Racism is embedded in UK culture. But standing against it is too

It’s been terrifying watching far-right riots escalate across the UK over the past week.

The violent demonstrations erupted after a knife attack in which three children were killed and many more injured at a children’s dance and yoga workshop in Southport last Monday. Misinformation that the attacker was a Muslim asylum seeker quickly spread online, encouraging far-right demonstrators to hijack a vigil for the victims. The event was promoted on social media by far-right influencers such as Tommy Robinson, who urged people to ​“Get there and show your support”.

Since then, riots have broken out in cities such as Liverpool, Bristol, Manchester, Hull and Belfast, where so-called protestors have set buildings and police vehicles on fire, and targeted people of colour. Rioters in Rotherham and Tamworth set Holiday Inns on fire, with the knowledge that asylum seekers were inside. At the time of writing, more than 400 arrests have been made.

Amid all the chaos and hate, it can be easy to feel helpless. But there’ll be many counter-protests in the weeks to come. And while the UK’s long, thorny history of racism is well-documented, as it comes to a head once more, it’s important to remember that we also have a tradition of coming together to stand up against hate; that we’ve beat racist uprisings before and we can do it again.

Here, Samira from Stand Up to Racism explains what you can do to push back against the rise of the far-right.

“We need to act swiftly to combat the recent unprecedented scale of far-right mobilisation around Britain. We need to be getting organised, pushing them back on the streets and breaking their confidence. We’re seeing racists very happy to attempt to burn down refugee hotels or attack Black people in the street, all on livestream, so we have a task to to push them back. But it’s a numbers game. It takes mass mobilisation to show them they’re not welcome.

​“Every time the far-right is in any area, we need a national pushback by a network of anti-racist activists who are prepared to come out and mobilise against them. We need to deepen anti-racist organisations in our communities, holding meetings in every area, bringing a broad coalition together that includes students, trade unionists, cultural figures, mosques and refugees to create maximum unity against the far-right. Their message is to spread division – we have to ensure that doesn’t set in.”

“There’s been a lot of talk of increasing police presence, but I don’t think this is the solution in any way, shape or form. The police [are more likely to penalise] Black, brown and Asian people and aren’t going to combat the far-right. We need to think about where these far-right riots have come from. They haven’t emerged from a vacuum. They’ve come from the racism of some people in parliament, the likes of Nigel Farage and decades of Tory policies which attack refugees and don’t provide them with safe passage.

​“From Starmer, we should see some acknowledgement of the racism that fuelled the protests, and the part that some of his rhetoric about stopping the boats has played in that. Labour needs to make policy changes that actually welcomes refugees into our societies and doesn’t house them in hotels that are increasingly under attack by the far-right.”

“If you’re in an online vacuum, it can feel like a very scary time, witnessing live streams of what are essentially pogroms around Britain. [But we also need to be] sharing images and videos of solidarity, of people protesting against the far-right, of people coming together in this time to cut through that outpouring of hate and division from people like Andrew Tate, Tommy Robinson, Nigel Farage and Lawrence Fox, who are happy to sit on Twitter and pour fuel on the fire.”

“My first advice is to bring everyone you know – anti-fascism is for everyone and it’s really crucial that everyone is there right now. It’s also an extremely terrifying time for Black, Asian and Muslim communities right now. It’s terrifying to think that you could go out on your streets and be attacked in broad daylight. The task of the whole community is to come together to make racists afraid again.

​“We also need to defend mosques, refugee hotels and immigration centres. The lesson can’t be that, if the far-right attempt to burn down a refugee hotel in Britain, the refugees are then moved on.”

“In Britain, this isn’t new. [The scale of the riots is] unprecedented, but it isn’t new. We’ve seen Nazis marching through our streets before, we’ve seen the National Front, the British National Party and the English Defence League and so on. Every time they’ve been pushed back, isolated and marginalised by a massive movement of anti-racists coming together. We very much have a tradition of doing that in Britain. It might feel very scary right now, but we know that if we get organised and come together, we can win.”

Stand Up to Racism is organising a national day of anti-racism protests on Saturday 10^th August. Find more details on their Instagram