Great Britain:
Demonstrations Against the Far Right

Aug 19, 2024

This article is translated from the August 13 issue, #2924 of Lutte Ouvrière (Workers Struggle), the paper of the Trotskyist group of that name active in France.

On Saturday, August 10, tens of thousands of demonstrators took to the streets of some forty towns and cities across Great Britain to protest against the xenophobic violence of the previous week, saying “Welcome Refugees!” and “No to Racism! No to Fascism!”

The scale of this mobilization was far greater than that of the August 3 and 4 riots, with consequent demonstrations in Glasgow and Edinburgh, for example, even though Scotland had been spared the racist attacks. In London, several rallies took place, the largest of which brought together 5,000 people in front of the headquarters of Reform UK, a violently anti-migrant party that attracted 4 million voters in the general election. In Belfast, demonstrators numbered 15,000. They also topped the thousand mark in major English cities like Liverpool, Newcastle and Manchester, and there were hundreds in smaller towns like Hull, where there were fears of a resurgence of racist attacks.

This success may have given comfort to all those who do not want to let the white supremacists and their troops go unchallenged. Counter-demonstrations took place as soon as the riots began, and on the day after the riots, local residents came to the aid of those in immigrant neighborhoods affected by the rampages. By the evening of Wednesday, August 7, following the publication of a list of potential targets, including mosques and shelters for asylum seekers, thousands of people had already gathered around the threatened sites. A whole section of young people and the working class, Muslim and non-Muslim alike, are clearly refusing to accept the poison of division that the far right is trying to spread.

If this reaction is a start, only the most naive can imagine that the far right will stop there. True, the government boasts that it has already arrested almost 800 individuals and convicted over 350, but after a decade of relative discretion, Britain’s Nazi apprentices—whether or not they’ve passed through the BNP (British National Party) and the EDL (English Defence League)—can already rejoice, despite their tiny numbers and loose structure, at having rallied, via social networks, a crowd of young people with nothing to lose and ready for a fight. They believe that the deepening crisis will provide them with a large recruiting ground.

Above all, the political class, right and left, has long since embraced the idea that immigration is a problem. Farage, leader of Reform UK, and the Conservative front-runners spend their time reproaching the Labour government for its “lax attitude” toward undocumented immigrants, against all the evidence since Starmer is hostile to free movement. They also accuse it of being more repressive toward racist rioters than toward those who defend the people of Gaza or fight against global warming. A sickening comparison ... and a false one: Starmer recently welcomed the sentencing of Extinction Rebellion activists to long prison terms, as a reminder of his commitment to “law and order.”

Faced with the demagoguery of politicians and the rise of the far right, these demonstrations are an encouragement against all aspects of the crisis of capitalist society.