They have also started a serious campaign of harassment of left-wing activists. Supporters of the revolutionary Marxist fortnightly Socialist Outlook have been attacked and threatened in a number of cities. A Black member of the far left Socialist Workers Party had his house firebombed and every week there are reports of attacks on comrades selling the SWP's paper Socialist Worker.
But most disturbing of all is the increase in both the number and degree of viciousness of racist attacks. There have been firebomb attacks on Black and Asian families and there have been horrific incidents in which three or four adult men have literally jumped on the faces of 10-year old Asian children.
According to the government, there were 6459 racially motivated attacks. in Britain in 1990. This is certainly substantially lower than the real figure. But what
December 9, 1991 • #218 International Viewpoint is certain is that the figures for 1991 and 1992 will be higher. Not all these attacks are the work of supporters of the fascist groups. Many are carried out by neighbours or groups of youths who go looking for victims. Racism is becoming respectable again.
The pro-Tory papers are carrying more and more stories about immigrants making fraudulent social security claims, and fabricating and distorting stories about immigrants being given council houses in preference to whites.
At the same time government ministers have again been referring to the country being "swamped" by immigrants and leg islation, condemned by Amnesty International and some Bishops, has been introduced to make it even more difficult for refugees to enter Britain.
The response of the left has been slow and weak. The most active anti-fascist group, Anti-Fascist Action (AFA) consists of a number of small ultra-left organizations and puts a lot of emphasis on physical confrontation.
A more promising body is the AntiRacist Alliance (ARA) which was recently launched by Ken Livingstone MP, Labour Party Black Sections and the Black Liaison Group. Its fundamental problem is that some forces within it seem determined to bureaucratic methods.
But it is the most important attempt to begin a national campaign against the rising fascist and racist danger and has won the support of important figures in the Labour movement and of many Black organizations. *
BRITAIN / ALGERIA married women from voting, allowing husbands to vote on their behalf.
Two years ago, the struggle of women for the right to vote was totally ignored in the media and by the big democratic
Now people have suddenly woken up to the fact that there are 3.5 million married women, who may have their votes
This has led to panic, and a conflict between the prime minister Sid Ahmed Ghozali and the APN, which has tried to show its independence of the government by proposing small amendments to this part of the electoral law.
In the end, the Constitutional Council, an unrepresentative body which has, in general, little to do, examined the law and removed the right to vote on behalf of other members of the family on presentation of the family book. Thus, women now have the right to vote, even though they may well not use it, being prevented from leaving the home. In any case their vote cannot now simply be • What is your attitude to the FIS?
FREE elections are due in Algeria on December 26, 1991. The big question is whether the powerful Algerian Islamic fundamentalist movement, the Islamic Salvation Front (FIS), will stand, and how well it will do, given the arrest of its leaders and the regime's attempts to fix the electoral system to its own advantage.
IV spoke to Chawki Salhi, a spokesperson of the Algerian
Socialist Workers Party (Algerian sympathisers of the Fourth
International) about the background to these elections. The interview took place on November 26.
HE electoral law imposed by
T the government has led to a significant stir of debate, as much between the government and the ruling National Liberation Front (FLN) in parliament as among the opposition.
All this noise is artificial. Both the various currents in the regime and most of the so-called democratic parties - apart from Ait Ahmed's Front of Socialist
Forces (FFS) — are in favour of majority voting in two rounds. Most of them have thereby supported their own disappearance from the electoral scene.
Only the Socialist Workers Party (PST)
has broken this consensus, fighting for proportional representation, with the support of some thirty other small organizaton.
The fundamentalists, meanwhile, have come out for a hybrid system which tops up those with the highest votes - this gave them good results on June 12, 1991.
But in any case, the debate is a fraud.
Once the big democratic parties grasped that the aim of the government at the recent elections on June 27 was to cut the FIS down to size in the National People's Assembly (APN), they accepted the big swindle, according to which the dispersed populations of the South are strongly represented, those of the countryside moderately represented and the cities under-represented. Obviously it is these same parties that are the first victims, since all new political phenomena find their first and strongest expression in the cities. Bella, have proposed a "third candidate in the second round" rather than two. But his arithmetic is as bad as the others. When the law was voted through, several figures in the regime realized that the two-round ballot could cut both ways, and that, even if it won, the FLN would have problems.since it would not have the absolute majority and could see all its potential allies vanish. • Another subject of debate over the electoral law is that of proxy voting, which effectively prevents
If its main leaders are imprisoned, will you call for a boycott of the elections or not?
We should remember that the FIS saw a conflict in the aftermath of the arrest of Abassi Madani and Ali Belhadj, on June 30, 1991, between its historic leaders on the one hand and some lesser known fig-
The former, who advocated a hardline, and even a military-guerilla for the FIS, thought that the general strike called by the FIS might end in their humiliation, and that it would be better to stop it.
On the other side, an unknown, Hashani, who has since been the FIS' public leader, started out declaring that he would refuse to talk to the government while Madani and Belhadj remained in prison. Despite this, he was quick to negotiate with the government and get ready for these elections, declaring all the time that the FIS would not take part if its leaders remained in jail.
Then the FIS was not only preparing to take part, but was even ready to put forward its imprisoned big chiefs not as candidates, but merely as alternates, to get round the stipulation that candidates must present their dossiers in person, while lying about this to the rank-and-
However the government has even refused them this, without legal grounds. Hashani once again declared that the FIS would boycott the elections, while at the same time making statements like: "If we take part, we must win; if we do not take part, we must prevent the elections from iaking place." The FIS' final aim is to 19 take part.
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