How can the movement be taken forward?
by Theo Sharieff, Socialist Party executive committee
Organised by Stand up to Racism (SUTR), thousands of protesters gathered near Picadilly in central London on 1 February to protest against a pro-Tommy Robinson demonstration taking place. Members of the Socialist Party took part in this counter-demonstration, calling for the building of a united working-class struggle for jobs, homes and services to smash racism.
An added impetus for the counter-demo was provided by Donald Trump’s ‘shock and awe’ inauguration the week previously, with him taking aim at some of the most vulnerable in US society and internationally, including migrants. The lively and youthful mobilisation reflected a determination to stand against the divisive poison spread by figures like Tommy Robinson.
Photo: Ian Pattison
Unfortunately though, counter-demonstrators looking for political ideas to build a movement to challenge racism were left unclear about how to build the anti-racist movement, save for the material handed out by Socialist Party members.
Racist figures like Tommy Robinson play on the anger and misery experienced by working-class people who have suffered decades of attacks on public services while the super-rich have continued to rake in billions in profits every year. They exploit the legitimate anger at the capitalist system and disgracefully try to direct it at migrants and ethnic minorities, helping to shore up the rule of the capitalist bosses by playing the game of ‘divide and rule’.
While the last 14 years of those attacks have been carried out on behalf of the super-rich by the Tory Party, the traditional party of British capitalism, Starmer’s Labour is now in power and is reliably carrying through those same attacks on working-class people of all backgrounds: NHS privatisation, local government cuts, tuition fee increases, the upholding of the two-child benefit cap, the list goes on. In the run-up to the general election last year, Starmer disgustingly targeted the Bangladeshi community when discussing deportations of migrants. As demonstrated by the polling for Reform UK, this is a government under which the populist right and far-right can gain an echo among some of the most downtrodden and alienated in society.
It is crucial therefore that the working class and the anti-racist movement boldly raises and campaigns for the building of a mass working-class political alternative to all the austerity politicians and parties. This is the only lasting way to undermine the support for figures who seek to divide and weaken the working class. This was a missed opportunity in the speeches made by SUTR organisers. Socialist Party members offered to speak on the platform to put forward these ideas, but that offer was unfortunately refused by SUTR.
Jobs, homes, and services
Other speakers on the SUTR platform — like the Green Party deputy leader Zack Polanski — did raise the need for a campaign for more jobs, homes and services. But no other speakers challenged the Green Party’s role of implementing brutal cuts and attacks in local councils. Max Holloway, the Labour leader of Welwyn Hatfield council, also spoke on the platform — fresh from increasing council tax by the maximum possible amount without a local referendum in that area — as did other Labour councillors making cuts.
Socialist Party members successfully moved a motion at the Trades Union Congress in 2018, which launched a “jobs, homes not racism campaign to unite the wider trade union movement and to campaign effectively against the far right”. There were trade union delegations from a number of unions on the march, and platform speakers from the trade union movement.
What next?
But the modest turnout — which roughly equalled the size of the pro-Tommy Robinson mobilisation according to reports — poses the question of how the trade union movement can more effectively mobilise its 6.5 million members in workplaces across the country in a movement to smash racism.
That means not only uniting workers in the workplaces, but mobilising the experience, resources and authority of the trade union movement to help organise anti-racist protests. This includes trade union-organised stewarding to defend anti-racist protesters from far-right attacks and police intimidation.
But as the model trade union motion Socialist Party members handed out on the day raises, such a campaign poses the need for the trade union movement to build its own working-class political voice.
The leadership of the trade union movement needs to urgently open discussions with the five Independent Alliance MPs led by Jeremy Corbyn, as well as suspended Labour MPs, about how they can use their voices to raise a programme capable of uniting the working class against all of the attacks of the bosses and racist division.