In a statement, the Communist Party of Britain (CPB) condemns the violent - racist oriented - incidents that broke out in Belfast following a knife attack in the city and call for working class unity:
"The Communist Party condemns the horrific knife attack perpetrated on the streets of Belfast on Monday night. We salute the bravery of witnesses who intervened to save the victim of the knife attack. Our thoughts are with their family and witnesses.
Working people everywhere are appalled by this despicable attempted murder. While police investigations are ongoing and the full facts are not yet public, reports indicate this crime likely reflects a broken asylum system, a failure of mental health services and other government agencies to intervene earlier which might have prevented this.
The criminal justice process must be allowed to proceed and the perpetrator should face full and proper punishment for this horrific crime.
Predictably, and as they did in July 2024 following the horrific murder of three young girls in Southport, the usual far right and fascist voices have instantly seized on this crime to stoke racial tensions and call for violence in the north of Ireland and across Britain.
Last night saw racist attacks and riots in Belfast targeting black people irrespective of immigration status or country of origin. These pogroms of black families in Belfast take us back to the sectarian pogroms of the 1960s and 70s. In towns and cities across Britain there were also racially charged demonstrations aimed at stoking these same racist tensions and creating a culture of fear among black people, migrants and asylum seekers.
The role of social media in amplifying fascist voices such as Stephen Yaxley-Lennon (‘Tommy Robinson’) and Rupert Lowe by billionaires including Elon Musk on X and their amplification of racist disinformation and fascist propaganda on Facebook cannot be overstated.
The original knife attack on Monday night, the violence witnessed in Belfast and other cities on Tuesday night and the increasing confidence of the far right to spark racist riots must be a wake up call for the left and trade union movement in Britain.
The labour and trade union movement must engage with the genuine concerns of working class communities regarding crime, housing, jobs and access to public services and point to the real causes of our society’s problems: big business, the politicians who serve them and the capitalist system.
We must combat and expose everywhere the rise of the far right and fascist groups, and their billionaire backers, who seek to cynically exploit attacks like this as part of their efforts to distract and divide working people and blame minorities for the problems caused by the system itself.
No to violence on our streets – build working class unity to end the system which creates it."
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