On Sunday 6 September, hundreds of reactionaries descended on Eastney, Portsmouth after the RNLI rescued and escorted 140 migrants coming from across the Channel in a dinghy.
Swarms of masked men clambered around the port to protest their arrival, while blocking streets, chanting racist slogans, and battling with police.
Like Dover a day before, this was incited by the far-right influencer ‘Danny Tommo’, with the backing of right-wing politicians such as Restore’s Rupert Lowe and Reform’s Zia Yusuf.
Calls of “invasion” and “stop the boats” were rife, alongside all sorts of racist and Islamophobic tropes.
Portsmouth left fights back
After a week of horrendous reactionary mobilisation, around 300 local anti-racists attended a counter-demonstration organised by Stand Up To Racism (SUTR) the following Saturday.
Portsmouth RCP members arrived on the scene early, and immediately passed out our placards, with some success.
Many people appreciated our more combative, class-based slogans like “Class war, not culture war”, “Poverty creates crime, not immigration status”, and “Robinson and Farage are in the Epstein Files”. This stood out from the usual liberal slogans, like “Refugees are welcome here”.
We organised a slogan team who began chanting. The strongest one we prepared was “Labour, Labour, shame on you! You’re to blame for racists too!” which received a mixed response.
The more radical section of the protest began chanting with us; however, we had one older liberal woman approach us to say “you’re splitting the movement!”.
But it is absolutely correct to attack the Labour government for making this situation worse.
For example, a Portsmouth local interviewed by the BBC claimed he joined the anti-migrant protest because migrants wanted to “stop the benefits, stop the free housing… they [the government] don’t give nothing back to the people of the country.”
It is Andy Burnham’s Labour government which is preparing for more austerity for workers and youth, which will only add to the feelings of desperation that drive some sections of the working class towards racist demagogy.
At the same time, Burnham’s government is legitimising and fueling the protests, by pledging to be “relentless in curbing small boat crossings”.
Urgent need to build
This is important to state, because the anti-migrant protesters outnumbered us five to three, and they stayed out longer than the counter-protest. And once the counter-protest dispersed, the right wingers were able to antagonise and harass groups of people as they were leaving.
How long will this cycle of right-wing attacks followed by left-wing counter-demonstrations go on for? The anti-racist left needs to get serious about driving these people off the streets, and undercutting the appeal of racist demagogy on a political basis.
We need a serious struggle against the far right, and against the decrepit capitalist system in which they thrive.
This means mobilising and fighting on our own terms: as a united class; with militant methods; based on a bold socialist programme against the real enemy – the bosses, bankers, and billionaires.
The Portsmouth branch of the RCP has been growing recently, and we learned a lot from last Saturday’s mobilisation. This time last year, we would not have imagined making even this small intervention, where we were able to stand out as revolutionaries. But this weekend shows we still have a long way to go, and an urgent need to build.
