Gets Twelve Months

British socialists have been criminally silent about the persecution of the the Black power movement in this country. In some cases this most likely arises out of genuine confusion about the aims of the Black Power movement. But I am obliged to say that in many cases it boils down to cowardice. It is noticable that whenever the press makes a real hue and cry about something ~ the Middle East war was a typical example - whole groups, which normally posture as being left, capitulate. This is the basic explanation of that criminal silence over the handing out of a twelve month sentence to Michael X. This sentence is only one aspect of a whole series of incidents in which members of the Black Power movement have been harried by the police. They are charged with breaking the laws of this country because they say that the white people are wicked. By coincidence, the same week that Michael X was sentenced a book on the history of slavery was published; readers will have seen reviews of it in the press. After reading these reviews, what surprises me is that the Black Power movement didn't come into existence many years ago. Coupled with the blatant discrimination that one can observe all around - who hasn't seen "Europeans Only" in the adverts for accomodation? - the black man's history forces him to think that white people are intrinsically evil. Those who equate the policies of Ian Smith and Stokely Carmichael (as did one M.P. recently in Tribune) are making the oldest mistake in politics. Equating the sins of the oppressed with those of the oppressor is the equivalent of asking the oppressed to accept the status quo. This is exactly what Christianity did once it had completed its revolutionary stage. Can we eyguate the violence of the pickets with the vblence of scabs or of that of the police who break up the picket line? Can we equate the devilish weapons the NLF uses (including poison snakes and terrifying booby traps ) with the use of napalm? Can we equate the hatred of a worker for his boss (who is probably a very nice man) with the hatred employers have for unions? Of course we cannot, we are committed. Neither can we equate the hatred of black people for their white oppressors with racialist theories designed to justify imperialism. What we need to do is, of course, to show that slavery, colour bar and discrimination are in the final analysis products of capitalism, But it is no use telling a West Indian who has just been beaten by hooligans that. We have to try to have an understanding of what it feels like to be a member of an oppressed community. Neither can we preach an abstract "workers of the world unite" line. The black man will tell us that it is very difficult to unite with other workers who harbour crude racialist feelings or with condescending liberals who repel them with paternalism. The slogan "workers of the world unite" must not be a sophisticated way of telling militant black men to hold back their struggle until the backward white workers are willing to struggle. Only once we have demonstrated our support for the black man's struggle against oppression in practice can we begin to expect our ideas to be examined. This is why it is vitally necessary for white socialists to campaign against the twelve-months prison sentence on Michael X,