What’s next in the fight against the extreme right in Britain?
The xenophobic riots that broke out in Britain on 30 July and culminated in fascist gangs setting fire to asylum seekers’ accommodation on 4 August have shocked and angered millions of people.
It is necessary to understand the root causes of far-right violence and to examine the response to the counter-protests organised by the organisation Stand Up to Racism (SUTR), which is politically led by the Socialist Workers Party (SWP).
Such a record shows that without the independent political mobilization of the working class against capitalism, there can be no effective strategy to combat and defeat the extreme right.
This struggle – which is fundamentally international in nature – involves not only the necessary defence of immigrants and Muslims from the violence instigated by fascist thugs like Tommy Robinson and incited by Reform Party leader Nigel Farage. Above all, it means a struggle against the Labour government of Starmer and its allies in the trade union bureaucracy, who are blocking the necessary socialist offensive of the working class.
It is no coincidence that anti-immigrant riots broke out less than a month after Labour came to power in the July 4 general election. The pretext for the riots was the murder of three children, which Robinson and Farage falsely blamed on Muslims and asylum seekers. But the toxic atmosphere that led to vigilant attacks on immigrants was created over decades by successive Labour and Conservative governments.
The SEP wrote in its August 4 statement:
“The rise of fascist and far-right tendencies is a concentrated expression of imperialist politics and capitalist decline. The ruling elites are stoking extreme nationalism and xenophobia to channel explosive social tensions in a right-wing, anti-immigrant direction, to advance Britain’s predatory imperialist wars and to wage war on the democratic and social rights of the working class.”
Labour’s election campaign was marked by virulent nationalism, militarism and anti-immigrant rhetoric. Sir Keir Starmer pledged billions for Nato’s war against Russia in Ukraine and his unconditional support for Israel’s genocide in Gaza. He called for tighter border controls against immigrants, attacked the Tories for “failing to stop the boats” and declared that austerity would continue under Labour’s “fiscal rules”.
The Labour Party’s first official act in government was to send Foreign Secretary David Lammy to Israel to pledge support to war criminal Benjamin Netanyahu. Starmer then attended the NATO summit in Washington DC, laying the groundwork for a military escalation against the nuclear power Russia.
On July 21, Home Secretary Yvette Copper announced a “summer blitz” with police raids on immigrants and an end to hotel accommodation for asylum seekers – a signal to the extreme right.
On 23 July, Starmer sacked seven Labour MPs who had voted for an amendment against the two-child cap on benefits. On 29 July, Chancellor of the Exchequer Rachel Reeves announced plans for £23 billion in spending cuts, including the abolition of the Winter Allowance for around 10 million older people.
Just one day later, riots broke out.
The massive resistance of the working class to Labour’s right-wing programme was blocked by the trade union bureaucracy. After the election it stopped all remaining industrial action on the basis of paltry pay rises and made Britain a strike-free zone. The pseudo-left SWP and the Stop the War Coalition, representing wealthy sections of the middle class, have allied themselves with the Starmer government, claiming it is being pushed to the left!
Their efforts to block widespread opposition to Labour’s agenda of imperialist war and capitalist austerity are exemplified in their response to the riots.
Stand Up to Racism calls for “unity”
Stand Up to Racism issued a statement entitled “Stop the Far Right: Unite against Racism, Islamophobia and Anti-Semitism”. Signatories included leading trade union bureaucrats and a small minority of around 20 current and former Labour MPs, including Jeremy Corbyn leading the five newly elected “independents”.
The SUTR statement does not address Labour’s role in spreading the anti-immigrant venom, which is why the statement was supported by ‘left’ Labour MPs.
Hand in hand with the political amnesty for Labour, the “unity” statement promotes the illusion that fascism can be defeated through protest politics. SUTR is silent on the social and class foundations of fascism, which are rooted in decaying capitalism. This omission is deliberate, and facilitates the construction of a cross-class bloc led by Corbyn whose aim is to suppress the independent struggle of the working class. Their statement states: “The far right is a threat to all decent people.”
Starmer has responded to the unrest with a tough approach to maintaining public order. While the far-right are their first target, he made clear that Labour’s new measures will be used against anyone who poses a threat to “public order”.
Labour has announced the creation of a new 6,000-strong national police force to tackle political and social discontent. It has made more than 1,000 arrests, using facial recognition technology and assembly-line courts similar to those introduced by Starmer during the London riots in 2011. The courts can impose prison sentences of up to 10 years.
Corbyn: Labour’s shadow
Corbyn plays a politically despicable role: he defends the Labour Party and prevents workers and young people from breaking with this right-wing party.
On August 5, he published a letter to Home Secretary Cooper “requesting an urgent meeting in light of the far-right unrest.” He wrote: “We expect our government to denounce bigotry and Islamophobia and the bigotry behind it and to stand shoulder to shoulder with its victims.”
This was like asking Heinrich Himmler to condemn the SS. Dubbed the “Iron Lady of Labour”, Cooper embodies the country-first, party-second authoritarianism that lies at the heart of the Starmer government. Her crackdown on immigrants and strengthening of police power are domestic expressions of Labour’s commitment to imperialist militarism and war, which reinforces, and ultimately relies on, the mobilisation of the far right against the working class.
Corbyn’s letter, signed by all five “independents,” recalls Leon Trotsky’s description of the reformist leaders of the 1920s and 30s who responded to the fascist threat in Italy and Germany with ineffective appeals to King Victor Emmanuel III and President Paul von Hindenburg:
“Fearing the revolutionary mobilization of the workers, the Italian reformists placed all their hopes in the ‘state’. Their slogan was: ‘Help! Victor Emmanuel, apply pressure!’ The German social democracy lacks a democratic bulwark like a constitutional monarch. So they have to make do with a president – ‘Help! Hindenburg, apply pressure!'”
By blocking working-class resistance to the Labour government, Corbyn is strengthening authoritarianism, driving sections of the middle and working classes towards Reform UK and sleazy elements into the arms of fascists like Robinson. Although Farage’s support comes largely from former Tory voters, he declared on election night: “We are coming for Labour.”
The political disempowerment of the working class is creating a highly distorted picture of class relations. According to a YouGov poll, 82 percent of the population opposes the far-right unrest. In Britain and around the world, there is overwhelming popular opposition to imperialism, fascism, genocide and social inequality.
But the rise of the extreme right cannot be stopped by individual protests. This requires the political and industrial mobilization of the working class, the overwhelming majority of the population, for socialism.
A counter-offensive in the form of strikes and protests must be prepared to mobilise workers and youth for demands that express the objectively revolutionary resistance of the masses against capitalism.
To this end, the Socialist Equality Party proposes the following demands:
No to genocide in the Gaza Strip! Stop the war with Russia, dissolve NATO!
Workers must block the production and supply of weapons to Israel and demand Britain’s immediate exit from NATO. End the war against Russia in Ukraine, which is threatening nuclear war. Smash the British armed forces. Billions for the NHS, not bombs!
Stop the persecution of refugees and immigrants! For the international unity of the working class!
Repeal all anti-immigrant laws and abolish the Prevent program and other anti-Muslim measures. End the barbaric detention of asylum seekers! For open borders and full democratic and legal rights for immigrants and foreign workers.
Stop austerity! Billions for health, housing and decent wages!
Workers must reject Starmer’s lie that there is “no money” for vital social programs and wages. They must seize the hundreds of billions that the financial aristocracy has seized by bailing out the banks and turning London into a playground for the super-rich.
For the United Socialist States of Europe!
Workers and youth have powerful allies among the millions of workers across Europe and internationally who oppose war, fascism, genocide and austerity. Build grassroots organisations to break the grip of the pro-corporate trade union bureaucrats. Forge a political movement to hand power to the working class and replace capitalist Britain and the European Union with the United Socialist States of Europe.
Victory in this struggle requires the building of a new revolutionary leadership. We appeal to workers and youth to join the Socialist Equality Party, the British section of the International Committee of the Fourth International.
