By KD Tait
A WAVE of far right demonstrations targeting immigration lawyers and refugee housing failed to materialise on Wednesday night after tens of thousands of anti-racists demonstrated in defence of our communities.
This show of strength by black, white and Asian workers from Newcastle to Southampton shows that the best way to oppose far right terror is through mass mobilisation of working class communities.
But there is no room for complacency. The riots were overtly racist and violent. Several descended into near pogroms, with Mosques attacked and hotels set on fire with people inside. In many places it was only the presence of antifascists that prevented serious injury or worse.
Away from the riots, Muslims and people of colour have been targeted by racists in the streets. Hindu temples have been daubed with Islamophobic graffiti. Bus drivers have been spat at and called ‘terrorist scum’. Women have had their hijabs ripped off and subjected to rape and death threats online.
The role of anti-immigrant propaganda
The false claim that a Muslim refugee committed the Southport murders may have sparked the riots, but this outbreak of racist terror is intended to intimidate all immigrants—not just Muslims, refugees or people of colour. It has been fuelled by decades of government policies demonising Muslims as a terrorist ‘enemy within’, the Windrush scandal, the criminalisation of refugees, and racist campaigns by the media and politicians claiming Britain is being ‘invaded’ (Suella Braverman) by a ‘swarm’ (David Cameron) of ‘cockroaches’ (The Sun).
All this was distilled by the Brexit campaign into a toxic combination that promised leaving the EU would mean we could ‘take back control’ of our borders and ‘spend £350 million a week on the NHS’. The inability of the Tories to fulfil their pledges to cut immigration or ‘level up’ working class communities—both of which run counter to the needs of the British economy and the profits of its bosses—was a major factor driving the four million votes won by Nigel Farage’s Reform party.
It is no coincidence that race riots erupted only a week after tens of thousands attended a demonstration in central London organised by the fascist and Reform supporter Tommy Robinson. If the demonstration marked the parliamentary debut of an openly nativist, populist party, the riots represent the attempt by Reform’s fascist fellow travellers to turn its slogans into action. For them the real way to ‘deter refugees’ isn’t Rwanda—it’s knives and petrol bombs.
The Labour Party has responded with a police crackdown that has seen nearly 500 arrested and the first jail sentences imposed. This may fill up the overflowing prisons, but it will do nothing to address the popular discontent that is deflected by racist propaganda against the foreign workers who staff our NHS and slave away in Britain’s low wage, exploitative call centres, warehouses and hospitality industry.
In this respect the riots have already served their purpose. Despite the token denunciations of ‘criminality’, the press is full of articles asking whether it is ‘legitimate’ to be concerned about immigration. What they don’t ask is why complaints about the NHS crisis are directed against the relatively trivial sums spent on housing asylum seekers, instead of the vast wealth hoarded by Britain’s bosses.
Racism and capitalism
Britain’s historic and continuing role as one of the world’s great imperial powers has made it both one of the richest countries, and its working class one of the most diverse. But the racism that blames asylum seekers for a lack of investment in public services does not originate in the working class. It comes from the top down. It is part and parcel of the British ruling class’s ideology, rooted in colonialism, slavery and Empire, which has always promoted racism as a tool to divide the working class.
From the Irish in the 19th century, to the Eastern European Jews at the turn of the 20th, to the Black, Asian, and Polish immigrants in the 1950s, 1970s and 2000s, the generations of immigrant workers who built our cities and created Britain’s modern multiethnic working class have always been subjected to racist campaigns by the press and parties owned by the same employers who exploit them.
Decades of deindustrialisation followed by years of austerity destroying public services, housing and jobs, leaving Britain with the lowest pensions and some of the highest poverty in Europe, have created fertile conditions for the far right to exploit. But as the saying goes, the real enemy of working people doesn’t arrive by boat—he arrives by private jet. It is not refugees fleeing war in Afghanistan, or migrants paid slave wages to care for our elderly who are to blame for Labour’s decision to keep the two-child benefit cap or strip pensioners of winter fuel payments.
Labour has already echoed Tory promises to ‘stop the boats’ and restrict immigration. MPs in seats where Labour votes are outnumbered by Tory and Reform votes will be tempted to pander to anti-immigrant ideas. That’s why Keir Starmer has refused to denounce the racism of the rioters. It’s why Labour has disgracefully told councillors and MPs not to attend anti-racist demonstrations. This will only encourage the far right.
A workers’ united front against racism and fascism
We must oppose the crackdown on refugees and migrants which the Tory press are demanding. Immigration controls serve to segregate communities and create a two-tier workforce in which migrants can be more easily exploited because they fear being sacked and forced to leave.
The best way to undermine the far right poison is to demonstrate that class, not race, is the fundamental dividing line in society. To do that, we need to rebuild our class organisations that have been weakened by decades of deindustrialisation destroying working class communities, and anti-trade union laws that prevent us from collectively defending jobs, pay and working conditions. We need a real united front against racism and fascism. This means trade unions and Labour parties should actively encourage their branches to attend demonstrations, with banners and organised stewards’ groups. Councillors and MPs should be invited to address demonstrations, denouncing far right terror and calling on the government to abandon its anti-immigrant policies.
The immediate task is to organise the self-defence of our communities. Calls for protests to be ‘peaceful’ are understandable—but misguided. Where they come from the left like Stand Up to Racism, they are dangerously wrong, and threaten to disarm our resistance. We can’t rely on the institutionally racist police to protect us. Mass assemblies in working class areas should elect self-defence committees to protect communities and defend the right to protest.
The real answer to the misery inflicted by capitalism is to seize the huge wealth of the super rich and use it to raise pay and pensions, and build the housing, schools, and social care system, and invest in green industries which could provide hundreds of thousands of jobs and regenerate communities.
Labour’s first weeks in office have been met by a violent outburst of racist terror instead of a mobilisation of the working class putting forward a programme to provide the jobs, education, housing and healthcare that our communities need.
Without a mass mobilisation of the organised working class, that names the real enemy and demonstrates a class response, we leave the path open to popular discontent being deflected by far right demagogues like Nigel Farage and his fascist outriders into pogroms and riots that will tear apart working class communities and undermine our ability to fight for our real interests.
The anti-racist mobilisations show that the support exists for such a campaign. But it needs to be organised.
