Workers Power Leeds branch has been organising in the Richmond Hill and Burmantoft ward to combat the growth of fascism in the area. Mark Collett, who starred in a Channel 4 documentary a few years ago called 'Young, Nazi and Proud' is standing in the ward again. He got over 1,000 votes last time and, on the back of his "free speech" two trial at Leeds Crown Court, he hopes to use his national profile to get elected onto the council.

Over the last few months the antifascist left in Leeds has begun to crank back up into gear to begin doing work in the city. However we are starting off from a position of weakness. The failure by UAF to do any kind of systematic work in the city has left us with a pool of activists but not a real network of people around the city, in the estates and suburbs that can help us out.

The AGM in March only had 10 people to it. When Workers Power put a resolution, which laid out the political arguments an effective anti fascist campaign would need to have (for a working class united front against fascism, no platform for fascists, etc.) the motion was referred to next week's meeting. At this meeting, 24 people came and our resolution was roundly defeated. Many people argued for the campaign to remain broad, and that any attempt to impose "politics" on it would limit the campaign.

The problem for UAF is that the campaign might be broad, but it is also failing. The BNP are standing 24 candidates in 23 wards; they mobilised forces for the Griffin-Collett trial every day that they were in court; they have clearly consolidated a base of support in Leeds, if not actually grown, in the last few years. Compare this to Respect, who are standing only one candidate in the council elections this year.

At the UAF meeting, Workers Power agreed to organise the leafleting in Richmond Hill and Burmantoft against Collett. On Wednesday 19th Workers Power and Revolution supporters began the leafleting around the council estates in East End park. We handed out over 3,000 leaflets, a mixture of UAF, Asylum Lies and Workers Power antifascist leaflets.

Our leaflets dealt with the issues that UAF won't touch. The front page had arguments against the supposed "working class" nature of the BNP, ponting out, for example, that they won't tax the rich, that they supported the government against the FBU in 2002, that their leaders are fascist. We even had a special box out on Mark Collett with some of his quotes from the TV!

On the back we had three boxes, one on Muslims in Britain, how they live in poverty, have a lower employment rate and so on, a box on immigrant workers and Asylum seekers in the UK, dispelling some of the myths and giving a class analysis of immigration. The final box had a section on how to fight back, that we needed working class action, strikes, protests and pickets to defend our NHS, to force the government to build more council houses, etc.

The example of the defeat of the CPE in France showed how immigrant youth joined forces with students and French workers in a massive general strike and huge demonstrations that rocked the country, forcing the government to climb down. The BNPs politics would have divided this movement. Workers and immigrant youth would have blamed each other for the government's attacks, instead of uniting to fight back. This is the real role of fascism in society, an instrument of civil war against the working class, to divide and rule - a tactic that can only help the bosses and the government.

As long as UAF ducks the hard arguments and rests content with merely "exposing" the BNP as Nazis and criminals it will fail in its mission to stop fascism. You can throw leaflets at the BNP and their supporters, but in the end, if the left and the workers' movement does not tackle the political arguments around the issues that allow the fascist to grow, then we will not significantly dent their growth.

Why does the SWP and its supporters in UAF insist on "unity" no matter what the cost? It is because UAF relies on unity with the trade union leaders, and with "respectable" politicians like Tory leader David Cameron, to legitimise antifascism in Britain. This means no criticism of these leaders, it means staying silent on the explosive issues like immigration that could tear the fragile coalition apart.

But unity on its own decides nothing, because without the correct policies any antifascist coalition is simply arranging the deck chairs on a sinking chip. The BNP has fielded more candidates, year on year, and received more of the vote, year on year, since 2001. We have to start thinking hard about what kind of strategy is going to work to really defeat the Nazi menace.

The leafleting session on Sunday 23rd attracted 25 people, on the same day that UAF mobilised separately for leafleting in Morley. Workers Powers members and other antifascists, including three postal workers from the local delivery office, helped to hand out 2,000 leaflets around Harehills Lane and the back to back housing to the west of it.

It was around here that one of our leafleting teams was confronted by none other than... Mark Collett! A BNP supporter, who received one of our leaflets earlier that day, had tipped him off. Collett drove up in his car and shouted abuse at us, getting on his mobile phone to call his "security team". Needless to say we were not going to let this jumped up little Nazi put us off. We all leafleted together and ignored the car full of skinhead thugs that kept on driving by.

What this incident demonstrates is that the BNP is not a normal political party. They might have policies no different from UKIP (their election leaflet just reads as typical right wing politics, nothing that wouldn't shame the Tories' right wing) - but what hides behind the suits? The thugs and Nazi skinheads, who are prepared to try and take control of the streets, to intimidate political opponents by physical force. This is how you can spot a fascist party, and the proof was in the pudding on Sunday in Leeds.

It will be hard to see if the leafleting has an effect on the vote. The national profile of the candidate, the 1,000 votes he received in previous polls, the increased profile of the BNP across the country (thanks to misguided reports by the Joseph Rowntree trust and Labour MPs panicked by a decline in their core vote), and the increasing rising tide of Islamophobia all make the conditions for BNP growth perfect.

One other thing is missing as well, which gives the BNP political space to grow and recruit: the absence of a genuine revolutionary working class party in Britain; a party that is rooted in the class, the communities, the estates and the workplaces; a party that can give answers to the questions that workers face. As long as the working class lacks a socialist, revolutionary party which can marshal activists from the local area to do this kind of work day in and day out, all we can hope to do is slow the BNP's growth.

Workers Power is fighting to build that new party. The Socialist Workers Party had a chance to build a revolutionary party out of the antiwar movement, to use the betrayal of parliamentary democracy and the Labour Party to win people to a socialist message. But, instead, it chose to build a populist, electoral party around George Galloway: Respect.

The Socialist Party, to its credit, has launched a Campaign for a New Workers Party, which Workers Power has joined. But the SP insists on it being a reformist party, a party that is silent on the question of how to get socialism. It resists any attempt to open up the possibility of winning workers and youth disillusioned with Labour to make a complete break with reformism. The SP barely mentions the fight against racism in its political message.

Consistent - i.e. revolutionary - socialists must not hide our real politics from the class in order to be "respectable" and build left reformist parties. Neoliberalism is polarising the population: radicalising millions with its repulsive wars, its racist abuse of refugees and immigrants, its attacks on workers' rights, services and living standards; but, at the same time, poisoning others with its scapegoating of Muslims and asylum seekers, its creation of competition and markets for scarce resources, its shackling of the unions.

Our message to the working class has to be that there is an alternative to racism, poverty and imperialist war, that we can only expose the "fool's socialism" of the BNP by fighting for the real thing: a radical, anticapitalist alternative. That the working class internationally can unite and fight for socialism, a system that will put the mass of workers, poor and the youth in charge of society. This will mean a revolution to clear out the bosses and their protectors, the police.