IIn some ways, the counter-protests across Britain against the far right were a clear, much-needed piece of good news. Huge numbers of people across the country mobilised almost spontaneously to protect refugees, Muslims and other minorities from the worst wave of racist attacks in decades. The counter-protests are a sign that this country has become less tolerant of racism and more politically engaged, in a principled rather than a party-political sense.
At the counter demonstration in north-east London that I attended, the streets and pavements were filled with people of different ages, races, sexual orientations and religions. The crowd was tense at first, but then became more talkative, almost celebratory, as it became clear that the racists were not going to show up.
But participating in one of these actions is more complex than it first seems. Are you there just as a decent citizen, or as a committed anti-racist? Is your presence a one-off thing – perhaps even a desire for a new experience – or a long-term commitment? And what are you prepared to do if the far right does show up? These are questions we may have to ask ourselves if their toxic campaign continues.
At the rally in north-east London, a line of mostly young Muslim men blocked the road outside a mosque 50 metres from the main crowd. They chatted like everyone else, but some of them wore masks and had their hoods up. Their response to a racist threat, it seemed, would not be to ask for peace and love.
The politics of this unexpected time of unrest are treacherous for the major parties. The Conservatives have contributed so much to the violence through their language and policies. Labour, new to government and often falsely portrayed as soft on law and order, needs to show it has not lost control. At the same time, both parties do not want to alienate disaffected white men – of which the rioters are only the most extreme example – not least because they have been a key voting bloc since Brexit. Anger at the status quo is an energy that both parties would like to harness and redirect.
Labour ministers have used the need for public order to justify their crackdown on the rioters and to avoid supporting the counter-protests. The Tories’ cuts have made policing the thousands of angry people on the streets even harder. But the government’s simple, tough approach is also an attempt to make the whole situation less political. Racism, Islamophobia and hostility towards immigrants, and the backlash this bigotry provokes, have often been sensitive issues for our establishment politicians, who are aware of how these issues divide society, and not always along party lines.
The last comparable wave of right-wing extremist violence in this country also occurred under a Labour government, when the economy and public services were under pressure, as they are today. Between the general elections of 1974 and 1979, the vote for the National Front (NF) – an openly racist party that advocated the “immediate disenfranchisement” of all ethnic minority Britons and then the rapid “repatriation from this country to their supposed countries of origin”, even if they were born in Britain – doubled. At the same time, NF members, voters and sympathisers regularly marched through multiracial neighbourhoods, attacking homes, businesses and residents, sometimes with fatal consequences.
Then, as now, many mainstream politicians did not support racist violence but believed that anti-immigrant sentiments were justified. In 1978, then-Conservative opposition leader Margaret Thatcher said the NF was gaining support because it was “talking about some of the problems” of immigration. She adapted her party’s language and policies accordingly.
As thousands of people mobilised against the NF in Asian London neighbourhoods where racist killings had taken place, such as Southall and Spitalfields, and nationally through new anti-racist organisations such as the Anti-Nazi League and Rock Against Racism, the police and political establishment often reacted coldly or openly with hostility. Officers formed massive cordons to facilitate NF demonstrations and meetings, and often met anti-racist counter-protesters with aggression and contempt. In 1979, a few days before Thatcher’s increasingly xenophobic Tories won the election, a white anti-racist, Blair Peach, was killed as he tried to leave an anti-NF demonstration in Southall, almost certainly by a police officer whose name was never mentioned.
There are some signs that we live in a different country today. The counter-protests have been praised by Metropolitan Police Commissioner Mark Rowley, London Mayor Sadiq Khan and, in carefully general terms, King Charles. Police officers are more likely to be a target of the far right than its protectors. Public attitudes to immigration and multiculturalism, while fluid, have gradually become more positive. And while in the 1970s white participants in anti-racist events tended to be young and politically engaged, often activists from trade unions and fringe left parties, this summer’s mobilisation against the far right has also included pensioners, middle-aged people and relatively apolitical people.
Even the right-wing press, whose instinctive prejudices were at times overridden by fear of being out of step with its readership, found itself compelled to comment positively on the counter-demonstrations at times. “United Britain stands firm against the thugs,” wrote the Daily Express last Thursday above a front-page image showing masses of counter-protesters in a left-leaning part of London, as if the paper had been temporarily taken over by an anti-racist collective.
And yet these important, photogenic political victories must be considered alongside the far less edifying but equally resonant experiences – like those of people of color closing their businesses early or being too afraid to go out, as if subject to a racist curfew – to understand and then repair the damage the far right has done over the past two weeks.
Former prosecutor Keir Starmer is putting many violent racists in prison, but their obsessions are not so easily contained. When and if the next wave of racism comes, the response of the state, society and media will again show with frightening clarity what kind of country we are becoming: one that actively supports multiculturalism, grudgingly accepts it, or remains fundamentally hostile. By the time this is resolved, this summer’s riots may well be history.
-
Andy Beckett is a columnist for the Guardian
-
Do you have an opinion on the issues raised in this article? If you would like to submit a response of up to 300 words via email for consideration for publication in our letters section, please click here.
