The ugly head of reaction is once more rearing its head across the British Isles.
This summer marks the third in a row that racist violence has plagued the streets of the North of Ireland, with many justifiably worried of events of a similar scale erupting across Britain.
After all, it is only two summers ago that pogrom-style attacks did take place in deprived areas such as Rotherham, Middlesbrough, and Hull, amongst others. In the last month, racist riots have taken place in Glasgow and deadly attacks against Muslims have occurred in Edinburgh and Bolton.
🚨 BREAKING: A 36-year-old white Scottish man is being investigated by Counter Terrorism Police after five people were stabbed in Edinburgh
He said after his arrest: “I’m protecting the country from these fucking Muslim bastards raping our young daughters” pic.twitter.com/ssrecw0hgi
— Politics UK (@PolitlcsUK) June 20, 2026
And it was only in September when London’s streets saw the biggest far-right demonstration in British history: ‘Unite the Kingdom’ marched practically unopposed, with counter-demonstrators outnumbered twenty-to-one.
Events like this in Britain are not new; there have been many street-battles against fascist thugs over the last 100 years.
But when such violence is on the rise once again, it is necessary to conduct a sober evaluation of the methods of the left to combat this menace.
The past period has shown their methods are not working. And we can, in a large part, thank Stand Up to Racism (SUTR) – a front organisation for the Socialist Workers Party and the dominant organisation ‘leading’ the anti-racist movement – for this.
We should add the leaders of the trade unions to the list of those responsible. They have consistently failed to mobilise their members against racism and reaction, and in doing so, they have consciously left the struggle against racism to the likes of SUTR.
1. It’s not just refugees
What are SUTR’s methods when it comes to fighting racism?
In brief, they call for peaceful protests to counter the far right on the basis of moral appeals for ‘love over hate’, where they will engage in some empty chest beating and perhaps a dance or two.
SUTR’s approach and its impotency are epitomised by their main slogan: “Refugees are welcome here.”
It is true that many of the racist riots we have seen over the last few years have targeted hotels allegedly housing asylum seekers, in some cases even setting these buildings on fire.
But it is wrong to suggest that these racist, far right thugs are just targeting refugees.
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Gangs of masked thugs don’t discriminate when it comes to questions of race. Petrol bombs have been launched into homes of British-born black and Asian families. Bricks have been chucked through their windows. Racist checkpoints set up stopping cars to beat up any non-white passenger.
In Edinburgh, when a right-wing extremist went on a stabbing spree, he was targeting Muslims specifically. Video footage circulating on social media shows him shouting whilst getting arrested by police “I’m protecting our country from these fucking Muslim bastards…raping our kids.”
It is highly unlikely this man checked the immigration papers of his victims before stabbing them. The same can be said for all of the thugs terrorising communities.
The Edinburgh attacks occured just days after Tommy Robinson and Restore Britain’s Rupert Lowe released their ‘rape gang report’, alleging that all Muslim men are violent rapists. Tommy Robinson even then shared posts which used this report to justify the actions of the Edinburgh attacker.
Similarly, the 2024 race riots were incited by – and justified by – the likes of Tommy Robinson circulating unconfirmed and false information that the perpetrator of the Southport stabbings was a Muslim.
A popular demand amongst the far-right currently is for ‘mass forced re-migration’ – in other words, ethnic cleansing. And in practice, this means they want anyone who isn’t white-British to be deported; regardless of immigration status or if they, their parents, or their parent’s parents were born here!
For context, around 20 percent of the UK population do not consider themselves white-British. That’s nearly 14 million people. The population classed as refugees and asylum seekers is just 615,000.
Therefore, this programme of the ‘left’ which puts asserting that “refugees are welcome” front and centre completely fails to defend the overwhelming majority currently under attack from racists and reactionaries.
This kind of programme also offers nothing to the thousands of black and Asian people who are already getting organised in the fight against racism and the far right.
Last year, SUTR attended an anti-fascist demonstration in Whitechapel, in East London chanting “refugees are welcome here” – to a crowd largely consisting of third generation Bengalis, with long standing traditions of fighting the right in their community.
Another left group brought a banner saying “don’t fuck a fascist”!
This absurd approach had the effect you might imagine: the local community were confused at why the ‘left’ were even there, and were even visibly put off by them. They consequently distanced themselves from the ‘left’ bloc.
Is it any surprise these communities are not responding to the calls of SUTR? The slogan of “refugees are welcome here” and the so-called ‘leaders’ of the anti-racist struggle are totally out of touch with the very people they claim to defend: black and Asian communities.
And, ironically, they are also totally out of touch with the real issues facing white-working class communities.
2. It promotes culture war over class war
Instead of cutting across the culture war, the slogans used by SUTR play right into it.
The billionaires, bankers, bosses and all their slimy representatives in Parliament set the culture war agenda. They point to all the scarcity in society and say, ‘There is not enough for everyone, because the left are giving it all away to migrants and Muslims at the expense of white-British communities’.
Farage, Lowe and Robinson say, ‘There is not enough for everyone, so choose who will get looked after. Either it will be white-British communities, or the foreigners?’
They force people to pick a side – and without fail the ‘left’ falls into their trap.
The left screams ‘our streets!’, and the right screams back ‘no, ours!’; the left screams ‘refugees!’, and the right screams ‘Brits!’
The ‘leaders’ of the so-called left even have a chant which goes, “Welcome all the refugees, throw the Nazis in the sea”. With this, they are essentially saying, ‘Give all the resources to refugees, and screw the left-behind white British communities.’
However, we don’t have to pick a side. This scarcity is artificial. There is more than enough for everyone to have a home, food, a job, healthcare, and so on.
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It is in fact those at the top – the Epstein class – who are hoarding all of this wealth from us. They pedal these vicious lies of scarcity precisely to deflect from this fact.
They point the finger at minorities so that it is not pointed at them – and to make sure to keep the workers and oppressed divided.
The working class are in fact the vast majority who produce all of the wealth in society. This gives workers immense power in society; when the working class is united, and aware of this strength, no force on earth can stop them.
The root of the misery we face therefore is not migrants and Muslims, it is the capitalist system and the capitalist class at the helm of it. It is not a question of race and religion, or good versus evil, it is a question of class.
It is the capitalist class who conduct horrific wars across the globe for their own imperialist interests, which leads to millions seeking refuge. Likewise, they are the ones who whip up vitriol against foreigners for ‘stealing jobs’ – whilst simultaneously encouraging migration as a source of cheap labour to increase their profits.
It is only through expropriating this parasitic class and putting society’s wealth into the hands of the working class – the vast majority of society – that we can democratically, rationally allocate our resources based on human need and not profit. A socialist society would easily be able to provide for all.
How does “refugees welcome here” explain any of this? It doesn’t. As a slogan, it doesn’t so much as touch the question of class. And we would argue not only does it fail to provide real answers, but it falls into the trap of the culture war because it is stripped of any class content.
The slogan reinforces the lie that right-wing leaders tell their supporters: that the left are aloof to the suffering of white working-class communities, that they do not care for their suffering.
This is exactly what the right-wing leaders want! It allows them to demagogically present themselves as ‘in touch’ with class issues that the left are ignoring – and this is precisely the basis of their support amongst white working class communities in Britain.
3. It actually emboldens the far right
We saw the practical consequences of this in Leeds at the recent counter-protest against Tommy Robinson supporters, where we barely outnumbered the other side.
Whilst SUTR were chanting “refugees welcome here” and having an impact on no one, things quickly descended into a mud-slinging match. The right were united together in their anger towards us. The right then became emboldened; a dangerous game considering we did not have the numbers were it to escalate into a street battle.
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In contrast, when we used our class based slogans and directly answered their lies, the right looked bewildered, and we split their protest in two.
The right are a rag-tag bunch of different social layers, including some of the most left-behind in society. As a result, they have all sorts of conflicting ideas when you get down to it. This means raising class slogans that expose the truth can quickly disorientate and divide them.
We shouted:
“Who cuts our jobs to save their profits? Not the migrants, it’s the bosses!”
“It’s not the boats that raise our rents; it’s the landlords, time they went!”
“Nigel, Nigel, you’re a liar! Just another crook for hire!”
We saw some on the right had ‘save our women’ placards which were alleging that all Muslim and migrant men were a threat to women. So we quickly responded with:
“Save our women? What do you mean? You’re protecting Epstein!”
“Tommy Robinson and his crew, they are in the [Epstein] files too!”
By drawing out that figures like Farage, Robinson, and Lowe are all being funded by people like Elon Musk, who are very much part of the Epstein class, we exposed the hypocrisy of their leaders claiming to ‘defend women’.
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After we raised our slogans, a literal fist-fight ensued between two on the right! We overheard this was due to a disagreement on their attitude towards the Epstein files.
After this, their side split into two separate camps. We showed in microcosm the potential for cutting across their culture war using class war slogans and ideas.
We were also harassed by self proclaimed ‘auditors’: right-wing grifters trying to make viral social media content. As soon as we raised such class politics, they could not disagree with us and left with their tails between their legs.
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Of course, we do not attend these counter-protests because we are trying to convince and win over fascist-sympathising thugs. We attend to humiliate them and drive them off our streets.
But this can only be done with a class programme that can cleave through their poisonous culture war – a programme capable of uniting workers of all backgrounds against the real enemy: the billionaires and bankers.
4. It plays into ‘lesser evilism’
In order to decisively fight the right, workers and youth of all backgrounds must be organised en masse.
The far right remains a minority. Even where they have rioted, they have only been in the hundreds. The working class and youth are the overwhelming majority. When this force is united, we dwarf the pathetic right.
In the most recent ‘Unite the Kingdom’ rally in London, the turnout fell to 60,000 – nothing compared to the concurrent Nakba demonstration, where at least 250,000 marched for Palestine and against racism.
The majority of ordinary people are angry and disgusted by the right, and they are willing to do something about it. In our activity talking to the public every week, we have found this to be undoubtedly true.
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Where counter-demonstrations have outnumbered the right, it has been through these people’s own initiative and outrage – not down to the efforts of the ‘leadership’ of the movement.
In fact, there has been an abysmal showing of the left at several recent counter-protests across the country, such as in Leeds, Hull, and Liverpool. And it is precisely the inadequate and out of touch ‘programme’ put forward by the existing left leadership that is failing to mobilise and unite people.
The history of the working class struggle against reaction teaches us that it is not enough to simply be against something – you must give people something to fight for.
The ‘programme’ of Stand Up To Racism and the ‘left’ leadership in the trade unions does nothing of the sort; instead, it simply denounces the right. Their arguments amount to nothing more than ‘racism is bad’ and so we should not support racism.
In practice, this empty moralism leads directly into the catastrophe of ‘lesser evilism’: a call to tacitly back and vote for the ‘lesser evil’ (say, Starmer’s Labour) to avoid the ‘greater evil’ (i.e. Farage and Reform UK).
The choice between the ‘lesser’ and ‘greater’ evil is a false one. Far from tackling the reaction Farage feeds and feeds off, Starmer’s government has implemented a raft of deeply racist, reactionary policies.
‘Lesser evilism’ is a vicious trap set for the left by the establishment liberals, which the ‘left’ leaders have fallen for time and time again.
5. The slogan’s liberal origins
If we go back and look at the origins of the slogan “refugees welcome here”, we can see how it was popularised by the liberal establishment themselves – who were openly utilising it for their own cynical interests!
Around 2015, liberal governments across the West were attacking workers and youth with savage austerity after the 2008 economic crisis.
At this time, Europe’s capitalist bosses were also keen on securing cheap migrant labour that they could exploit to ensure all the better that the working class would pay for the crisis they had created.
In this context, the refugee crisis caused by the 2011 Syrian Civil War – a war that was a product of the very same liberal establishment they all served – became the perfect political football for liberal leaders like Germany’s Angela Merkel.
While letting desperate refugees drown in the Mediterranean, these European leaders publicly adopted the slogan ‘refugees welcome’ to make themselves appear left-wing, and progressive – obfuscating their true reactionary role as defenders of the rotten capitalist class which had been imposing austerity across Europe.
That is how devoid of class content this slogan is.
Even when these snakes do ‘welcome’ refugees, they do so to use them as objects of their exploitation. Refugees will never be welcome anywhere under capitalism – only under a genuine socialist society would they be provided for, and the causes of their displacement actually resolved.
Solution: fight racism with socialism
Having learnt nothing, the ‘left’ leadership of today are asking workers to rally behind Burnham and another Labour government to prevent Reform – when it is Labour who is in power right now attacking workers and whipping up racism!
This is nothing more than asking workers to accept the miserable status quo and to trust in the same establishment which is responsible for their oppression today to ‘protect’ them against the right.
These ‘leaders’ are sowing illusions in the liberal establishment, the politicians who serve only their capitalist masters, to save the working class.
In the same vein, in the 2024 race riots SUTR actually pleaded for the black and Asian youth, who had spontaneously formed self-defence committees in order to protect their communities, to go home and trust in the racist police to protect them!
These ‘leaders’ of the anti-racist movement pursue such reprehensible class collaboration precisely because they have no faith in the working class to defeat the right. And then they have the audacity to claim the workers have all become racist when no one responds to their vacuous calls to stand for ‘love against hate’!
It is their own programme of moralism, devoid of any class content and culminating in collaboration with the capitalist class, that is incapable of mobilising and uniting the workers and youth.
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Only a class programme which addresses the real issues in society, that offers a world where all would be provided for, can cut across the culture war and unite the masses across ethnic lines, based on that which unites them: their class.
Only a united working class is capable of ending the dictatorship of the Epstein class and their barbaric capitalist system once and for all. We do not trust nor need any rotten politician to save us, we can and must trust in ourselves.
That is the task we in the RCP have set ourselves: of refounding the fight against the right by basing ourselves on the working class and radical youth, around a revolutionary programme for a socialist transformation of society.
As our first step towards this, we are hosting the Yorkshire Anti-Fascist School, with Fiona Lali, on Saturday 11 July. We urge all who agree with what has been said to join us there!
