Often on a Friday evening, we order a curry from our local “Indian” takeaway. They deliver, but it is easier and quicker for me to walk round and collect, and, anyway, I enjoy chatting to the guy behind the counter. He’s a Man United fan, I’m Liverpool, so we have some banter with a bit of an edge to it. Well, we started on the football, and he noted the lack of summer signings by my team, but we quickly got on to the news: “It’s been a horrible week”. And it certainly has, with race riots and anti-Muslim pogroms in various British cities, egged on by right-wing pundits and politicians “just asking questions” in the context of inflammatory disinformation and with Elon Musk making ignorant predictions of civil war while retweeting Islamophobes.
My interlocutor, born and bred in the UK, told me that it was the first time he had felt uncomfortable and anxious in this country and that many “ethnics” as he referred to people like himself, had chosen to work from home on Wednesday rather than risk being caught on the street. But he told me he’d left work early, just to be safe (thereby telling me that he works two jobs). But he told me, also, that he was encouraged and felt better, thanks to the massive counter-demonstrations in Bristol, Brighton, Newcastle, Walthamstow that night, which told him that the far right are a minority and that most people oppose them and which seem to have stemmed the violence, for now. On the other hand, he said, it was one thing to live in a diverse and left-leaning city like Bristol and quite another to be in Hartlepool or Sunderland where the “ethnics” are isolated and heavily outnumbered by their white compatriots and, consequently, feel more scared and vulnerable. (We then went on to discuss the overthrow of the Bangladesh government, of which he approved.)
The reason I’m bringing this up is because of the failures of imagination on the part of the the new Labour government, who are certainly the secondary target of far-right violence. Making the round of the studios yesterday, the Paymaster General, Nick Thomas-Symonds, urged people not to join counter-demonstrations, because the police were under strain and should be left to do their job. (It was a message that actually differed from that of the Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police who thanked the counter-demonstrators.) The government wants to put the far-right violence down by co-ordinated riot policing and then swift judgements and tough sentences: “the full force of the law” as every official spokesperson robotically repeats. Well, I’ve no objection to to the fascists and their criminal hangers on getting it good and hard. But that state response doesn’t answer to the need my friend has for him and his family to feel good about their fellow citizens and that’s actually the role that mass counter-protests against the fascists can play: we, a mixed, diverse crowd are the people and they, the violent racists, do not speak to to concerns of “ordinary people” as they claim. The police and the courts are no substitute for popular mobilisation in defeating the racists and assuring members of minorities that they too are a part of us. Labour leaders, managerial and authoritarian by temperament, just can’t see that. They’ll talk about “integration strategies”, for which meagre funding may be available, but the best integration comes from people feeling safe and confident in one another.
{ 21 comments }
AmberCat 08.10.24 at 8:28 am
So this guy is afraid of rightwingers in England but approves of the overthrow of the Bangladesh government, which has unleashed anti-Hindu programs?
Sensing some inconsistency, depending on who’s in the majority.
Chris Bertram 08.10.24 at 8:40 am
@AmberCat the post wasn’t about the consistency of my interlocutor, but about the need for popular mobilization to defeat fascism. I’m much more ignorant of Bangladeshi politics than both him and you, but I note that the provisional government of Muhammad Yunus has deplored anti-Hindu violence and that groups of mainly Muslim volunteers have been protecting Hindu sites. It doesn’t seem necessarily inconsistent to support the replacement of Hasina by Yunus and to denounce the violence.
Phil 08.10.24 at 10:10 am
Labour leaders, managerial and authoritarian by temperament, just can’t see that.
As a member of the Labour Party I was disappointed – and, initially, surprised – at how little interest the local leadership had in anything I recognised as ‘campaigning’. I add that qualification because they were keen to get us doing what they considered to be ‘campaigning’; the trouble was, this consisted almost entirely of making sure our local Labour councillors and Labour MP were re-elected.
This lack of interest in civil society campaigning went along with what for me was another disappointing discovery: an attitude to the Left which wasn’t so much rivalry (even unfriendly) as utter contempt. For them, the Left – or, as they would see it, “the Trots” – weren’t a source of alternative policy and organisational ideas (even bad ones); they were a contamination that had to be removed or repressed before any discussion of policy or organisation could take place.
Suppose that the current Labour leadership held these two attitudes. Seeing thousands of people taking to the streets, in however good a cause, they would at best be indifferent; seeing hundreds of placards in among those crowds of people bearing the insignia of Stand Up To Racism (an organisation associated with the Trotskyist SWP), they’d be positively hostile.
Perhaps my experience has left me with a tendency to overstate the importance of what I saw at first hand, but the attitudes do seem to track.
engels 08.10.24 at 11:08 am
On a side note, I think the concept of “24 hour courts” (which Starmer also instigated after the London riots) manages to sound authoritarian and consumerist in a very Blairite way: like a huge, empty out-of-town Tesco at 3am piled high with Tough Sentences instead of Coke and frozen pizza.
engels 08.10.24 at 11:37 am
Btw I thought our prisons were full up due to Tory incompetence (and lack of private finance?) or maybe that was last week.
J-D 08.10.24 at 11:43 am
Why was it the Paymaster General who was doing this?
I am sufficiently familiar with British government arrangements to know that the title ‘Paymaster General’ provides no information whatsoever about the responsibilities of the person holding that position, and that the ministerial functions assigned to the position are at the discretion of the Prime Minister and vary from time to time. What I don’t know is what are the functions currently assigned to the current Paymaster General that made them the person who was going round the studios yesterday talking about the riots and the counter-demonstrations.
It’s a very small point, I know that, but on the larger points I can only say that I agree. (It’s good that the Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police thanked the counter-demonstrators, isn’t it? I wouldn’t have been able to predict that.)
Kartik Agaram 08.10.24 at 5:53 pm
I’m with you. There’s a peculiar alchemy (including mechanisms of preference falsification) by which politicians see one demonstration as a minority occurrence to deploy the cops on and another as a voting bloc to be pandered to. Counter-demonstrations are a key tool to control this particular egregore.
Ebenezer Scrooge 08.10.24 at 11:36 pm
The conservative mind tends to think of punishment as the most legitimate function of the state. This is true for even the brighter small-c conservatives, who I know are common in the US Democratic Party, and I suppose are also common in Labour. I’m not surprised at the narrowness of Thomas-Symonds’ response.
In this particular case, there is much to be said for swift, certain, and generally moderate punishment. But it is a very inadequate response by itself.
Cheez Whiz 08.10.24 at 11:46 pm
If Labour is lagging the trajectory of the Democratic Party in the US, they will be wanting public commentary and memory of the riots to go away as quickly as possible, because confronting fascism is a tricky business if you’re trying to avoid public unrest and scattered violence. As you say, public recognition of the legitimacy of a stigmatized group and their right to exist is a valuable tool, one of the few profitable purposes of protest. Rest assured, of the Conservatives continue down the radical path in search of enthusiastic support, Labour will be radicalized against their will, as has happened with the Democratic Party in the US.
John Q 08.11.24 at 1:22 am
At least in the international press, the defeat of the rioters has been presented as a joint effort of police and counterprotestors.
As regards the official response, the rioters convicted so far have appeared as pathetic thugs, taking the opportunity to express their bigotry through physical violence, then pleading for leniency. Happening in real time, it has certainly discouraged those who might have thought of joining in.
And it certainly makes fools of those who’ve tried to present them as representatives of the decent British working class, left behind by multicultural elites.
Also a striking contrast with the failed-state response to Trump’s 2021 insurrection
Moz of Yarramulla 08.11.24 at 5:18 am
There’s also a comparison to be made to the Just Stop Oil protesters who recently got 4 and 5 year prison sentences after slightly delaying traffic on a major road. That sets the bar for participating in an actual hate crime/race riot pretty high, and burning down a migrant housing centre presumably being another big step up the ladder.
Of course the secret police have been far too busy infiltrating (and impregnating) environmental activists etc to know anything about the far right. And they’re more likely to be infiltrated by the far right than infiltrate it.
Longer term I’d like to see a significant government response, but it’s worth remembering that right now the UK police are still struggling with “killing black people is wrong, even when police do it” and the various flavours of “sexual assault is wrong, even when police do it”. So I expect we’ll see another inquiry, and likely a ramping up of “anti-terror policing” focussed on Muslims and black people (viz, more anti-terror funding, but no change in where that funding goes)
qwerty 08.11.24 at 9:08 am
AmberCat @1 has a good point. If most people are caught up in the paradigm of victimized and oppressor ethnicities (and I suspect they are), then your hypothetical “popular mobilisation in defeating the racists” will be a joke, a feel-good fantasy. Law enforcement is the way to go.
engels 08.11.24 at 10:25 am
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/article/2024/aug/11/rioting-swift-justice-real-motivations-behind-uk-rampage
Yasha 08.11.24 at 8:39 pm
thanks for the thoughtful piece… uplifting. i share the view that the popular mobilisation by communities in self-defence was impressive, emotional and almost exhilarating… it was also robust enough to support a police force that would have been overrun due to the sheer number of hotspots where the nasties mobilised, and their aggression and anger. in some cases like bristol it prevented direct attacks on asylum seekers like those in rotherham and tamworth, as when the nasties arrived the police hadn’t. as they now seem to be bickering among themselves over who’s fault it was and their newspapers try to cover their tracks, the worst may have passed but we need to stay alert and i share your appeal for creativity. i almost sense as though a window of opportunity for the uk to move towards being a progressive beacon is opening up, but i wonder if the new pm is capable of recognising it, or willing to go down that path if he does. it is important that communities stood together and were thanked, and it remains important to stand firm against the steady stream of silly arguments that become battle cries which they make and/or misportray… at present, it is the one that “two-tier policing” and differential treatment are something that primarily penalises “whites”, despite masses of evidence of the contrary.
J-D 08.12.24 at 1:49 am
I’m not sure I understand properly what this is intended to mean. The feeling I get from it (which, as I have observed, may be a misunderstanding) is that it’s connected with the suggestion sometimes mocked as ‘Calling people racists is the real racism’.
Some people oppressing and victimising others is a thing which actually does happen, and more specifically some people oppressing and victimising others on grounds of ethnicity (or supposed or imagined or imputed ethnicity) is also a thing which actually does happen. I would like to live in a world where these things are not true, but the way to get from here to there is not to pretend that we are already at the destination.
Apparently the Commissioner of Metropolitan Police thinks that community mobilisation can make a valuable contribution. Of course it’s possible that they’re wrong about that, but they’re less likely to be wrong about it that a random Internet commenter.
engels 08.12.24 at 12:56 pm
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/article/2024/aug/11/the-roots-of-this-unrest-lie-in-the-warping-of-genuine-working-class-grievances
notGoodenough 08.12.24 at 9:40 pm
I have considerable reservations regarding the general response of the government, media, and police/CPS (who seem in many cases to have been far less useful than the local communities they supposedly serve). While I’m hardly going to shed tears for the fascists, I do think that a) there is a failure to examine root causes and the general complicity of the political, media, and legal professions in furthering hierarchies of oppression; b) the normalisation and/or expansion of powers will inevitably be deployed against peaceful protestors (and, given the current trend in characterising disagreement with politicians as abusive, perhaps just general members of the public) in ways which will be increasingly authoritarian and disturbing, particularly with the likely exacerbation of crises in the future; and c) while the case that removing the ability for people intent on causing harm to do so is not unreasonable, neither is it to point out that the UK’s legal system is not exactly a roaring success when it comes to rehabilitation (assuming one thinks that is possible/desirable). Given that there seems little chance that any of the underlying factors will be addressed, I doubt that we will see much positive change (though potentially quite some negative).
notGoodenough 08.13.24 at 7:53 am
I have considerable reservations regarding the general response of the government, media, and police/CPS (who seem – in many cases – to have been far less useful than the local communities they supposedly serve). While I’m hardly going to shed tears for the fascists, I do think that a) there is a failure to examine root causes and the general complicity of the political, media, and legal professions in furthering hierarchies of oppression; b) the normalisation and/or expansion of powers will inevitably be deployed against peaceful protestors (and, given the current trend in characterising disagreement with politicians as abusive, perhaps just general members of the public) in ways which will be increasingly authoritarian and disturbing, particularly with the likely exacerbation of crises in the future; and c) while the case that removing the ability for people intent on causing harm to do so is not unreasonable, neither is it to point out that the UK’s legal system is not exactly a roaring success when it comes to rehabilitation (assuming one thinks that is possible/desirable). While community organisation is critical, I don’t see much appetite to tackle any of the fundamental problems, and am consequently concerned that we will see continuing flare-ups in future.
engels 08.13.24 at 6:55 pm
Labour: now that we’ve locked up the unbritish fascist thugs we can get back to checks notes working with actual fascists to further criminalise migrants…
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/world-news/2024/08/12/starmer-meloni-europol-people-smugglers-illegal-migration/
Chris Bertram 08.14.24 at 2:08 pm
@engels, while I don’t find it implausible that Starmer would have such discussions with Meloni, I’d note that the Telegraph has been running quite a number of supposed inside-track stories about the new Labour government, many of which seem to be invented.
Tm 08.15.24 at 3:22 pm
“urged people not to join counter-demonstrations”
I agree this is silly and politically damaging and that popular we should promote mobilization against fascism.
However. Germany has a few months ago experienced a huge, probably unprecedented wave of mass demonstrations and marches against fascism (“gegen rechts”). Taz has a map with lots of data (https://taz.de/Schwerpunkt-Demos-gegen-rechts/!t5338539/). Demonstrations were held everywhere, including in small towns and in some places where fascists already dominate. Some of the events in larger cities were the biggest ever recorded. In Hamburg they had to cancel the first demonstration because so many people showed up it became dangerous. In the aggregate, so many people participated in these marches that this must have been the biggest mass movement by far in German history. The events warmed people’s hearts and gave them hope.
And yet there has been almost no discernable political impact. Electorally, the fascist AFD party is still on a success path. It’s possible the anti-AFD vibes deflated their EU election result somewhat, from more than 20% predicted in some polls to “only” 16%. At the same time the Green and Left parties, the most reliable forces against the rise of the fascists, have been decimated in the same election. he media discourse has not changed one bit. The mainstream media have continued their relentless march of normalizing fascism by broadcasting live interviews with fascist leaders and inviting them into all the talkshows, while relentlessly attacking the left.
Most disturbingly, the radicalization of the mainstream right wing parties (CDU/CSU but also FDP) has continued unabated. CDU leaders are totally unimpressed by those millions expressing disgust and the socalled “firewall” against the AFD is full of holes. CDU rhetoric against immigrants and against the poor is hardly less vicious than that of the AFD.
A leading figure, Jens Spahn, recently touted his party’s “common ground” with Trump’s policy positions (“viele inhaltliche Gemeinsamnkeiten”) (note that not a single journalist seems to have asked him what those common positions were). At an upcoming conference in Berlin, CDU leaders will network with US fascists including he Heritage Foundation (https://www.rnd.de/politik/berlin-trumps-maga-republikaner-konferieren-mit-der-cdu-QLQTLIJQBZB2BLA2CMHBSAPJFA.html). Some CDU leaders are also fans of Orban and DeSantis.
I don’t know what lesson to take from this. So many people having engaged in some form of collective action must have changed something. Perhaps the effects of the movement will take time to sink in. Perhaps things would already be much worse without the movement. In any case the challenge we are up against can’t be overestimated.
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