Haven't the IWCA also moved to the Right by arguing that immigration should be limited, i.e. the possibility of class conscious peoples entering the country is denied.
You have of course hit the nail right on on the proverbial head , nutnut. The (now resoundingly defunct) IWCA localist political initiative was apparently an attempt to "occupy the political ground" on big , mainly white, working class housing estates , that the BNP were making great headway in during the mid 1990's (until they imploded with their failure to deliver any pogroms or mass deportations to their bigotted voting supporters, or defend their poor white working class supporters against the emerging austerity offensive after the 2008 Crash).
The IWCA is in no way "of the Left". In fact its leading figures have repeatedly denounced "the Left" as having "nothing to offer the Working Class". Their localist, self-help, politics was/is in no way socialist - more a form of working class oriented self-help liberalism - with lots of emphasis on workers co-operatives - and local self activity to combat local crime and drug dealing - and huge illusions in the possibilities for localised working class advance deriving from winning local council seats. The IWCA political "offer" of course not only attempted to occupy the geographic ground that the BNP were for a while successfully winning, but with its slippery special hostile "take" on "multiculturalism" as being a conspiracy by the capitalist state to substitute "identity politics" for (working) class political identity and action, it was able to boast about "campaigning in local councils to oppose the award of grants to ethnic minority projects" whilst of course claiming that this wasn't for any racist reasons - oh no ... it was because of an adherence to solid working class politics. Went down well no doubt with the racist white bigots as well of course ! Similarly, with the IWCA's slippery and equivocal stance on immigration - in favour of immigration controls - and happy to go along with the lie that it is migrant workers who lower wages by competing with "indigenous workers" - but not for racist reasons of course - but from solid "pro-working class political motives" (well the indigenous working class anyway). Went down well no doubt with white bigots all too ready to blame fellow (migrant) workers for their falling wages and living conditions, too of course.
The IWCA has no broader, national, or international perspective or political analysis comparable to that of socialism. Certainly no vision of a society beyond capitalism. Their localist ,myopic, self help, slogan - "Working Class Power in Working Class Areas", says it all really. Utterly facile and delusional, Try creating "working class power" in somewhere like Stoke on Trent nowadays, lads - capitalism has upped sticks and gone away, and the council is having to impose cuts which will destroy even the most basic local council services . "Power" and resources generally simply aren't available or controlled at local level for the working class to get hold of in isolation. Only mass action, local, national, and internationally, around a socialist analysis and objective can tackle the plight capitalism has left us all in. A few workers co-ops, local projects, and dubious slippery accommodations to hostility to immigrant workers or ethnic minorities which choose to self identify culturally and religiously rather than in working class terms, just aint going to do it.
The IWCA "critique" of both the failures of the Left and the rise of the Far Right over the last 20 years is an entirely bogus one. They create a complete myth of "original thinking" by the Right - counterposed to the claimed lack of anything useful to say by the Left. This in fact deliberately mixes up and confuses the success of the last 30 years of the completely non-fascist neoliberal political agenda and its globalist freemarket ideology (now in ruins of course since the 2008 Crash), with the much lesser success of the fascist and neo-fascist Right across Europe during the last 20 years. The neo-fascist Right of course offered no new thinking at all (other than superficially substituting Islamophobia and general anti new wave immigrant hysteria for antisemitism) - but just benefitted from riding the wave of anti immigrant sentiment across Europe produced by globalisation and the importation of large numbers of new , ethnically different, migrant workers to fuel the long neoliberal boom. So what "new thinking" would the IWCA have the Left do to match the neo-fascist Right's success ? They would have us believe that it is to copy the work," on the landings", of the Far Right in big working class estates. Local anti austerity and community activism work by the Left on working class estates is of course a positive strategy, and one the Left needs to do much more of. Unfortunately most of the BNP's "local community work" has simply been racist shit-stirring - not useful community work. Campaigning against a new mosque, or campaigning against the award of council grants to ethnic minority cultural projects is NOT something the Left wants to engage in .
In the years ahead, with the austerity offensive now gathering pace, the fascists and their no doubt short-lived champagne hoorah henry petty nationalist rivals of UKIP (with their simplistic petty nationalist and barely concealed anti immigrant racism platform "protest vote" role for backward elements of the working class, as well as the more rabid Daily Mail readers of the middle classes) will continue to peddle their racist and petty nationalist political mesage. Socialists have a powerful alternative analysis and message - of hope and real radical social change. Sure the socialist Left was in the doldrums throughout the triumphant years of neoliberalist hegemony. That era is well over. Only militant socialists will be able to build a mass movement to build an effective resistance to the capitalist offensive. The fascists,and UKIP, have nothing to offer but scapegoatism and prejudice.
If the IWCA really want to impress anyone with some analysis I suggest you actually say something new yourselves, rather than banging on with the same old anti socialist claptrap, and bigging up the Far Right's growth, simplifications you've been peddling unchanged since 1995. The only thing you've noticed since then is that, a) the IWCA project completely failed - but was somehow also an amazing triumph ! and b) the BNP 's unstoppable forward momentum crashed and burned . Now you seem to think UKIP is on an unstoppable rise ! FFS, its a short lived bigots protest vote. UKIP's leaders are a bunch of dodgy bigotted used car dealers. That bandwagon will soon derail too. Eventually the fascists will of course come back strongly as the crisis really deepens - that's what happens in a social crisis as class antagonisms harden- but by then the radical Left will be growing fast too - just as it has been in Greece, France, Spain, Portugal.. The IWCA's rump of members will soon have to decide which side of the political fence to be on.
