Black Fower in Britain

(Cont'd. ) of the white worker, who, it ersues, correctly "would rather form a racial pact with his kith and kin exploiter". This is true; but it ignores an analysis of the objective situation where the white worker is not, in Marxist terms, less exploited than the black man, but is merely, because of the benefits and relative comforts that he enjoys, less conscious of that exploitation. It would be absurd for me to argue, as this position can be misread as meaning, that because, objectively, the interests of the different sections of the struggle are the same, they should be shackled together and inhibited by the speed of the slowest. That the black man must sacrifice his own surging militancy in an effort to carry the white working class with him; this is absurd and it is impossible. What I am complaining of is the long term strategy in the analytical basis of the Black Power movement - a strategy which, if it exists, argues no role for the other objective sections of the anti-imperialist fight. The working class in western bourgeois society, the black people in those societies, and the black exploited * countries, must all be seen as objective components of this struggle. And, to adapt Marx's words, it is only by the emancipation of man that the black man can be emanci- pated. In this context I would challenge the statement in the Manifesto that "what € we are facing today is .... International White Power. And the only force that can quell it is International Black Power", The fact must be faced that victory against imperialism cannot, ultimately, be achieved by one section of the struggle alone; and that to argue that the black American car worker on strike at Ford's to improve his 190 dollar a week pay, yet still working there on essential war work for the destruction of Vietnamese peasants, has more in common with Africans and S.E, Asians than he does with his fellow U.A.W. white workers, is fanciful delusion. As I tried to make clear at the beginning, this in no way constitutes a rejection of the U.C.P.A. manifesto. I welcome both it and, more important, the militant development that it represents. What I am here questioning --not in a dogmatic fashion, but in search of answers -- is the coherence of its position; fundamentally, the Black Power movement lacks a strategy. The consciousness of the black western worker is at a far more developed stage, onthe whole, than that of the white worker; as such the militancy of the Black Power movement is a crucial part of the fight against imperialism. And the Manifesto itself says that the demand for Black Power "simply reflects @ new stage in the revolutionary consciousness of the black man". But then it goes on to argue that this is"a change of strategy". It is here that the essence of my criticism of the black power analysis must be located; black power is not a strategy,« it is merely a tactic. A tactic of shattering importance, but still only a tactic. . My fear is the danger to the long term strategy of the anti-imperialist struggle which® can be posed by wne use of a major tactic in an ideologically and strategically inco- * herent framework. My fear is less that the black power movement can damage the future of the anti-imperialist struggle, than that the analysis offered by its leadership may do that damage. The most obvious omission in the manifesto is any discussion of long term strategy. There is no discussion of the real content of black power, of how it is to be achieved or of what relation it will bear to other sections of the struggle against imperialism, * Indeed, if we turn to the listed aims of the U.C.P.A., on pages 13/14 of the manifesto, we find them to be fundamentally corporatist (nursery schools, advice centres, cooperatives etc.) if isolated from e broader strategy. And that essentially is what has happened; they have been isolated from a broader strategy. All we find is this cloudy reference to a non-corporatist approach: "(j) To propagate solutions of our problems on international levels". The whole of this document seems to me to support my view of it as part of a radical tactic, not a radical strategy. As a tactic, the demand for black power is of crucial importance and relevance in stirring the consciousness of one of the most militant exploited groups. But in terms of strategy, it offers no coherent guides. eee