The November 6 mass action against state-organized racist attacks exposed how the police, the agents provocateurs, Pingists and other opportunists carry out their dirty work against the people, and split the mass action of the people against state-organized attacks.
The agents provocateurs, opportunists, plainclothes police and the traitors to the East Indian community carried out many provocations against the people and worked to the maximum to split the fighting unity of the people. At the November 6 action, these state agents carried out two-fold reactionary activity. One, they intimidated a lot of the people who came to the demonstration. The people who came to the demonstration approved of the slogans of the Joint Committee such as Blame the Rich and Not the People for Racist Attacks! and Self-Defence is the Only Way! These state agents snatched away these signs from anyone who came into the section of Nathan Phillips Square under police guard, and forced the people to take up signs with false slogans which encouraged reliance on the state. Second, in order to back up this intimidation, these agents tried to keep the people from marching under the banners of the Joint Committee by telling the people that if they join the Joint Committee demonstration, they will be attacked, that they might be deported by the Immigration Department, and various other threats.
These opportunists were allied with the police who stepped in to physically split the ranks of the people and to disrupt the unity of the people against state-organized racist attacks. The police formed a barricade to physically split the community at Nathan Phillips Square. On the march from Nathan Phillips Square to Queen’s Park, the agents provocateurs, opportunists and Pingists were joined by the police to split the community. The opportunists and police carried out numerous provocations to get Indians fighting Indians, and to get the people fighting amongst themselves instead of opposing the state.
These are the long-time and usual tactics of the state. The police are always working to split the resistance.
Lenin taught that this alliance of the opportunists with the state is the only source of strength for these elements:
But the whole thing is crystal clear. The immense strength of the opportunists and the chauvinists stems from their alliance with the bourgeoisie, with the governments and the General Staffs. This is often overlooked in Russia, where it is assumed that the opportunists are a section of the socialist parties, that there always have been and will be two extreme wings within those parties, that ’extremes’ should be avoided, etc., etc. – and plenty of similar philistine copy-book maxims.
This alliance between the opportunists and the state was clearly demonstrated at the November 6 action, where the opportunists carried on their splitting activity hand-in-hand with the police. For example, among the traitors to the community who are allied with the state is a phoney Sikh who has spoken a lot about relying on the police to find an end to the racist attacks. A brother of this so-called leader has received immigration even though he had worked in Canada illegally and violated the immigration laws etc. Giving this individual immigration and publicizing his participation in what the October 19, 1977 Globe and Mail calls a “riot” is part of the state-organized racist attacks against the people, and shows the alliance between the state and these traitors.
The opportunists, agents provocateurs, and the handful of traitors to the community are the Trojan Horses in the community. They are splitting the resistance of the people to state attacks in Canada, just like they are splitting the national liberation struggles of the people of Asia, Africa and Latin America, in order to get the people to fight with one another. The solutions offered by these agents of the rich are deceptive. They tell the people that they can end the state attacks if they rely on the state. They call for an end to government “inaction”, and pretend that the state is not already active against the people. They tell the East Indian and West Indian communities that it is the people that are racist, and that the state can provide a solution. But this is like the Trojan Horse, and it will bring disaster to the communities if this line is followed.
These opportunists are allied with the state to split the resistance of the people and to organize provocations to split the community. The activities of these opportunists on November 6 is the same as on August 14, 1976 in Vancouver when they organized an ugly incident to get the people fighting amongst themselves and to split the unity of the community.
However, despite all the efforts of the opportunists on November 6, the East Indians and West Indians came en masse, and justly demonstrated their anger against the racist attacks. All the provocations of these people failed to get the Indians to fight one another. And hundreds of Canadians came to join the Canadians of East Indian and West Indian origin, showing the unity of the entire Canadian people against state-organized racist attacks.
The Joint Committee works to unite the people and frustrate the efforts of the state to split the people. It resolutely opposes those who are traitors and sellouts to the community, and all the agents provocateurs and other splitters who try to wreck the unity of the people against state-organized racist attacks.
(People’s Canada Daily News, Volume 7 No. 266, November 7,1977)