Countering the far-right

On 20 and 21 February, two protests took place in Birmingham, organised by the far-right, one by West Midlands anti-hotel “auditors” and “citizen journalists” and the other by a UKIP reboot attempt hiding behind an apparent revival of the "Christian right".

Anti-racists from the local community, Stand Up to Racism and the Green Party organised counter protests, both in Sutton Coldfield outside the former Ramada Hotel, and in Alum Rock outside the Fox & Goose pub where Nick Tenconi and his band of not-so-merry men congregated to launch a 'Walk with Jesus' down Washwood Heath Road.

Outside the 'asylum hotel' on Friday (20 Feb), some anti-racists were physically attacked by masked thugs and had to go to hospital, but we stood our ground and won the weekend.

The far-right have optimised social media spaces and have been pushing the narrative of “protecting women and children” from undocumented migrants.
The irony is as they insist on migrants entering the UK having to have IDs, even though they themselves have been seen on protests against ID and mass surveillance!

Some of the anti-racist counter protesters attempted to engage in conversation with the far-right agitators, over issues such as so-called “illegal” immigration and digital ID cards.

Because Labour, led by our very own Shabana Mahmood MP, have called people in the hotels “illegal” (BBC News), this has given ammunition for the far right, and is factually incorrect.

Under the 1951 UN Convention and Article 14 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, claimants are not required to seek asylum in the first safe country they reach, but they must formally apply for protection upon arrival.

When asylum seekers claim asylum, they are fingerprinted and given a biometric ID, so rather than us not knowing who they are, we actually do!

Another claim made by the far-right — as they wave flags outside hotels and harass asylum seekers staying there — is that they're defending their communities against sexual violence, but abuse against women and children happens in all communities.

According to SafeLives Marac national dataset (2023) (SafeLives), over 105,000 children in the UK live in households with high-risk domestic abuse, with 78% of these children directly harmed by the perpetrator.

One case of abuse is one case too many. However, many of the people who advocate and fight against this abuse are people of colour. Nazir Afzal (This is Manchester Awards) was central in the prosecution of grooming gangs. Afzal is best known for tackling cases involving violence against women and the sexual exploitation of children; the New York Times called him "Britain’s go-to prosecutor" for these areas, whereas right-wing rabble-rouser Tommy Robinson puts legal trials at risk.

Much of the far-right's business model is to get social media clicks, monetising their content and making money off misery and bullying. These platforms and profiles, where hundreds of thousands of people visit are key in their public reach.

We, the ‘left’, need to mirror this and create content to promote the positive side of migration, solidarity and unity; however we cannot create content without being part of this content. The anti-racist movement needs to galvanise young people to turn out in larger numbers to see off these racists.

UKIP, Reform and Restore all talk about remigration, talk of deploying the military to “hunt down” immigrants, and encourage vigilante-style local policing (Hope Not Hate).
It's a very short walk from shouting and ‘othering’ asylum seekers, to then turning on anyone of colour.

We can take hope in the fact that the National Front of yesterday has had to rebrand itself multiple times due to the resistance from anti-racists. The British National Party (BNP), Britain First, the English Defence League (EDL), Football Lads Alliance (FLA) to name a few.

Their opening lines are often “We’re not racist but…” — we need to finish that sentence with "but... disappear into the gutter where you came from!” Only through mass mobilisation can that happen.

Photographs: Adam Yosef