the Voice of
The Communist League of Revolutionary Workers–Internationalist
“The emancipation of the working class will only be achieved by the working class itself.”
— Karl Marx
Nov 14, 2016
The following article comes from Workers’ Fight, a monthly paper written by a revolutionary organization of the same name, in Britain.
Since the “Brexit” referendum, xenophobic attacks in Britain have drastically increased according to the police’s own figures, especially in the immediate aftermath of the vote. Obviously, the vicious anti-migrant tone of the referendum campaign reinforced those who had already thought of taking out their frustration on foreigners.
On August 27th, in Harlow, a gang of teenage thugs attacked two Polish workers outside a takeaway, beating one of them to death—40-year-old food factory worker Arkadiusz Józwik. A week later, two other Polish workers were severely beaten after attending a vigil in Józwik’s memory. And then a few days later, in Leeds, another Polish worker narrowly escaped being kicked to death by 20 thugs, all of them again, teenagers. How many more similar attacks have gone unreported?
These events can’t be blamed on the referendum campaign alone. The many years during which politicians blamed foreign workers for everything that went wrong in Britain, including the consequences of the capitalist crisis, fueled an anti-migrant “fear” across some sections of society.
Today, it is in the interests of the working class—and it is its responsibility—to react against these prejudices and counter the divisions they threaten to create in its own ranks, by providing foreign brothers and sisters all the solidarity and support they need against these attacks!