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ANTI BNP MEETING

Anti BNP activists from around Yorkshire and Humberside are gathering thisSaturday in Leeds.

Yorkshire Unite Against Fascism are having their annual conference and willbe discussing amongst other things how to stop the racist and fascist BNP

getting a Euro MP elected in June.

This is an important meeting for people who want to ensure we don't wake upto a nightmare on June 5th with British and European Fascists taking seats in

the EU Parliament.

If the BNP get a foothold on the EU it will give them a bigger platform topeddle their poisonous message and give them significant financial resources.

Speakers include:Linda McAvan MEP - Gloria Mills UNISON national officer & ex President TUC - Bill AdamsYorkshire & the Humber TUC regional secretary - Bev Miller Chair UNISON Black MembersCommittee - Abdul Gooljar Islamic Society of Britain - Paul Clays CWU regional secretary - IanStevenson NUT regional secretary - Fiona Edwards Women's Officer Sheffield University StudentUnion - Lee Billingham Love Music Hate Racism

Racism in EuropeEurope is often one of the first

places people think of when racism isdiscussed. From the institutionalizedracism, especially in colonial times, whenracial beliefs — even eugenics — were notconsidered something wrong, to recenttimes where the effects of neo-Nazism isstill felt. Europe is a complex area withmany cultures in a relatively small area ofland that has seen many conflictsthroughout history. (Many of theseconflicts have had trade, resources andcommercial rivalry at their core, butnational identities have often added fuel tosome of these conflicts.)

“Debates over the origins of racismoften suffer from a lack of clarity over theterm. Many conflate recent forms of racismwith earlier forms of ethnic and nationalconflict. In most cases ethno-national conflictseems to owe to conflict over land andstrategic resources. In some cases ethnicityand nationalism were harnessed to warsbetween great religious empires (for example,the Muslim Turks and the Catholic Austro-Hungarians). As Benedict Anderson hassuggested in Imagined Communities, ethnic

identity and ethno-nationalism became asource of conflict within such empires with therise of print-capitalism.

In its modern form, racism evolvedin tandem with European exploration andconquest of much of the rest of the world, andespecially after Christopher Columbusreached the Americas. As new peoples wereencountered, fought, and ultimately subdued,theories about “race” began to develop, andthese helped many to justify the differencesin position and treatment of people whomthey categorized as belonging to differentraces (see Eric Wolfʼs Europe and the PeopleWithout History).

Another possible source of racismis the misunderstanding of Charles Darwinʼstheories of evolution. Some took Darwinʼstheories to imply that since some “races” weremore civilized, there must be a biologicalbasis for the difference. At the same time theyappealed to biological theories of moral andintellectual traits to justify racial oppression.There is a great deal of controversy aboutrace and intelligence, in part because theconcepts of both race and IQ are themselvescontroversial”.

Racism has also been used tojustify exploitation, even using

“pseudo-science”:ANTI BNP MEETING