Saturday saw the biggest fascist organised street mobilisation in British political history. Around 100,000 attended, which is at least five times bigger than anything seen before.
It was clear from the beginning that this was going to be huge. The internet was flooded with paid adverts on every platform and in a rare show of unity it was backed by pretty much every strand of the hard right except Farage and the Tories. Walking around the area in Whitehall set aside for Tommy Robinson’s rally, the amount of private funding available was clear to see. The stage, security, portaloos, production team, sound system and giant plasma screens would have cost tens of thousands just for the day, begging the question: who is paying for all of this?
It was clear from previous experience that it was never going to remain peaceful. Tommy’s fanbase are not renowned for their attention spans, so it didn’t take long for attendees to leave the sites of the speeches in large groups to take swings at their political opponents.
The counter protest, which was bigger than expected, was still less than a fifth of the size of the racist mob. When it reached Trafalgar Square, thousands of fash (many of them drunk) were waiting. The cops were outnumbered and soon found themselves under sustained attack as they protected representatives from Stand Up To Racism and other such estblishments from the racists assembling at the top of Whitehall.
It’s strange how resources to clamp down and control peaceful (and generally far bigger) protests for Palestine seem almost unlimited. Yet a mobilisation made up of people with a long track record for drinking and violence seems to be beyond the ability of the state to manage? The riot plods raised their batons to threaten the fash, but seldom used them, despite coming under a constant barrage of missiles including rocks and glass bottles for several hours. Very few arrests were made. Had their attackers been on the left, or people of colour, it would likely have been a very different scene.
To their absolute credit the anti-fascists stood firm and worked together (for once) to keep their people safe from the attacks that were occurring around Trafalgar Square. One unfortunate group found themselves stuck on the wrong side of the lines for a considerable time but eventually managed to rejoin the main protest unharmed. There was at least one extremely sickening racist attack on a young black man by a mob of violent thugs. He had to be rescued by riot cops.
There is no single component behind this frightening shit show. A range of factors are to blame.
Firstly, history tells us that liberal centrism has achieved little but opening the door to far right rhetoric since the 1920s. Then, as now, the ruling elite are bankrolling fascism to protect their wealth in an uncertain world that is falling apart around them. There are very obvious parallels between what is happening today and Henry Ford funding the Nazis in the 1930s.
GB News is the £500 million pet project of a single individual and remains privately funded to spread its bile – despite making an annual loss. White supremacist Musk bought Twitter for $44 billion to turn it into (another loss making) racist cesspool. Mail Online, owned by the tax dodging Rothermere family, spews racist clickbait on a minute-by-minute basis. The list is endless.
These people have the money and influence to peddle whatever (racist) distraction from their parasitic greed that suits them, be it ‘small boats’, ‘grooming gangs’ or ‘money laundering barber shops’. I’m old enough to remember when ‘Jamaican yardies’ were the existential threat to our society back in the 1990s.
Meanwhile, more mainstream media has played its part with a consistently anti-working class, pro-establishment narrative; we have seen the BBC as an example of such, gifting the likes of Farage with what amounts to a season ticket for shows like Question Time.
Most of all there is the total incompetence and dishonesty of the worst Labour government in history. Starmer is the greatest giveaway to the far right of all time. Completely wedded to the establishment, he endlessly betrays an electorate screaming for transformative change. This is matched only by his ability to be the most unlikable politician ever. To make matters worse he panders to the narrative of REFORM instead of challenging it. In a deluded belief that he can beat Farage at his own game.
His dehumanisation of the Palestinian people as the UK remains an active player in the ongoing genocide also helps fascists smell victory like nothing else. He posts his public condolences after the murder of racist lunatic Charlie Kirk but refuses to have an opinion when the Yemeni Prime Minister Ahmed Ghaleb Nasser al-Rahawi and many others were slaughtered in an air strike. Such double standards send a very clear message.
On Saturday Robinson made the idiotic claim that his demo actually comprised 3 million attendees. While this over-excited Nazi goblin basks in the glory of his big day out, it is worth remembering that the UK has a trade union membership of over 6 million.
If the left are to adequately respond to what is now the most urgent internal fascist threat that we’ve ever seen, the unions will have to play a key role in not just mobilising their members but also providing hope for workers in the face of government sell outs. The same anger being exploited by Farage and Robinson can also work for us.
The unions also need to urgently realise that the scenes on the streets can be played out at the ballot box, as they have done in the USA. An inevitable collapse in support for Starmer could lead to a Tory/Reform coalition where Farage could be king maker. This would not just mean more repressive anti-union legislation but a fundamental threat to their very existence.
Meanwhile the radical anti-fascist left needs to do something that I’ve yet to witness in 30 years of involvement in this scene. They need to start concentrating on what they have in common rather than what they disagree about. Time is fast running out.
All photos: Guy Smallman: www.guysmallman.com.
