From Oldbury’s Wound to Smethwick’s Memory: Reclaiming Solidarity from Racism, Sexism, and Communalism
In Oldbury
On a September morning, a young Sikh woman was subjected to a brutal racist rape. Two white men allegedly descended upon her with fists, slurs, and sexual violence, spitting: “You don’t belong here. Get out.”
This was not only an assault on her body but on the very principle of belonging. It demands absolute condemnation. Yet outrage alone is not enough. This violence was not theirs alone; it was the inheritance of empire, patriarchy, and white supremacy. In that moment, her body became the battlefield where centuries of conquest and racialised control converged, rehearsing once more the logic by which power thrives: weaponising difference, turning the vulnerable into terrain for oppression.
Not an Isolated Attack
To call this “isolated,” as the police have, is to participate in erasure. The assault is part of the same lineage as Union Jacks hung from lampposts, patrol boats turning migrants into enemies, jeering crowds outside refugee hotels.
Symbols are not neutral; they instruct us to divide and scapegoat, while austerity quietly carves deeper wounds. Into this silence step Farage and Robinson, transmuting deprivation into conspiracy, unemployment into hate.
Smethwick knows this story well. In 1964 its walls carried the slogan: “If you want a n* for a neighbour, vote Labour.”* Malcolm X walked its streets in reply, invited by the Indian Workers’ Association and Claudia Jones, linking struggles across oceans and reminding us that empire’s divisions can be resisted. Smethwick remembers both poison and resistance, and the battle between them continues.
A Season of Hate
The Oldbury rape was not random. It unfolded in a season of far-right mobilisation: Sikh taxi drivers attacked in Wolverhampton; turbans torn from their heads; flags raised in defiance of refugees; Robinson calling the largest far-right rally in Britain’s recent history.
When news of Oldbury reached activists travelling from Birmingham to confront him in London, grief and rage fell heavy. They knew: the violence in London’s streets and the brutality in the Midlands were one and the same story.
Fractures in Solidarity
The following day, around sixty people gathered at Smethwick’s Gurdwara—concerned residents, seasoned activists, and notably a strong presence of women of all ages. Calls for justice rang out, but so too did fractures.
Some spoke of honour while turning their anger against Pakistani men who had come in solidarity. Yet one of those men, dismissed as an “outsider,” was neither stranger nor interloper but a local activist, a neighbour who had stood the day before against fascists in London. To cast him out is to betray the memory of solidarity carried by our elders.
Others sought to exclude socialists, including members of the Socialist Workers Party, accusing them of opportunism. Yet these very socialists—women among them—had stood at the forefront of the Stand Up to Racism counter-demonstration against Robinson’s “Unite the Kingdom” march, under a banner reading “Women Against the Far Right.” They stood as a powerful living rebuke to the far right’s macho theatre—women confronting hate on their own terms, reclaiming dignity from those who claim to protect them.
The Cruel Trick of Power
This is the cruelest trick of power: to make us mistake neighbour for enemy, to replace solidarity with suspicion, to fracture into narrow corners. Communalism is not the opposite of fascism but its mirror—both disfigure unity, both entrench the ruling class, both whisper the lie that the threat is beside us rather than above us.
The far right postures as defender of women, denouncing “migrant rapists” and “Muslim grooming gangs,” while many within their own ranks have faced convictions for abuse. Their narrative is not protection but projection, not honour but hypocrisy. Women’s pain is instrumentalised, turned into property for men’s battles.
The 2005 “Beauty Queen riots” in Handsworth, sparked by an unsubstantiated rumour of rape, spiralled into communal violence that tore neighbourhoods apart. At the Gurdwara meeting, some Sikh male speakers echoed these racialised myths, referencing “Muslim grooming gangs” and boasting of past confrontations with Muslims. Some were known to have met with Robinson during his crusade against Islam to enlist Sikh support.
Facts Still Matter
Every single case of sexual abuse is one too many. Each victim is a life scarred, a voice silenced, a dignity violated. That truth must never be obscured by political battles.
Yet facts still matter: in 2023, over 115,000 child sexual-abuse offences were recorded in England and Wales. Of these, only 3.7 percent were the group-based offences sensationalised as “grooming gangs.” Where ethnicity was recorded, the majority of suspects—around 70 percent—were white, while Pakistani men accounted for only a small fraction. Relative to their population size, British Asians were under-represented.
The racist narrative of “Muslim grooming gangs” is not only false but dangerous: it erases most victims and brands entire communities as suspect.
Politics that Nourish Fascism
The far right feeds on such distortions but does not grow alone. It is nourished by politicians who scapegoat migrants while slashing services, who wave flags while cutting wages and benefits, who open the door through which fascism marches. To fight fascism is to confront the system that breeds it.
Betrayal also comes from within. Groups such as Sikh Youth UK have echoed Islamophobic narratives in gurdwaras, even publicly thanking Robinson for his support. And on the day of Robinson’s “Unite the Kingdom” march, Bobby Singh and Guramit Singh were there, cheering him on as speaker after speaker shouted “Send them all back!”—the very words the two racist rapists had spat at the Sikh girl after violating her.
Their presence at that rally was a stark image of how far some have drifted from the Sikh tradition of defending the oppressed. These alliances have been condemned by Sikhs Against the EDL, who warn that aligning with Robinson betrays the community’s history of anti-racism. The far right thrives on such fractures, using them to claim legitimacy and divide communities that once fought shoulder to shoulder.
The Assault as a Mirror
The assault in Oldbury is not an aberration. It is the logical consequence of a political order that has normalised racist scapegoating, demonised Muslims through the grooming-gang myth, turned refugees into criminals, and rewarded those who march with flags while cutting wages, benefits, and housing.
The victim in Oldbury suffered in her own body what our communities are told to suffer collectively: exclusion, humiliation, violation.
The Response Must Be Solidarity
The response must be solidarity. It could have been a Hindu woman, a Muslim woman, a Black Rastafarian woman—this time it was a Sikh woman. To the racist, difference does not matter; in their eyes, we all look the same.
And nor should it matter to us when it comes to defence and justice. To honour her suffering is not to retreat into sectarianism but to recommit to the tradition of principled unity that Smethwick once embodied.
We must expose the hypocrites who posture as protectors of women while embodying violence themselves. We must call out opportunists who turn women’s pain into communal property. And we must reject the lie that only insiders have the right to stand in solidarity. Every justice-loving person has a place in this struggle—so long as they act with dignity and with respect for the victim and her family.
The system we live under thrives on division; racism feeds on turning difference into suspicion, communalism poisons neighbours against one another, and the far right builds its strength from both. But the far right does not arise from nowhere—it is nourished by the politicians who wave their flags while cutting our wages, who scapegoat migrants while slashing our services, who hold open the door through which fascism marches. To fight fascism is also to fight the system that breeds it.
History and the Path Forward
Yet history reminds us that solidarity is possible. Fascists can be beaten back. And when communities unite across faith and colour, they not only survive but transform society.
Oldbury is a wound, Smethwick is a mirror, and together they tell us what must be done. We must not fracture; we must not fall.
We must stand shoulder to shoulder with women, with our neighbours, with each other—defending dignity not by building new boundaries but by tearing old ones down.
Only in unity lies the power to defeat fascism; only in struggle lies the strength to overcome racism, communalism, and the system that sustains them; and only in solidarity lies the path to our collective humanity.