Racialising Crime: An Anecdote

Not a weighty treatise on the nature of crime in a capitalist society, but an anecdote from when E and I were out leafleting, building for last weekend's anti-fascist events.

We handed over a leaflet to one woman who was standing in her garden. She took one look at it and said she didn't want it, because "we need something like the BNP to sort out this area". We asked her what she meant. She went into minute detail of her run-ins with the local drugs gang, who happen to be young Asians. She showed us the stab mark in her head from where they'd last attacked her and told us of the number of times she'd been beaten up after dark. Her friend came out, who was interested in the leaflet, but told us similar stories about other local white people she knew had been attacked by this gang. There were times her kids had been on the local fields when one of their dogs had dug up a drugs and knives stash. And her house had been attacked by the gang as well.

Assuming they weren't pulling our legs, and judging by the time they spent talking to us and their general demeanour there's no reason to believe they were, you can see why the BNP might have an appeal. In this case the anti-social elements are a thuggish group of drug dealing Asian men. They harass and assault a number of vulnerable white residents. And the police couldn't care less. From the standpoint of these white women it appears to be a race issue. But in essence, it isn't. Socialists should not fight shy of this and issues like it because it is "inconvenient" and upsets some dogmatic view of how the axis of racial dynamics are supposed to be. To brush them under the carpet is to invite the BNP's unwelcome attentions. In situations like this socialists need to adopt sensitive local strategies that seek to empower communities at the expense of anti-social elements and overcome the racial divisions their activities foster. And one way of doing that, as much as it may stick in the gullet of ultra left pedantry, is raising the demand for greater democratic control and accountability of the police, linked with a complete overhaul of the government's counter-productive and damaging stance on drugs. Doing nothing or making hay with "anti-white racism", like the BNP do, will exacerbate racial divisions and won't stop peoples' lives from being a misery.