After last night’s amazing counter protests by anti racists across the UK, Sean Vernell argues we need to continue the fight.
The scenes of fascist and far-right thugs attempting to burn down hotels that accommodate refugees and attacking anyone with a black or brown skin who happened to be walking by has horrified the majority of people in Britain. The far-right and fascist targeting of businesses owned by Muslims has echoes of Kristallnacht, the pogroms launched against Jews in 1938 in Germany by Hitler’s brown shirts.
The aim of the far-right is to scapegoat the most vulnerable in society for decades of poverty experienced in working class communities. They want to gain support from working class communities who have suffered the most from successive governments which have promised much but delivered nothing but further immiseration.
The obvious truth, which the liberal press seems unable to come to terms with, is that the fascists and far-right feel confident to launch such attacks because of the way mainstream political parties have fostered anti-immigrant sentiment. The Tories’ ‘stop the boats’ slogan, now echoed on many of the riots outside hotels accommodating refugees, was never challenged by Starmer. Instead, the leadership of the Labour Party attack the Tories for being ineffectual at stopping ‘illegal’ migration to Britain.
Labour and the Tories danced to the tune of the right-wing tabloid press who on a daily basis over many years used their papers to convince its readerships that migrants are to blame for the crisis in the NHS, the lack of affordable housing, poverty pay and foodbanks.
The starting point to assess how we defeat the fascists and the far-right is to remember that the anti-racists in Britain today are the majority.
A statement put out by hundreds of MPs, Trade Union leaders and celebrities calls upon the whole of the movement to unite to defeat the fascists and far-right. Sign it at bit.ly/unitystatement2024
Out of the blue?
For many of the liberal political commentators, the far-right mobilisations come out of nowhere. They have been taken by surprise by the level of support that the call to physically attack refugees and anyone of colour has had from within some working-class communities. Whilst they are aghast of what has taken place, they need to take account of their role in allowing the likes of Robinson and Farage to portray themselves as the ambassadors of the dispossessed.
These liberal commentators sneer at working class people, writing off everyone who voted for Brexit as a racist. They failed to understand the deep despair within working class communities whose lives have been impoverished after decades of austerity.
The failure of the Labour and Trade Union leaders to lead the fight to reverse these attacks has allowed right-wing populists and fascists to place themselves as anti-establishment leaders who will take on the corrupt establishment.
Learning the lessons of history
This is nothing new. In the 1930s Oswald Mosley, like Farage, came from an upper-class background and was supported, again like Farage, by the Daily Mail and other tabloid newspapers.
It is in deep economic and political crisis that fascist organisation emerges, and can do so very quickly. Fascism as a particular form of political organisation was first seen In Italy in the 1920s. Mussolini went from having no organisation to seizing power in two years. In Germany, Hitler’s Nazis, after the Wall Street crash in 1929, saw a big increase in votes winning the largest number of seats in the Reichstag. President Hindenburg appointed Hitler as Chancellor in 1933 believing that the establishment could control Hitler.
Today the political and economic crisis is not as deep as the period that followed WWI. The failure of the hope of revolution in German led to counter-revolutionary despair. But it is sadly not far-fetched to foresee a situation where in France, Marine Le Pen’s Nazis may fail to win the Presidential election but could be offered a key place in government by Macron and others, out of fear of working-class resistance.
What makes fascist organisation different to other forms of far-right tyrannical government that have came to power on the back of a military coup is that they had a base within different sections of class society. First, the middle class and small businesses who were crushed by the economic crisis. Second, the unemployed. This then allowed the Nazis to win some support amongst the working class. It is at this point, when the Nazis have a serious political platform, that the employers, who have lost any idea as to how to end the economic crisis turn to fascism.
To get to this stage the fascists need to build a street movement which allows these different sections to express their rage to the establishment. Like Hitler and Mussolini, ‘Tommy Robinson’ (real name Stephen Yaxley-Lennon) recognises that the key to the far-right becoming a real alternative is through building a street movement. He will be aided by far-right populist MPs from Reform UK who also recognise that they too need a street movement to survive.
Fascists use racism to achieve their aims by dividing working class opposition. The racist target changes depending on the context. In Germany it was the Jews. In the 1970’s in Britain the main targets for the Nazi National Front went from the Caribbean community to Ugandan Asians. In the 80s after Thatcher’s notorious ‘swamped’ speech, the Asian community became the target.
Today Robinson targets Muslims. Islamophobia is used to divide opposition to the fascists and the far-right, which opens the gate to attacks on all other communities. For fascists, racism is simply a tool to achieve their real goal – smashing independent working-class organisation that they rightly see as the key bulwark against everything they stand for.
Defeating them on the streets
This is why the key to defeating the fascists and their far-right supporters is by mobilising against them. There are some within the movement who argue that we should not confront the Nazis on the streets on the grounds that this plays into their hands by giving them publicity. If anything will play into the hands of the fascists and the far-right it will be pretending they will go away if we ignore them. They won’t. If there are not counter protests like the inspiring (and incredibly brave) ones we have seen so far, the fascists will grow in confidence.
This is how we defeated Mosley in the 30s, the NF in the 70’s, the BNP in the 90s and the EDL in the 2000s.
The millions of people who have marched week in week out on the streets of Britain in solidarity with Palestine demonstrate the potential power we have to build a street movement that dwarfs the fascist and far-right mobilisations.
We need to unite every part of the movement if we are to defeat the fascists and the far-right.
Starmer looks to stiff prison sentences to deter the far-right, as he did when he was Director of Public Prosecutions in 2011, when he locked up thousands of mainly black youth who were rightly protesting about the killing of Mark Duggan, another black man, by police in North London.
What Starmer won’t do is implement policies that will deal with the root causes of these horrendous attacks – racism , poverty and the lack of leadership from the top of the movement to coordinate generalised resistance to them.
This is why, alongside mobilising counter protests, we need an organised labour response that makes clear who the main enemy is. We cannot have any more pandering to racists within trade unions that campaign around slogans like ‘British jobs for British workers.’ We need a Trade Union movement that says – not just in words but also in deeds – that workers must not pay the price for corporate greed and government corruption.
The lessons of history cannot be clearer on how to deal with the growth of the fascists and the far-right – the maximum amount of unity is needed to confront the Nazis on the streets. But also we need an organised Labour movement that deals with the root causes of working peoples’ despair, through mass mobilisations and strikes to prevent further attacks on our communities.
Sean Vernell, UCU NEC
- Trade unionists, MPs and campaigners’ unity statement against the far right. Use the statement in your workplace and your local area. Add names and see the full list of supporters at bit.ly/unitystatement2024
- National day of action on Saturday 10 August
- Emergency fund for Stand Up To Racism