Raise the Colours (RtC) – the group behind the campaign to plaster the UK with Union Jack flags started in Birmingham in 2025 – held a protest in Sheffield on 4 April.
Their demonstration itself was made up of many disparate elements: live-streamers, fascists, Iranian monarchists, but also a large chunk of angry working-class people.
It’s important to note that the RtC demonstration – unlike recent Britain First and UKIP demonstrations, for example – specifically put out material basing itself on class issues: the housing shortage, the rising cost of living, and austerity.
But the leaders directed anger from these issues towards immigrants, rather than the real enemy: capitalism itself.
Local grassroots groups took notice of this planned demonstration and organised a counter-demonstration – not only one to counter them on the streets, but aimed at giving real answers to the class questions raised.
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The grassroots organisers produced leaflets to distribute to the RtC protesters themselves, to connect with their rightful class anger, and direct it towards the rich. They even echoed the tactic of putting up flags on lampposts – only instead of England flags, this time they read “Blame the billionaires!”
Stand Up to Racism (SUTR), a left-liberal anti-racist group, organised their own separate counter-demonstration; but even with this division, both counter-demonstrations independently outnumbered the RtC demonstration.
There were some stark differences between the two counter-demonstrations. While SUTR were chanting moralistic slogans, our comrades – having joined the grassroots demo – were speaking about the need for real answers to this anger in society. This sentiment echoed all throughout the demo.
Where SUTR would chant “There are many more of us than you”, our comrades led chants such as “Who cuts our jobs to save their profits? Not the migrants, it’s the bosses!”
The police pushed the more radical demo to join with SUTR, which eventually happened haphazardly. We continued to chant our class-based slogans, but SUTR’s PA system overpowered us.
Speaking to people at this protest, we found that there was a deep frustration with the lack of answers in what SUTR were putting forward – they told us that “It isn’t the fact these people [RtC] are angry that’s the problem, it’s who they’re angry at!” and “We all need a way forward, SUTR aren’t giving us one!”
People began to leave before the counter-demonstration was even over. And so gradually, the demonstration shrank from being four times larger than the crowd for RtC, to being outnumbered. The SUTR organisers decided now would be the most appropriate time to start dancing, as they are known to do.
The events of this demo explicitly showed the limits of a program that refuses to give answers to the seething class anger we find in society – at root produced by the crisis of capitalism.
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SUTR are incapable of giving such answers. The fact that another counter-demonstration was successfully organised by grassroots groups, who instinctively understood the need for a class programme to appeal to disgruntled workers, shows that a section of anti-racists are looking for more than liberal moralism.
Similar situations have played out throughout the country, like in Manchester back in February, as well as during the 2024 far-right riots, when Asian youth mobilised to physically defend their communities from racist thugs.
The RCP will continue to intervene in the anti-racist movement to offer clear working-class solutions.
