“I’ve personally never seen anything like it… It was like the Long March through China, if you know anything about history. It was like the bloody Long March”.
So lamented the fascist leader of Britain First (BF), Paul Golding, on the back of their abysmal day out in Manchester last Saturday, when they were sent packing by over a thousand anti-fascists.
It’s not often you hear British nationalists compare themselves to Mao’s communists. Fortunately for Paul – and perhaps unfortunately for the rest of us – the analogy stops short at the fact that their forces remain healthy and well, if a bit rain-soaked.
But it’s not surprising that BF is making excuses online – including accusing the police of sabotage! Last Saturday’s march – under the banner of ‘mass deportations’ and ‘remigration’ – was an abject failure for them, and a welcome victory for the left.
Despite mobilising nationally, BF was only able to amass about 300 of their lumpen boneheads and coked-up knuckle-draggers.
Meanwhile, local left-wing and anti-fascist groups managed to mobilise around 1,200. We outnumbered them four-to-one. By comparison, last August BF mobilised 1,000 in Manchester, outnumbering the left five-to-one.
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During a chaotic game of cat-and-mouse through the busy shopping streets and back lanes of Manchester city centre, the anti-fascists forced BF to divert its route several times, and change its rallying point from a central location to the relatively secluded Castlefield Bowl.
Bizarrely, these pure-blooded ‘patriots’ even dropped their beloved Union Jack flags into the gutters, littering Manchester’s streets with puddles of red, grey, and blue.
By the time dozens of Golding’s supporters had been side-tracked by the alluring scent of Fosters into the nearby watering holes, his crowd of sodden supporters presented a rather sorry sight. It was less ‘Nuremberg rally’ and more ‘mid-week League One away day’.
In a fitting epitaph for a pitiful day, most of the ‘patriots’ lot had cleared off before Mr. Golding took to the stage for his keynote speech. Talk about negative migration!
Pretty farcical scenes at the end of the Britain First rally in Castlefield Bowl. A good chunk of the crowd left after a speech by Ashlea Simon, thinking it was over. And despite her pleas to return only a few did meaning BF leader Paul Goulding scrapped most of his speech pic.twitter.com/f4QhoUuJZu
— Damon Wilkinson (@DamonWilkinson6) February 21, 2026
Left mobilises
On the other side of this police-lined fracas stood a coalition of local grassroots groups, under the banner of ‘Resist Britain First’. Notably, the counter-demonstration was very youthful and lively.
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Revolutionary Communist Party (RCP) members and supporters from across the North West mobilised to support the counter-demonstration. With up to 60 people in the Communist bloc at the peak of the march, this was our biggest region-wide mobilisation to date.
We kicked off the day with a briefing, outlining our political perspectives and practicing our tailor-made chants.
As we pointed out, while BF is a fringe outfit, and Britain is not heading towards fascism, the far right does feel emboldened – by the migrant-bashing culture-war attacks of Starmer’s Labour, the Tories, and Reform, as well as by the fearmongering and lies in the billionaire media.
As comrade Jack Tye Wilson remarked:
“Who is ploughing the soil of racism? Who is watering the seeds of reaction? It is the establishment – the liberals and reformists – first and foremost. It is Keir Starmer himself, with his war against the working class, overseeing decline and deprivation…
“Capitalism needs racism. You can’t have a non-racist capitalism – it’s simply not possible. The ruling class needs these divisive distractions and scapegoats, in order to deflect blame from their own system.”
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Armed with these clear, class-based perspectives, we joined the demo and march starting from Sackville gardens. With our large red banner, and our bold placards which read ‘Smash capitalism to smash racism’, we were definitely one of the most vocal and visible groups.
Unfortunately, the march itself was chaotic and leaderless. We only had a vague idea of where BF were, and in which direction we were headed. At points the demo got split up, only to reunite again. But we successfully managed to block a main intersection in Manchester city centre, where the police kettled us for up to an hour.
In the police kettle, the enthusiasm and spirits were high, and the mood was defiant.
RCP comrades added to the energy, with chants that linked the fight against fascism to the fight against capitalism, including:
- ‘Fight the system! Smash the right! Workers of the world, unite!’
- ‘Who cuts our jobs to save their profits? Not the migrants, it’s the bosses!’
- ‘It’s not the boats that raise our rent, it’s the landlords, time they went!’
On top of this, several comrades also gave some impromptu speeches on the megaphone, covering everything from the fight to kick out Starmer’s government, to the inspiring mass movement in Minnesota, to the Epstein files and the crisis of the monarchy.
We definitely put ourselves on the map among the wider left. For example, we received the following message from a North West-based anti-fascist group:
“Hey there comrades, just wanted to reach out and thank you for your amazing turnout yesterday… really appreciated having you there with your chants and speeches you were absolutely outstanding.”
The day’s tumultuous events left their mark on the attendees we spoke with. One protestor told The Communist: “Things seem to be going to the extreme on both sides. I don’t know how people can say they are not interested in politics anymore. I know which side I lie on.”
Police hypocrisy
The Greater Manchester Police (GMP), however, played a reprehensible role on Saturday. As well as kettling the counter-demo twice for up to an hour each time, videos have surfaced of the GMP manhandling anti-fascists, and mounted police cavalry-charging at the anti-fascist crowd.
Scandalously, one video shows a group of BF thugs beating up an Asian man who had fallen to the floor, only for the police to then arrest him for trying to defend himself.
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We saw with our own eyes the police stand by and watch groups of fascists provoking our crowd unopposed and trying to start fights. Some of them even thought it was amusing!
One comrade reported that they saw these reactionary thugs “pulling placards out of people’s hands, grabbing girls and harassing anyone who wasn’t white” – and the police were nowhere to be seen.
Undeniably, the number one priority of the GMP was protecting the small crowd of BF supporters, and helping them carry out their reactionary, hateful procession through the streets of Manchester.
As we pointed out in our speeches and chants, it’s the same police protecting the fascists in Manchester that are tasked with clamping down on peaceful Palestine protestors, and turning a blind eye to the elite paedophile networks of Epstein, Mandelson, and Co.
As one comrade asked, “If they are really here to protect and serve us, why aren’t they marching down to the Palace to arrest Prince Andrew? Why aren’t they marching down to Westminster to arrest the war criminals?”
Instead, they were kettling and provoking anti-fascists trying to stand up to a gang of reactionaries. As one chant correctly observed: “Police protect the fascists! We protect the city!”
The police, however, were clearly on the back foot throughout the day. At a number of points, the anti-fascist crowd burst through the police lines, and the riot cops looked like they didn’t have a clue what they were doing. They were completely overwhelmed by the day’s proceedings, despite there being a relatively small turnout on either side.
A tale of two marches
There is one last thing worth commenting on, which is the fact that the anti-fascist forces were unfortunately – and scandalously – split down the middle.
Down the road from the bulk of confrontations, at Piccadilly Gardens, was an equally-sized crowd of anti-racist counter-demonstrators. This demo was organised by Stand Up To Racism (SUTR), which can be best described as a left-liberal outfit.
SUTR is a front organisation, founded and led by the Socialist Workers Party (SWP). With its links to the trade union bureaucrats, it has enjoyed a monopoly on the ‘official’ anti-racist movement for decades – although there are signs that its star is fading.
Despite having former-Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn and Green Party deputy leader Mothin Ali down as headline speakers, SUTR failed to mobilise more than half a thousand.
Part of the blame for this must be apportioned to the inaction of the local trade union leaders. Despite the main unions being official signatories of SUTR, a number of trade unionists we spoke with told us that they hadn’t heard from them about the demo.
More importantly, however, it must be said – in the interests of strengthening the struggle against racism and reaction – that the politics on offer at SUTR’s rally were incredibly weak and lacking in militancy.
Almost every speech riffed on the same moralistic motifs of ‘love over hate, hope over despair, unity over division’ and ‘refugees are welcome, we love migrants’ – reading from the same hymn sheet that SUTR has adopted since its inception.
Preaching “Love not Hate” does not defeat this. Only mass mobilisation does. https://t.co/dHiPzsfZzg
— Fiona Lali (@fiona_lali) February 23, 2026
The most ‘concrete’ political strategy put forward – if you can call it that – was when Corbyn endorsed a vote for the Green Party in the Gorton and Denton by-election, in order “to give a real message that our communities will not be driven into fear… by the far right.”
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Stopping Farage’s Reform is all well and good, but the fight against the right starts with preventing Britain First thugs from marching down the streets of Manchester!
As an aside, rank-and-file activists from Corbyn’s own ill-fated Your Party were to be found at the other counter-demonstration.
In the run-up to the event, SUTR even sowed illusions in the Labour-led local council, calling on them to ban Britain First’s march – presumably the ban would be enforced by the police – and endorse a musical festival instead:
“We also call on [Labour] Manchester City Council and the [again, Labour] Mayor of Greater Manchester to host a unity event, in partnership with [another SWP front group] Love Music Hate Racism, involving local musicians, poets, and artists, to celebrate the diversity that makes Manchester the great city that it is.”
SUTR did get their musical concert in the end, with their bloc singing and dancing to drums – while a few streets away from the grassroots counter-demonstration were facing down the Britain First. Videos of these festivities have understandably provoked frustration amongst left wingers online.
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Class programme
As we have explained in our previous analysis, SUTR’s liberal, cross-class, moralistic outlook has led the anti-racist movement down a blind alley.
Only a militant working-class programme – which at the present moment means attacking Starmer’s Labour government and the capitalist establishment head-on – can offer a way forward.
Such a programme could cut the ground from underneath the right-populist Reform, whose demagogy feeds off of discontent with the liberal status quo; as well as fringe, far-right groups like Britain First, who feel emboldened by the establishment’s anti-migrant, culture-war attacks.
The fact that youthful, local grassroots groups – with little in the way of resources and links to the workers’ movement – managed to bring out equal numbers to SUTR is an indication that the latter’s influence on the anti-racist movement is steadily slipping out of its hands.
What’s more, a section of the SUTR march actually split away from their own demo to join the grassroots march and physically block BF. We say: well done!
It’s clear that SUTR’s woolly liberal politics are out of step with the youth in particular, who aren’t content with words, but are desperate for militancy and action to curb the rise of the right.
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Last Saturday was a victory – but it wasn’t a crushing victory, nor was it assured beforehand. And outnumbering a fringe group like Britain First four-to-one doesn’t come anywhere close to the real balance of class forces in Britain. If the workers’ movement lifted as much as its little finger, it could eradicate these fascist pests.
Britain First have pledged to unleash their lumpen hordes on Manchester once again on Saturday 18 April, ahead of St George’s Day. They will likely try their best to outdo last Saturday’s effort, and atone for their embarrassing defeat.
This reactionary menace must be met with resistance: by putting forward a militant, working-class programme to mobilise workers and youth en masse, and relying only on our own strength – not the police, not the council, and not the ballot box.
On Saturday 28 March, the ‘Together Alliance’ – the latest in the SWP’s Matryoshka doll of front organisations – will be marching in London under the banner of ‘March for Love’. This will be another test for their woolly programme of class collaboration.
The RCP is too small to fill the vacuum in the anti-racist movement. But last Saturday’s mobilisation shows that we can – on the basis of clear perspectives and class-based slogans – bring a fresh, revolutionary outlook. This resonates with the angry, radical mood amongst students and young workers.
We call on all those who are serious about fighting capitalism, racism, and reaction – help us build the forces of communism; join the RCP today.
