Park was preceded by a series of quickly organised meetings throughout London in the immigrant ghettoes. A meeting in Islington, sponsored by the Campaign Against Racial Discrimination, chaired by Oscar Abrams, a leading Black militant in the area, heard Boutelle explain why Black consciousness was essential if Black people were to overcome oppression. The exploiters took the African away from Africa and made him into a Negro, he told the audience. We have got to get rid of that, he said. Before we can be free we have to become ourselves, he went on, and we have to become what we once were and in the process, by so doing, destroy the system that enslaved us.
On Saturday, June 8th, Boutelle was the featured speaker as a special meeting in central London to commemorate the ideas of Marcus Garvey, organised by a combination of several Black Power groups under the title of Black United Action Front.
Among those present was Obi B. Egbuna, a leader of the U.C.P.A. and one of the most articulate spokesmen for Black Power in Britain. On the platform were Frankie Dymond of the Racial Adjustment Society and B.S. Ghose of the U.C.P.A.
A PROGRAMME VITAL
At this meeting, Boutelle laid great stress on the importance of a programme for the Black Power movement if it is to be successful. As far as he was concerned, he stated, there was a great lack of programme among many of the Black Power tendencies in the United States, although, he continued, many organisations such as S.N.C.C. and the Black Panthers in California were seriously attempting to come to grips with the problem.
Once you have a programme, he said, it became that much more difficult for the ruling class to co-opt you into the system or into either of the big political parties. He emphasised the need for building an organisation. The organisation is more important than the individual, he said, more important than even the greatest individual and should be capable of lasting out any of its leaders.
The Socialist Labour League followed its failure to take up Boutelle's challenge with a virulent attack in its newspaper, the NEWSLETTER, on the whole concept of Black Power. Treading its familiar path, it equated Black nationalism with white racism and slandered such spokesmen of the Black community in the United States as Stokely Carmichael and Le Roi Jones.
Unfortunately, the S.L.L. is not alone in this sectarian behaviour: predictably the British MILITANT has also been attacking Black Power, but the latest recruit to this peculiar brand of sectarianism is International Socialism. In an article in SOCIALIST WORKER (formerly LABOUR WORKER) Black Power is described as a dangerous slogan. This article was by no means as bad as those appearing in the MILITANT and NEWSLETTER and we are told that it is not an official position of I.S., however, surely an editorial comment disassociating the editors from the article was necessary.
Our sectarian friends always seem to rise to the occasion on such questions as Black Power exactly at the time when the capitalist press and the representatives of the ruling class (e.g. Ennals) launch their attacks. Sectarianism is known to be closely linked with bourgeois prejudices and from that, formal (i.e., non-dialectical) methods of thinking. For the sectarian it is enough to learn a few slogans by rote and bring them out at the appropriate time.
SECTARIANISM AND RACISM
In the case of race questions, the sectarian thinks it is sufficient to bring out the slogan of Black and White Unite. And for him, anyone who does not recognise his brand of absolute truth is naturally petit-bourgeois or even an agent of the ruling class. Those sectarians who argue that if Black people organise separately white racism is reinforced repeat, albeit in a different jargon, the liberal-bourgeois-religious argument that the source of racism is psychological. They appear not to notice that racism is already prevalent despite the fact that the Black people have not, up to now, organised to any great extent separately.
Another confusion in the mind of the sectarian is his inability to separate long-term and short-term strategies. From a long-term point of view nothing could be more correct than Black and White unite. But for the short term, we must recognise that a large section of the white working class is racist. Instead of lecturing the Black people about the iniquities of them organising themselves separately, white marxists should be getting stuck into the job of combatting this racism by education and propaganda. For marxists the key thing is to make revolutionaries. Black People are much more likely to become revolutionaries when they are aware of their own power and identity. (i.e., overcome completely the ideology of inferiority their slavemasters, past and present, imbued them with). Once having become revolutionaries Black people will be much better fighters against capitalism - it goes without saying that marxists should do all they can to introduce Black revolutionaries to the ideas of marxism.
UNITY IN REVOLUTIONARY STRUGGLE
Unity of Black and White will be best expressed in a struggle - a revolutionary struggle, if possible - against capitalism. To put the main emphasis on this unity now, when, so far, the white workers have not been capable of meeting the challenge of the Labour Government is futile. On the other hand, can we seriously go to the Black workers and say "Don't organise yourselves, build unity with the white workers instead, that is the best way to fight racism," when the Black worker knows very well that the white worker is not even capable of defending his own living conditions? When he knows that traditionally militant sections of the working class have turned their militancy against the Black workers instead?
To say these things is not to condone them or pretend that we wish it were not otherwise. But to refuse to face the realities of the situation is pure blindness.
The best way to solve these problems is through struggle against capitalism. If the Black people are prepared now to fight against discrimination and oppression we should seek to encourage this process with all our power.
Paul Boutelle's historic visit did much to help us in these aims. His influence on the Black community has, we are sure, considerably hastened the formation of a Black Power movement in this country with a programme. His talks to white socialists has helped to clear away the confusion caused by the sectarians and the liberals. We look forward to seeing him again.