Comrade van Gelderen's article, "No Compromise on Immigration" (International April 1969) suffers from a rather vulgar and oversimplified view of the means with which to combat racialism. It is self-evident that Marxists must at all times oppose immigration restrictions and fight racialism with class policies. However, it is crude in the extreme to assert that by quoting statistics the left is "doing so at the sacrifice of principle". This 'ultra left' position stems from a basic lack of understanding of the relationship between principles and tactics. There is nothing intrinsically wrong in quoting figures to expose the racialist's lies; it would, however be unprincipled to fail to lay bare the reasons for their use of lie after lie; that is, it would be culpable indeed not to put to the fore at all times the interests of the united proletariat.
Racialism does exist, so does the danger of fascism. Neither can be fought with statistics alone, but they can be a weapon in the fight against these running sores of capitalism.
Robin Doughty and David Buttrick, Birmingham
REPLY BY TESSA VAN GELDEREN
Of course the lies of Powell and all other racialists must be exposed, but I still maintain that there are some comrades on the left who, while explaining the reasons for these lies, do not, at the same time, state that there should be no restrictions on the number of people entering this country. As socialists, it is important to show that we are not interested in solving the [illegible] the capitalists face. We also have to show that we are in favour of complete freedom of movement under capitalism. Any move by the capitalist state machine to restrict movement must be opposed on principle.
I am sure that comrades Doughty and Buttrick will agree that this is a principle (and not just a case of crude thinking or ultra-leftism) and this is precisely the point I attempted to make in my articles because the only way we can expose Powell's figures on immigration is to work out the number of immigrants entering the country and take it away from Powell's figure (and if this is not "vulgar and oversimplified", I don't know what is). But the only way of working out these "correct" estimates is to base it on the number of immigrants allowed into the country and this number by the immigration acts, to which we are all bitterly opposed.
So there is an "intrinsic" danger in using statistics in this way since it would appear that we are accepting 'the status quo' of our capitalist society, instead of putting forward our own ideology. And this is a principle - not a tactic. It is the principle that we do not recognise that a capitalist state has any right to restrict the movement of any person.