The menace of the far right has once again reared its ugly head and bared its teeth this week.
Migrants and Muslims have been targeted in a wave of xenophobic riots and attacks across Britain. The labour movement must mobilise workers and youth to meet this threat head on.
This latest burst of racist violence was sparked by a stabbing in Southport last Monday, in which three young girls were killed and many more were injured in a tragic knife attack on a children’s dance class.
False rumours were quickly spread about the identity of the culprit, with opportunistic right-wingers whipping up Islamophobia, online and on the streets.
Fascist groups like the English Defence League (EDL) and Patriotic Alternative (PA) led the charge, pulling in their thuggish supporters to terrorise Southport’s Muslim community and besiege the local mosque.
Similar mobs have subsequently descended on towns like Hartlepool and Aldershot, as well as cities such as Manchester. A crowd even gathered outside Downing Street on Wednesday, with over 110 arrested.
In all these cases, the far right’s actions have been aimed at asylum-seeker accommodation and mosques. Chants of “stop the boats” and “we want our country back” have dominated these ‘protests’.
A further 25 far-right demos are reportedly planned for this weekend, with counter protests being called in response.
Muslim communities – in these areas and across the country – are rightfully fearful about the threat that these reactionary rampages pose. And workers and young people of all backgrounds are wanting to know what should be done to protect against these pernicious pogroms, and to show genuine solidarity with those in danger.
The threat is very real. But neither the police nor Starmer’s government can be relied upon to deal with it. Far from it. All the main parties have been competing with one another to show how tough they are against immigrants. The entire rotten establishment is responsible for creating this inferno. We cannot call in the arsonists to put out their own raging blaze.
Instead, workers and youth must trust only in their own strength. The working class – organised and mobilised – must stomp out these fires, before they can spread any further.
Wake-up call
This week’s events should be a wake-up call to the ranks of the labour and trade union movement.
Fascist elements are running amok on our streets, attempting to torment, intimidate, and – in some cases – physically harm migrants and Muslims. But the response from the leaders of the ‘left’ and the labour movement, thus far, has been extremely timid. And weakness only invites aggression.
Of course, we should maintain a sense of proportion, and highlight the true scale of the forces of reaction.
These gangs are still small in number. Their demos are far from being mass protests. In most cases, these hooligans are being bussed in from other areas, and do not represent the working-class communities they claim to be ‘defending’.
Given the class balance of forces, there is certainly no perspective of fascism rising to power in the near future – neither in Britain, France, or the USA.
That does not mean, however, that these far-right mobilisations should be treated with complacency. They are a real threat to those being targeted. And left to fester, with reactionary demagogues like Nigel Farage, Tommy Robinson, and Andrew Tate fanning the flames, this danger can grow and become emboldened.
The riots seen in Britain over the past few days aren’t the first of their kind. Similar violence broke out elsewhere in Merseyside just last year, in February 2023, when far–right activists set upon the Suites Hotel in Knowsley, which was being used to temporarily house refugees. And anti-asylum-seeker protests were also stirred up in Llanelli, South Wales, only a few months later.
The so-called English Defence League and their ilk have regularly flared up on Britain’s streets over the years, pouncing on every opportunity they can to spread their toxic bile and fear.
We can safely say that, unless the labour movement organises and confronts the far right, it won’t be the last time we see scenes like those that have played out in Southport and Hartlepool.
Class approach
The truth is that this menace could easily be combatted and snuffed out. But to do so requires bold methods, based on mass mobilisation, class struggle, and clear class demands.
Moralistic appeals for “peace” and “unity”, as is the unfortunate language of the labour movement leaders and campaigns like Stand Up to Racism (SUTR), will get us nowhere.
Nor can we rely on the bourgeois state to protect minority groups from far-right violence. Unfortunately, for example, a leading figure of SUTR has commented that it would be “great” to see more police on the streets over the weekend.
This approach is profoundly mistaken. As we have seen countless times over recent years, the police – the ‘armed bodies of men’ of the capitalist state – are themselves racist, sexist, and abusive to the core.
What’s more, Starmer’s government will try to exploit this latest unrest to continue beefing up the powers of the police, and clamping down on our democratic rights.
The only force that the working class and young people can rely upon to smash the far right is themselves.
Polarisation
The fact that we have now seen three small-scale riots in the past week reveals the immense instability in British society.
When you add to this the riot in Harehills less than two weeks previous, and the riots in Cardiff last year, a picture emerges of an enormous stress and strain accumulating in society.
Though the Harehills and Ely riots were very different in nature, we saw similar scenes of pitched street battles, projectiles hurled through the air, and police vans set on fire.
Such things do not happen in ‘normal’ times. These events are a product of the complete alienation from the status quo that millions of people feel.
Liberal journalists and politicians, including the PM, have been quick to point the finger at social media disinformation – and even AI – for provoking these riots. These ladies and gentlemen are completely removed from reality, and understand nothing at all.
We need to say clearly, anti-migrant and anti-Muslim riots have been fostered by years of racist and bigoted rhetoric on the part of ‘mainstream’ ruling class politicians like Boris Johnson and Suella Braverman, who have now been joined by Starmer.
To this we need to add the fact that entire layers of the population have been driven into despair by decades of austerity, deindustrialisation, and neglect.
It’s no coincidence that the initial riots took place in Merseyside and Teesside, which have both been reduced from industrial heartlands to deprived wastelands in the past few decades.
For many, the best you can expect is a job at the local Amazon warehouse or Sports Direct, if you’re lucky. The youth clubs, community centres, and pubs have all closed down. The heart of the community feels like it’s been torn out. People have no hope for the future.
This mood of deep disaffection, and a collapse in support for the status quo, has been a driving feature of politics for over a decade, both in Britain and internationally.
This rising anger against the establishment has partially expressed itself in various ways, both on the left and the right: the Scottish independence movement, the Corbyn movement, the Brexit referendum, Trumpism in the US, Le Pen in France, the global Palestine movement, and so on.
The latest riots and unrest are merely an amplified form of the same underlying process: the rotting decay of British capitalism, the anger towards the liberal establishment, and the resulting polarisation in society.
People are searching for a way out of the crisis. And, given the lack of real leadership, this will lead to violent swings to both the left and right in the next period. There is no returning to the ‘sensible’ centrist politics of yesteryear, as many mainstream politicians would like.
In the absence of a determined leadership on the left to direct this anger against the ruling class and the capitalist system as a whole, this mood of hopelessness and despair provides fertile ground for far-right demagogy to take root.
The Tories, the bosses’ media, and Labour too have whipped up endless culture wars, in order to divide the working class and deflect the blame from the crisis of capitalism. This has nurtured the far-right menace even further.
Establishment figures can wring their hands and point their fingers all they want. The fact remains that the blame for this violence and unrest lies squarely with their system.
Starmer’s Labour will be utterly helpless to solve any of the problems facing ordinary people. His government will only discredit the establishment even further. This will fuel the far right, and enable figures like Farage and Tommy Robinson to present themselves as the ‘real’ anti-establishment opposition.
There is a warning here for the left. If it is not able to articulate a revolutionary anti-establishment programme, the growing mood of anger against the system will be capitalised by the far right, with extremely dangerous consequences.
Smash the far right
For many migrants and Muslim communities across Britain, there will be a genuine fear over the prospect of violence over the coming days and weeks.
Ethnic minorities, refugees, and Muslims face constant xenophobia and Islamophobia from the establishment and the right-wing press. They face regular attacks from the police, and repression from the state for being involved in the Palestine movement. And now they are being physically attacked by far-right thugs.
Many young people from these communities will expect nothing from the state to protect them. We may therefore expect to see spontaneous mobilisations in the coming days to defend against these attacks.
We must be clear: these communities have every right to defend themselves, by any means necessary.
We cannot sit on our hands and wait for the leaders of the labour movement to step in. Further violence is all but inevitable. If the far right are whipping up pogroms and hate marches, we need to meet this threat in a language they’ll understand.
We should look to the lessons of previous movements. Back in the 1970s, the menace of the far right was met with mass mobilisations of workers and young people, in Southall, Bradford, and in the Battle of Brick Lane.
And when fascists descended upon Cable Street, East London, in 1936, communists, socialists, trade unionists, dockers, and Jews joined together, mounted barricades, and physically prevented the fascist mob from entering their neighbourhood.
These examples all show that the only way forward is uncompromising, militant direct action.
Wherever action like this is taken, the labour movement must give its full support and backing – not just in words but in deeds. The full weight of the organised working class must be mobilised to defend against the threat of violence.
As Leon Trotsky said in relation to France in the 1930s:
“The tactical, or if you will, ‘technical’, task was quite simple — grab every fascist or every isolated group of fascists by their collars, acquaint them with the pavement a few times, strip them of their fascist insignia and documents, and without carrying things any further, leave them with their fright and a few good black and blue marks”.
Revolutionary programme
But what is required most of all is a political programme that can cut across the support for the far right.
Figures like Farage and Tommy Robinson opportunistically use questions like the lack of employment, housing, and public services to bolster support for their reactionary, anti-migrant agenda.
But this message does not only come from the far right. It is the message of the Tory Party, the tabloid media, and, yes, also the message of Sir Keir Starmer.
The idea is simple: migrants arriving in small boats are supposedly the ones to blame for the collapse of public services, lack of housing, jobs, and so on.
This serves to create a useful scapegoat and distract attention from the main reason why the NHS, schools and universities, and services are all crumbling to pieces: the crisis of the capitalist system, which has led to over ten years of austerity and cuts.
It is not with appeals to humanity and the goodness of everyone’s hearts that the far right will be defeated.
We need to explain that there is plenty of money in society to satisfy the needs of the many. The money is spent on arms expenditure, backing the Israeli regime, funding the US’ proxy war against Russia in the Ukraine, in bankers’ bonuses, Covid contracts for ministers’ mates, and so on.
The enemies of the working class do not come in small boats. They are already on this island, travelling around in private jets.
Only a class-based approach can cut across the poison of racism, xenophobia and bigotry.
Furthermore, we need to explain that the reason tens of millions of people leave their homes and face untold harrowing obstacles to try to reach our shores is because of imperialist wars and imperialist looting of their countries.
The problems of the working class, as well as the middle class, cannot be solved on the basis of capitalism. British capitalism is facing terminal decline, and is threatening to take us down with it.
Only through the expropriation of big business, the banks, and the insurance giants – without compensation – can the economy be run in the interests of working people. Only then can jobs, houses, and public services be provided for all, and dramatically increased and improved. This would once and for all cut the ground from underneath the racist demagogues.
If the movement adopted a bold revolutionary programme – one which linked all of these questions to the need to overthrow the establishment, the capitalist system, and imperialism – this would eliminate the squeals of the far right, and consign them to the dustbin of history.
This is the kind of programme that the Revolutionary Communist Party is fighting for. In order to achieve this, and deal a death blow to the far right, we must build a force that can topple this rotten system once and for all.
