My weekly column in the daily Plymouth Herald (20.5.25), warning of the fascist group coming to Plymouth on Saturday 24th May, under the banner “Great British Strike”, emulating the National Socialism of the Nazis, and conning the working class. Please join the counter-demo at the Sundial, Armada Way Plymouth City Centre, 11am.

The full article:

The fascists are coming! On Saturday, Nazi-sympathisers are returning to Plymouth to parade in the city centre that their forebears flattened with blanket bombing 84 years ago. They’re not welcome here!
We say Never Again! Never will we allow Hitlerites to foment violence, scapegoating sections of the working class or minorities identified by our skin colour or gender. Never again will we be conned by talk of white power and male supremacy preached and funded by super-rich multi-millionaires and their billionaire masters.
Fascism took-over in Germany and across Europe one hundred years ago resulting in social terror and genocide and world war in which more than 70 million people died. We should be historically informed and ideologically clear enough by now to recognise and oppose fascism when it speaks.
Fascism allows no free-speech or opposition, especially not organisation of the working classes such as trade unions. All individual interests must be subordinated to the good of the nation’s rulers, defined by those with wealth and power.
Fascism promotes extreme nationalism and militarism breeding contempt for electoral democracy and cultural diversity. Fascism is a political belief in there being a natural social hierarchy, white men at the top, and the rule of an elite as an autocracy with absolute power. Fascism is favoured by sections of the Capitalist ruling class when rumblings of discontent sound loud amongst workers.
Fascist ultra-nationalism was first fomented across Europe by isolating and demonising Jewish people, dividing the working class and ending with at least 6 million murdered in industrial death camps. Today it is Muslims similarly scapegoated across Europe, and now targeted in Britain as encompassing all Black and Brown-skinned “migrants” wherever born.
Racial hatred is being whipped-up again to divide us and rule us. Onto this stage comes Keir Starmer, echoing the nonsense that migrants are a threat to Britain’s economy, culture and identity. He claims that migration is making us a “country of strangers” when it is the extreme class divisions between rich and poor which segregate and alienate.
We’ve heard it all before. In the 1960’s Enoch Powell said white people were “strangers in their own country”, Nigel Farage marched with the British National Party in the 1980’s and praised Powell as his political hero, now Starmer echoed Powell with his “island of strangers” immigration speech. The fact is, this country’s working class has never tolerated a fascist party and isn’t about to now.
Migration isn’t a threat to the security and wellbeing of the working class. Migrants are not responsible for the housing crisis – rent hikes by landlords, interest rate hikes by banks, construction material price-hikes by monopoly corporations have together caused a crisis totally out of any power or influence of Black migrants.
Migrants are not responsible for the crisis of our Health Services – in fact migrants keep it going amidst decades of underinvestment. Without so-called “foreign-labour” the NHS and care homes for the elderly would not exist. You are far more likely to be helped by a migrant worker in a hospital than be in the queue alongside them.
Migrants are not responsible for the high prices of electricity and gas – they suffer the same charges whilst watching the record profits of Corporations like Shell and BP enrich the shareholding class.
We, the working class, are being fleeced by the super-rich, and fleeced by the same people telling us to blame the poorest and most powerless of the world on the basis of the colour of their skin. We’re not that stupid!
When we see Muslims being butchered in Palestine we protest – 600,000 on the streets of London last weekend. Britain’s multiculturalism is a hallmark of our post-colonial culture and identity.
Last weekend, leading fascist organisers in Britain called on Nazis to join Reform UK. They want to fast-track racism and male-supremacy, on a roll after the Prime Minister’s inflamatory speech.
Starmer is fuelling far-Right scapegoating out of fear of the rising tide of protest against his Austerity Mark 2 programme of social welfare cuts across the UK. We want to see real change for He could raise taxes on the Rich, but he’s on their side. He could restore the Winter Fuel Allowance and gain the support of the majority of of our cash-strapped elderly. He could u-turn on the £5billion cuts to welfare for people with disabilities. He could ensure a living wage for care workers and invest in the NHS and schools rather than military rearmament.
But Starmer is not on the side of the working class. History is littered with failed politicians who sought to appease fascists rather than expose their lies. Starmer is courting the same fate. Trade unionists must stand together and demand redistribution of wealth from the super-rich to the working class.