Only policies in the interest of the workers and their families, can stop the increase of violence

In the past weeks there was a lot of racist and other useless violence in Belgium. In the Brussels Central Station a young man, Joe Van Holsbeeck, was murdered by two youth who wanted his MP3-player. In Brugge a group of neo-nazi skinheads attacked two men, a black man is still in coma. In Antwerp the 18-year old Hans Van Themse shot some immigrants with a gun. Result: two dead and one wounded. Just before that police found the body of Mohamed Bouazza in Antwerp. He probably also was the victim of a racist attack. The anger and the shock after this violence is huge. As socialists we do not limit ourselves to sympathy for the victims, but we also want to raise a strategy of fighting racism and violence in society.

Antwerp: stop the racist violence!

On thursday 11 may a young girl Oulemata was shot together with the 2 year old white baby Luna, who she was taking care of. Hans Van Themse walked through the city centre of Antwerp with a gun shooting at people with a “wrong colour”. This was in a busy area of the city centre, which brings the violence very near for many people. Many realised they as well could have been at the wrong place at the wrong time. The shock of this racist attack led to an emotional reaction of thousands of people.

Following the racist murders, there was a debate on the responsability of the Vlaams Belang and on racism in general. While the killer himself was an isolated racist, we have to point out why these sort of isolated people feel strong enough to commit racist attacks.

The family of the murdered Luna said Hans Van Themse is “a young man who was brought up in an environment that supports the ideology of the Vlaams Belang”. They point out to the far right background of Van Themse’s family. His grandfather went voluntarily fighting with the Nazis at the Easter Front. His aunt is a member of parliament for the Vlaams Belang and his father has been participating at activities of Voorpost (which provides the stewarding at meetings of the VB and other far right groups). The Vlaams Belang definitely strengthens the spreading of racist ideas, but the leadership of this party is not alone in that.

The traditional parties try to portray themselves as anti-racists. But at the same time they defend policies that lead to exclusion and division. We for example see that in the debate on immigrant rights and the present actions of immigrants in Belgium, all traditional parties defend a rhetoric of repression and criminalisation of immigrants with no legal status in the country.

In the discussions on the wages, the bosses and traditional parties always say that our wages are too high compared to workers in Eastern Europe or Asia, or even compared to foreign workers who are working in Belgium, legally or illegally. According to a recent study by McKinsey 22% of the Belgian GDP is produced on the “black market”.

The bosses and the government are putting the workers up against each other. Afterwards they only have moralistic arguments to say that racism is bad. Of course the bosses wouldn’t say that they want to cut our wages to improve their profits. No, they blame other workers to raise the need of having to compete with those workers.

How to fight racism?

The uncertain position of many workers and their families, combined with the rhetoric of the bosses and the government, creates the space for racist ideas to develop. The growing poverty (15% according to official figures) and the growing productivity of the workers through uncertain jobs in flexible conditions, provide a frutile ground for racism.

On this basis racism and the far right can grow: * Poverty. 15% of the Belgians live in relative poverty, amongst unemployed this is 32%, amongst those who do not own their house of apartment this is 24.6% * Bosses use the black market to impose lower wages and worse working conditions. A recent study by McKinsey says that 22% of the Belgian GDP is produced on the black market. In investigations by the General Bureau of Social Laws 40% of the controlled companies and workplaces are involved in illegal employment or breaking the laws on social protection of the workers. In 2002 14,611 workplaces were controlled, 547 of them employed illegal immigrants. * Bad housing conditions. The price to buy a flat in St Gilles (Brussels) rose with 46% in one year (2005). Between 1997 and 2004 the price of a flat in the Flanders area rose with 160% (from 45,300 euro to 128,702 euro). The prices to hire a place in Brussels rose with 25% between 1998 and 2001.

The lack of instruments to organise a fightback against those who are responsible for the neoliberal anti-workers policies, creates the possibilities for a passive electoral discontent in the form of a vote for the far right. We think we will need more than passive resistance, we have to build new instruments (fighting and democratic unions, a new mass workers’ party) to be able to fight back in an active way.

Some leftwing activists, academics,… wrote a statement which appeared in the Flemish press under the title “Racism is our collective responsibility”. They say it is necessary to have a period of collective and political thinking on racism. They say we need to use all possible political and judicial means to fight the Vlaams Belang. They also raise the need to fight day-to-day racism and discriminations. In that respect they are in favour of positive discrimination.

We do not think that these proposals will be useful in the fight against racism. It are the neoliberal policies themselves that need to be questioned. Furthermore we need a collective resistance to these policies, to avoid that individual fake solutions can remain so widely spread. A collective solution implements a fight for our common interests. Against the huge unemployment we have to fight for a shorter working week without a loss of pay. We will need victories around this sort of demands to be able to give an answer to the needs of the workers and their families.

We will need a united fight against the neoliberal policies, with no divisions on the basis of origin, age, gender, sexual orientation,… Racist ideas can be answered on the basis of united struggle. In the movement against the attack on our pensions in the fall of 2005, we saw a lot of picketlines during the strikes. On these picketlines the first question was not to ask somebody’s origin, but his or her preparedness to join the strikes against the attack.

Racism can continue to gain ground because of the lack of a real political alternative for the workers. New judicial procedures against the VB will not change this situation. The best way to fight racism, would be the creation of a new workers’ party that is able to link the day-to-day struggle with a political program aimed at defending the interests of the workers and their families. By defending our interests, we can point out who is really responsible for social problems. In that process it will turn out that this is not our neighbour with a Moroccon background, but the bosses who are making record profits on our back.

Turning passive discontent into active resistance. That is the main challenge for a new workers’ party and it will be the only way to fight a continuing growing electoral support for the Vlaams Belang. At this moment a number of VB-members might use the occasion of the racist murders in Antwerp to leave this party. That is the case for professor Luc Lamine of the university of Leuven. But is certainly is not a dominant trend amongst the voters of the VB. Who else would they vote for at the present time?

The sadness is not owned by the city of Antwerp!

Following the racist murders the city authorities of Antwerp have tried to dominate the protest actions. On the 26th of may 20,000 demonstrated in Antwerp under the slogan “The sadness of from A”. In local dialect “a” stands for “you”, but it is also used as a symbol in publicity campaigns of the city of A(ntwerp). Even the rightwing local daily paper ‘Gazet van Antwerpen’ wrote in its editorial: “This slogan fits into a publicity campaign of the city of Antwerp using a big ‘A’. A different, more neutral, slogan, would have been better for this demonstration.”

The city authorities want to use the sadness and the anger as part of their publicity campaign. At the same time they say there can be no political recuperation and there was a ban on all leaflets, banners,… for the demonstrations. Only after long negotiations with the families of the victims, a second slogan was added. This was a slogan against racism.

Because of our sympathy with the families of the victims, we have not gone against the ban of opinions who go against the city authorities on the Silent March of the 26th. But because of our sympathy and our anger following the racist murders, we also want to organise to really fight racism and the grounds on which racism can grow. That includes fighting against the city authorities of Antwerp who are only interested in their own prestige and publicity campaigns, and not in the needs of the workers and their families.

80,000 demonstrate following the murder of Joe Van Holsbeeck in Brussels. Impressive show of solidarity

On sunday 23 April 80,000 demonstrated in Brussels. This demonstration was a show of solidarity with the family and the friends of the murdered Joe Van Holsbeeck. It also was a protest against useless violence. The silent demonstration was a loud cry for a more social, safer society with more solidarity.

In discussions with our members, many at the demo raised the question of safety. However, not many people raised the need of more police and repression. Instead of that, most spoke about the need of prevention, including through our education. Many agreed that the reasons of the murder are the frustrations following a lack of means in a society with a big emphasis on material possession.

Many parents on the demo expressed their fear for the future of their children. Society in all its aspects is becoming harder and more uncertain: jobs, income, housing, health care, pensions, physical integrity,…

Useless violence

Because of the huge press attention for this murder, about all the traditional politicians were eager to express their opinion. They tried to present that as if it was without “political recuperation”. In the meanwhile they did come in the picture. And of course not with any criticism on the policies of the past 20 years.

In the past weeks all the media carried discussions on useless violence and the need to fight this. They however didn’t explain why there is an increase in violence. If the society cannot give a useful content for everybody’s life, that society is paying a price for it.

In the daily paper ‘De Standaard’ a reader’s letter stated: “Fifty years ago, when I was still a child, there was no talk about a subjective of objective insecurity. But there were workers everywhere. In the parks there were gardeners, in the railway stations there were waiters on the floors and those who controlled the tickets, on the busses there were the drivers but also controllers, in big public buildings there were porters, even in the elevators there were workers… Today we pay these people to sit at home being unemployed, while many of those jobs have disappeared. Those people feel excluded and don’t participate in our social security. Is that better?”

This letter describes the changes we have seen in the past decades. Public services knew some ‘rationalisations’, with tens of thousands of jobs that disappeared and less services. Today it is easy to point out to the individual responsibility of parents, while at the same time public crèches are closed, while there are less means for our education and while many parents are forced to work ‘flexible’ for low wages. The fact that 15% of the Belgians are poor is too easily seen as an individual responsibility of the poor themselves. But that of course doesn’t explain why this figure has doubled in 7 years time.

As socialists we defend the need of a strong social security. That implies more than assurances and allocations. It also is about having our own place in society, being respected, growing up in a secure environment, working and living in a stable situation. It are these elements of our personal security that have been under fire for the past decades, because only the profit of the big companies seems to be important.

Security and safety for everybody

Against the growing inequality the traditional parties only offer more repression and thus more inequality. Resistance against this is portrayed as being “conservative”. When the French youth and workers demonstrated against the attack on their working conditions, a journalist of De Standaard wrote that this was a conservative reflex, “The students of today will know less security, but they have more challenges.”

Socialists are in favour of more safety and security for everyone. In capitalism only competition and profits count. This leads to a harder society. More repression will not provide an answer for that.

Real solutions will have to be on a different level: the right of a decent life, a stable and well-paid job. Education plays an important role in consolidating differences in society: poor youth usually start while they are behind on the field of language, culture,… and are even further behind after leaving school. If we want to change this situation, we will need more money for education.

A lot of the youth learn their “criminal profession” on a very early age by wandering around the streets with no goal, as they have no money to participate in leisure activities. Youth facilities run by the youth themselves in all cities and villages, would be a huge step forward.

This demands investments for which the present government says there is no money. That problem perhaps could be solved by taking on the criminals who are responsible for diverting millions of euro in the pockets of the rich.

We think that the fight against useless violence is a fight for a decent future for everyone. A future in which an MP3-player doesn’t have to be a reason to kill someone. We therefore have no confidence in the traditional politicians who already have proven their failure. We need a break with the capitalist logic and its political representatives.

Brugge: Vlaams Belang tradition of fascist violence continued

On the 6th of May a group of neo-nazi skinheads in Brugge attacked two men. One of them is still in coma. According to our information some of these skinheads are very much involved in the neo-nazi scene. This was not the first time that Brugge came in the news with rightwing violence.

The national VB-leaders Frank Vanhecke and Filip Dewinter started their political activity in this city in the early 1980s. That was also accompanied with violence. Pubs that were labelled as “too leftwing” were attacked and even shot at. The carillonneur of the famous Belfort in Brugge was physically attacked in a raid on the tower.

In 1997 there was a bomb attack in Brugge on a far right militant, Jeroen Mol. This neo-nazi said that Blokbuster (the anti-racist campaign led by CWI-members) was responsible. Finally he had to admit he committed the attack himself. Frank Vanhecke, national chairman of the VB, said Jeroen Mol was not a member anymore of the VB. His lawyer, former Vlaams Belang MP Rob Verreycken, defended Mol in court.

The VB now says it has nothing to do with neo-nazi’s and skinheads. At least, that is their position whenever there is a problem with one of their neo-nazi’s or rightwing skinheads. As long as there’s not too much public attention for it, the neo-nazi’s remain welcome in the party. That became very clear when an organiser of a neo-nazi gig in Western Flanders turned out to be a member of the regional council of the Vlaams Belang. This person immediately disappeared from the regional council, but now Dewinter admits that he still is a member. Another organiser of the same radical youth grouping is local councillor of the VB. This was widely mentioned in the press and as a result this he still is in the regional leadership of the VB.

Against the violence of small fascist groupings such as the neo-nazi’s of Blood&Honour we need to organise to stop their intimidations and violence. Weakness leads to aggression. Organising ourselves is therefore the best answer to fascist violence.

We made this clear in the city of Turnhout in 2004. A group of neo-nazi’s attacked local ‘alternative’ youth and immigrants. We started a campaign against fascist violence to inform and mobilise broader layers. In September 2004 we held a demonstration. One of the neo-nazi’s involved in the recent attack in Brugge came from Turnhout and wrote on an internetforum some weeks before the attack that he preferred not to come too much in Turnhout because neo-nazi’s weren’t accepted there anymore.

Not racist?

Should we believe the Vlaams Belang when they claim to oppose racism? We do not think so. Here’s two quotes from their own people to prove this point.

“The problem of the African countries is that there are too few intelligent people there. And from the limited number of people with an IQ above 100, some go to Europe or Northern America”.
Filip De Man, MP for the Vlaams Belang on his website on 8 may 2006

“The predators have teeth and claws. The predators have knives. As children, they have learned at the yearly sacrificial feast how to cut the throat of warmblooded animals. We get sick when we see blood, but they don't. They are trained, they are armed. (…) We are the herd-animals, they are the beasts of prey. The herd-animals themselves have allowed the beasts of prey in their biotope.”
Paul Beliën on the killers of Joe Van Holsbeeck when it was still presumed that they had a Northern African background instead of a Polish background. Beliën is the husband of Vlaams Belang MP Alexandra Colen and he regularly collaborates with activities of the VB.