My weekly comment column in the daily Plymouth Herald (24.3.26), obviously advertising the mass demonstration against the far-Right taking place at the weekend. The back-room complexities of fund-raising and organising coaches, and filling them with activists, remains unseen. Commercial hire is absurdly overpriced. We are in debt and need donations, if you can. But more, we need to fill the coaches and build the mass movement against fascism.

Join us in Challenging the Rise of the Far Right

Hundreds of people will be travelling from Plymouth to London on Saturday to join the national demonstration against the far-Right. The protest by the Together Alliance and accompanying festival of diversity in Trafalgar Square will be the largest assembly against race-hate and fascism in British history.
The threat of fascism is very real and present. The numbers of fascist organisations in Britain have grown, and their ranks expanded, greater than the National Front in the 1970’s or the British National Party in the 1990’s. At the same time, the level of public awareness has decreased as we have been separated and isolated into private social bubbles by financial Austerity, the Covid Pandemic and the sense of vulnerability caused by wars and climate crisis.
We are emotionally jostled by conspiracy theorists seeking power through spreading fear and threat. We are lied to by far-Right politicians blaming and scapegoating minorities for all society’s ills. We are confused by politicians broadcasting conflicting fake facts in the name of Truth, just to further their own influence.
Our children are subjected to all this in a concentrated form of professionally produced propaganda on-line, the Incel “Manosphere” telling boys they must be ready to fight, and girls they must submit to men’s needs. The saturating levels of You Tube generated sexism and misogyny is alive in the playground and classrooms, daily observed and documented by teachers themselves, taking a collective toll on the mental health and wellbeing of all concerned.
Racism, the learnt prejudgment and assumptions of people of colour or minority ethnic group, is being encouraged and organised by antisemites, white supremacists and Christian fundamentalists, the targeting of Muslims most prevalent. Powerful political forces and social dynamics are being forged to develop fascist organisation here and across the world.
In the United States of America, President Trump’s Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s (ICE) armed street thugs are terrorising minority communities, a style of para-military State organisation that Nigel Farage of Reform UK and all to his Right are pledging to bring here the moment they achieve power, targeting a million or more people of colour for forced deportation. Yet we know it’s not migrants that have created the cost of living crisis, food and fuel poverty, our austerity has been caused by the blatant profiteering of the richest multi-millionaires on the planet.
Across Europe, openly racist and Islamophobic parties including the AfD in German, with whom Britain’s Tory Party are allied, is building street organisation to assert white privilege and forcibly smash all resistance. In France the same is happening with the leadership of the ultra-nationalist and openly racist National Rally set to win the Presidency within the next year.
It is not an extreme view to be concerned about these developments. It is not politically extreme to oppose racism and fascism. Opposing the far-Right is essential to personal preservation as a member of the working class. It is now essential that we counter the rise of fascism on our streets and in our workplaces. We remember the history of the twentieth century, the death and devastation caused by the fascist parties that took power in Spain, Italy and Germany.
We know that the totalitarian dog-eat-dog militarised organisation of society in the interests of a small super-rich all powerful elite produces a life of fear and subjugation, threat and violence for the majority. For example, after Hitler’s fascists, the Nazis, seized power in 1933 they banned political parties, trade unions and civil society organisations. They were “razing to their foundations” the institutions of any and all working class democracy. No semblance of resistance was tolerated.
Key to this was the funding and organisation by the wealthy of violent street gangs recruited from the dispossessed, to “take the streets” and destroy all opposition. This is the blueprint and the goal of the fascist organisations in Britain today. Funded and informed by USA groups including the Homeland Party, the successors to the BNP including Patriotic Alternative and Britain First are joined by the reformed UKIP group led by the self-styled fascist Nic Tenconi, and others.
The Flag Force groups encouraged by the White-supremacist Stephen Yaxley-Lennon (aka Tommy Robinson) are raising the English flag and Union Jack as symbols of neighbourhood domination in order to intimidate minorities. They are mirroring the 1930’s fascist strategies in a new era of capitalist crisis, nationalism and expanding warfare.
In Britain there are currently many more anti-racists than racists. We must not allow ourselves to be out-organised.
When we show our strength in numbers, the bullies and dominators disappear back into the shadows.
Now is the time to stop the far-Right. Challenge far-right propaganda. Counter fascist-led demonstrations. It will only get harder, the longer they are left alone to breed hate and division. Join the demonstration in London, coaches from Plymouth and across the South West: go to togetheralliance.org.uk/getting-there