After the horror, the hope

Author and activist Dave Renton reviews a week in which mass anti-racist and anti-fascist protests started to push back 

The week of the racist riots in Southport and elsewhere wasn’t quite the worst this country has ever seen. That dubious honour belongs to the riots in Cardiff and in seafaring communities across Britain in 1919. But the riots belong to a pattern of similar events: 1947, when anti-Jewish rioters threw bricks at Jewish homes and synagogues in Leeds, Liverpool and Manchester; the pogrom in 1958 when a crowd of 400 people attacked Caribbean families living in Notting Hill; the BNP-inspired riots in Oldham in 2001. Compared to those events, summer 2024 will go down in history as the worst race riots the country has seen in 100 years.

Since then, anti-fascists have had a good few days: mobilising thousands in each of Liverpool, Birmingham, Bristol, Brighton and Walthamstow. The few supporters of the far right stood in the streets, their flags flapping helplessly as they posted in the chat rooms: where were the crowds they’d been promised. 

Tommy Robinson has rebuilt his movement, back to where it was in 2018 when his social movement accounts were taken away from him. After staging a return to central London, he has latched on to the events in Southport, urging his supporters to call local protests wherever they can. 

At some point, the confrontations between left and right will settle down into a pattern. That hasn’t happened yet, and the overall picture is chaotic marked by certain trends which do seem fixed. In the large cities, or towns with a perceived left-wing identity, antifascists are capable of calling large protests which outnumber the far right, even with little warning. But in many parts of the country, the left’s rooms have withered and we are the ones outnumbered. Last week it was horror, today it is hope, but neither has a permanent ascendancy, the decisive battles in this cycle of antifascist organising are yet to come. 

The response of the Labour government has been to promise the unprecedented mobilisation of the police against the race rioters. The big brains of the Labour right think that the far right will be shamed by the act of fighting the police officers for whom they claim to stand. While that strategy may have some effect in stiffening Conservative MPs and even press against Robinson, overall, it seems to be polarising the right and strengthening the links of mutual support between Farage voters and the rioters. Don’t be surprised if Reform voting increases sharply after the riots – just as in Germany 15 years ago a racist street movement Pegida became the advance guard of an electoral movement, the AfD.

From the point of view of defending embattled communities, the police are useless. And even if, in the short term, increasing police funding to stamp down on political extremism makes life a little harder for the Tommy Robinson fans, we only have to look at the Spycops inquiry to see what happens when the police get new powers. The interest in the far right wanes, the left is treated as the real and lasting enemy. 

Anyone who’s serious about anti-fascism knows the weakness of our tradition over the past 4 years. Anti-fascists have picked up many bad habits that would take a lifetime to unlearn (protesting at a mile distance from the threat, militant sounding slogans with nothing behind them…). In the last week, liberal antifascists started off by calling big town-centre rallies at a great distance from any actual mobilisation, before changing tack and getting dragged behind the central demand of the thousands of people joining the movement – that not one mosque should be harmed, nor one immigration advice centre, nor any building or person threatened by the far right. 

At some point, it will help antifascists that the movement is led by Robinson. Charismatic he may be, experienced, and a genuine “name”. But he is also, very obviously, taking his supporters’ anger and using it to make money from them. 

It is to the tremendous advantage of the left that this current cycle of far-right organising comes 10 months after the start of Israel’s genocidal war against the people of Gaza. Although anti-fascist networks have been allowed to wither over the past 4 years, the fact that people have been marching in their hundreds of thousands means that we have a base from inside which a new generation of antifascists can be – and have been – found. 

It is very possible that as this summer wears on anti-fascists will experience further defeats as well as victories. The people we are fighting are too well-rooted in too many communities. When the far right is able to mobilise the numbers we saw last weekend even in Liverpool, you know this cycle of organising won’t be easy for the left or for the people we defend. But the thousands who turned out this week are a sign that there is still an anti-majority, if only we can mobilise it. 

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