What led to the bombings in Britain

What can they be thinking? The Blair government in Britain, it seems, is just as out of touch with reality as the White House in Washington.

Demonstrators from Stop the War Coalition and Muslim Association of Britain rally in London, July 17.

It has now adopted an official policy of indignantly denying that the recent bombing attacks on the transit system in London, which killed 55 people, have anything to do with Britain’s role in the wars and occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan.

Foreign Secretary Jack Straw on July 18 dismissed a report by an independent estab lishment think tank on foreign affairs. “I’m astonished that Chatham House is now saying that we should not have stood shoulder to shoulder with our long-standing allies in the United States,” Straw told reporters. He implied that the report, which says that the wars have galvanized anti-U.S. and anti-British sentiment, were making “excuses for terrorism.”

According to Straw and Blair, who sound more and more like the fundamentalist Christians in George W. Bush’s camp, it is not these brutal wars, nor the attempt to recolonize the area, that are the problem, but an “evil ideology.”

This is not the view of most people in Britain, however.

According to a leading British daily, “Two-thirds of Britons believe there is a link between Tony Blair’s decision to invade Iraq and the London bombings despite government claims to the contrary, according to a Guardian/ICM poll published today. The poll makes it clear that voters believe further attacks in Bri tain by suicide bombers are also inevi table, with 75 percent of those responding saying there will be more attacks. The research suggests the government is losing the battle to persuade people that terrorist attacks on the UK have not been made more likely by the invasion of Iraq.” (The Guardian, July 19)

The Blair government is trying to avoid a situation like that in Spain, where the voters threw out the conservative government of José Maria Aznar last year after a deadly terrorist attack on commuter trains in Madrid. Despite huge public opposition, Aznar had sent Spanish troops to Iraq as part of Bush’s “coalition of the willing.” His successor, Prime Minister José Luis Rodriguez Zapatero, quickly brought the troops home.

Rally unites Muslims,
anti-war forces

In Britain, talk of an “evil ideology” may appeal to the racist and xenophobic elements who have a long history of bashing immigrants, but it certainly does not speak for the many millions who have demonstrated their anti-war sentiment, and who punished Blair’s party at the polls in the recent election because of his aggressive foreign policy and collaboration with Bush’s wars.

Some of them rallied July 17 in London’s Russell Square to say that they will continue to oppose the wars and stand in solidarity with the 1.6 million Muslims in Britain, who face hostility and violence every day.

The rally, called by the Muslim Associ ation of Britain and Stop the War Coali tion, honored the people killed in the transit attacks but rejected the government’s conclusions.

STWC chairperson Andrew Murray said the groups were rallying for three reasons: “Innocent victims have lost their lives in an incident that proved how ridiculous the war on terror has been. The second reason is to express our solidarity and support for the Muslim community in Britain and the third reason is: we are not going to stop our campaign against the war on terror. We will continue to campaign for the speedy removal of troops in Iraq and we are going to fight for it harder than ever.” (Quoted in IrishExaminer.com)

Neo-fascist party active
in Yorkshire

British police claim the explosions, which tore apart three subway trains and a double-decker bus, were the work of four young men, all British citizens—three whose parents had immigrated from Pakistan and one who was brought from Jamaica as a young child. All four reportedly died in the blasts.

They all have lived at one time or an other in West Yorkshire, an area in the north of England that used to be very industrial but now has pockets of deep pov erty and a preponderance of service workers. Many of these workers come from countries in the former British Empire, where long years of colonialism and the continuing hold of imperialist corporations and banks have distorted the econ omies and undermined national sovereignty.

For many years, the National Front, an openly fascist movement, organized attacks on immigrants in Britain, blaming them for the decline in living conditions that took place as capitalist firms restructured the economy while politicians, most notably Prime Minister Margaret That cher, slashed social programs and weakened unions.

The NF—whose founder, A.K. Chester ton, had once been a leader of the League of Empire Loyalists—has in recent years metamorphosed into the British National Party. The BNP keeps up a steady drumbeat against immigrants, but has tried to clean up its fascist image in somewhat the same way that David Duke, a former Grand Wizard of the Ku Klux Klan in the United States, did when he entered the election for governor in Louisiana in 1991. In fact, Duke last May hosted a New Orleans conference of 300 racists and anti-Semites from around the world that was attended by the head of the BNP, Nick Griffin.

The BNP recently received over 13 percent of the votes in Dewsbury, a city in West Yorkshire where one of the alleged London bombers, Mohammed Sidique Khan, had recently moved with his wife and child.

Just one year ago, on July 15, 2004, the BBC broadcast a tape it had secretly made of a BNP meeting in Keighley, West Yorkshire, where speakers bragged about having beaten up Pakistanis and West Indians. At the meeting, BNP leader Griffin called Islam a “vicious, wicked faith.” Griffin, it should be noted, is also a notorious anti-Semite.

Now Muslims all over Britain are hearing similar words from government figures who, while not directly accusing their religion, are demanding that all Muslim leaders declare their loyalty to the government.

Some 300 racially motivated attacks were reported in the first week after the London bombings. Filmmaker Sarfraz Manzoor says, “If you are a British Muslim, you’re as likely to be a victim of an attack as you are likely to be accused of doing it.”

While the participation of the British government in the Iraq and Afghanistan wars has undoubtedly been a major factor in creating the atmosphere in which—assuming that the government account is true—four young men would make the decision to die in a terrorist attack, it can also be said with confidence that the existence of an openly racist, xenophobic party in British politics must also have filled them with alienation and rage.

Imagine the feelings of the communities of color, for example, when on July 9, two days after the London bombings, a member of the BNP was appointed to the local council’s Commission for Racial Equality in the Calderdale area of West Yorkshire. (BBC News, July 15) After a furor developed and 17 members of Parliament signed a motion calling for the removal of BNP councillor Adrian Marsden, this “race relations” committee was disbanded.

Worker solidarity versus ‘empire loyalists’

Beginning with the Industrial Revo lution in the 19th century, British capital’s search for markets, resources and cheap labor led to the plunder of huge areas of Asia, Africa, the Middle East and the Caribbean. For the benefit of a small class of British elite, colonialism turned hundreds of millions of people into subjects, deprived of control over their own lives.

Since the rise of the national liberation struggles in the last century led to the formal dissolution of the British Empire into the Commonwealth, some have made the difficult transition of relocating to Britain itself in hope of work and a better life. They have had to endure the hostility of white supremacists and “empire loyalists,” who use them as scapegoats for all the social problems caused by capitalism.

The British working class is now very multinational. Its ability to fight back against the further depredations of the billionaire class depends on its degree of solidarity. And this depends on rejecting those, whether in the government or on the far right, who use religion, national origin, sex or gender to pit worker against worker.