For two years running the far right has sought to intimidate and terrorise migrants and minorities across Britain.
In 2024 Robinson’s online network of racist thugs swooped with pretended outrage at the murder of three children by the son of a Rwandan migrant on the Merseyside town of Southport, setting fire to mosques and asylum hostels. Copycat riots occurred throughout the country.
Last year saw the long siege of an asylum hotel in Epping Forest and the Raise the Colours campaign of placing intimidatory union and St George’s flags in public places around the UK, while tiny fascist gangs attempted to march through sensitive neighbourhoods.
This year socialists, trade unionists, and Black and Asian communities must fight back, not just with passive protests, but fully prepared to stand their ground and block the racists. And not just the lumpen fascist thugs, but also the police who protect them.
Two-tier policing: the myth
This year the trial of Vickrum Digwa on 1 June for the murder of Henry Nowak last December brought hundreds of rioters to the streets of Southampton. Reform’s Nigel Farage had encouraged people to react with ‘cold rage’ at the verdict, despite Henry’s family appealing for calm.
Both Farage and Tory leader Kemi Badenoch pointed the finger at the police, who had initially disbelieved Henry’s complaint of being stabbed and arrested him instead of the killer. Farage claimed that police anti-racist training was in fact ‘anti-white racism’.
Both of these reactionaries are wrong.
Since 1990, nearly 2,000 people have died during and following police contact in England and Wales, while only one on-duty officer has been convicted of manslaughter, none for murder. The scandal at the centre of this case is the reckless indifference, casual violence and the culture of routine brutality and impunity the police show towards working class people.
Ethnic minorities bear the brunt of this discrimination. According to a recent report commissioned by Sadiq Khan and King’s College London found that Black people are 48 times more likely to be stopped and searched than whites. That’s why anti-racist training is needed now more than ever.
Two-tier policing: the truth
Nevertheless the police have taken the false accusation of ‘two-tier policing’ as an excuse to hammer blows against the antifascist movement as they try to defend their towns and cities against fascist gangs. Badenoch and Farage have given the green light for the cops to be even more violent against antiracist campaigners.
In Birmingham on 20 June, 800 antifascists heavily outnumbered Britain First’s motley crew by at least four to one. They would have been chased out of town, were it not for the cops kettling our side while the fascists marched. One police officer punched a pregnant woman to the ground, simply for being there.
In Brighton on the same day, our side were better organised, having escaped the control of the SWP’s Stand Up To Racism, which preaches passivity at any cost. Mustering 4-5,000 protesters, many coming in union contingents, banners and flags in hand, the antifascists were determined not to be kettled. Knowing the streets because they lived there, they ran rings round the heavily armed police.
But the state forces were not to be outmanoeuvred and demanded the fascists’ right to march by force. They tried to crush the antifascists in a narrow street, causing several to faint—but only to see more class fighters fill the breach. Tear gas, baton charges and even mounted police were deployed… but to no effect. Eventually the racists were forced to retreat to the train station from whence they came.
Strategy
SWP members have been at the forefront of antifascist mobilisations for many years, but their organisation has repeatedly led them and others into the cul de sac of police kettles, hundreds of yards if not miles away from the enemy they claimed to confront.
The Together Alliance, which was noticeable by its absence from the counter-demo mounted against Tommy Robinson’s second Unite the Kingdom march in central London in May, is not the answer. In fact it takes us further away from the task at hand.
Instead antifascists should follow the strategy of the movement in Brighton, Bristol and elsewhere, organising mobile units to escape police cordons, and stop the fascists in their tracks. They need proper stewards and self-defence groups to defend their actions against police attack and provocation, and to go on the offensive to drive the racist scum off their streets.
If we can achieve this over the summer, we can begin to turn the tide on the far right. But that will not happen automatically. Every threatened march must be met with organised, disciplined and militant resistance. Every union branch, tenants’ group, student society and community campaign should be drawn into preparing it. And every antifascist mobilisation must point beyond defensive action towards the need for working class power: a movement that can fight the racists in the streets, challenge their allies in Parliament and the media, and offer a socialist answer to the misery on which they feed.
That is the task Workers Power exists to fight for. Against Farage, Badenoch, Robinson and every fascist would-be leader, we say: no reliance on the police, no trust in liberal hand-wringing, no passive protests penned in miles from the enemy. Build militant antifascist action. Build rank-and-file organisation in the unions and communities. Build a revolutionary party that can turn working class unity into a struggle for power.
Black and white unite and fight—but this time, let’s really fight.
