How NOT to fight the right

It’s the end of summer in Britain, and we all know what that means. Football on the telly, a new season of Taskmaster and the left and right in the streets yelling about immigration. Protests against migrants have once again blown up across the country. The spark this time was the arrest and charging of an asylum seeker, Hadush Kebatu, for sexual assault of a teenage girl. Kebatu is one of around 140 asylum seekers currently housed in the 80-room Bell Hotel in Epping. The town has since become both an epicentre and symbol of protests and counter-protests, now happening at similar hotels around the country.

In the streets there is a stalemate. But the mood of the country is shifting to the right, clearly seen in the growing support for Reform UK, which now claims it will deport 600,000 people. The rightfully hated Labour government, already scrambling to make the numbers add up for the autumn budget, now scrambles to jack up deportation numbers as well. The slogans of the left, “enough is enough”, “broken Britain”, etc, are now taken up by the likes of Reform, who gain much more traction with them. They are peddling right-wing populism while stoking racial divisions that divide an already weakened working class. The ugly expression of this is racist thugs in the streets driving fear into minorities around the country.

Standing at the head of the current counter-protests is Stand Up to Racism (SUTR), with the Socialist Workers Party (SWP) behind them. While the impulse to want to fight these right-wing mobilisations is correct, SUTR’s strategy is based on liberal politics and moral outrage and ends up being counterproductive. Rather than fighting the right, it is fuelling it.

The immigration system is broken

The main problem is their refusal to acknowledge that there is a problem with the immigration system in the first place. For example, the SWP writes that: “trying to win people away from the fascists doesn’t mean accepting their ‘concerns’ about migrants and refugees as ‘legitimate’. These are racist ideas. We can talk about housing, healthcare and welfare. But we need to say clearly that bosses and landlords are to blame, not migrants” (“Stop the far right in its tracks”, Socialist Worker, 27 August). For the SWP, anyone expressing “concern” at the government’s immigration policy is a racist, and socialists should talk about housing, healthcare and welfare but not about immigration. Most would see this as a defence of the government’s immigration policy.

The truth is there are legitimate concerns about the government’s immigration system. The asylum system in Britain is as broken as everything else. There are nearly 80,000 claims waiting to be processed. Tens of thousands make the channel crossing every year, and thousands who arrive are dumped in the around 200 hotels converted to asylum waiting centres, mostly in small and dilapidated majority-white towns. While the numbers of asylum seekers is tiny compared to the overall number of immigrants arriving every year, it is a useful flashpoint for the right. As for “legal” migration, while we must certainly oppose the right-wing calls to slash it, there is nothing progressive about the ruling class’s policy of bringing large numbers into a rotting country. There is no way in hell that anyone claiming to be a socialist should want to associate themselves with the disastrous policies of capitalist governments in this mess.

Yet, the SWP’s admonition that socialists must remain silent on this only ends up being a defence of the status quo. And indeed, at times, the SWP does defend the government openly. After the court injunction mandating an end to housing refugees at the Bell Hotel, Socialist Worker wrote an article headlined: “Moving refugees out of Epping hotel will lead to more fear and violence” (20 August). Marginalising refugees in these hotels at tax payers’ expense, cut off from meaningful contact with the communities they are dumped in, has caused “fear and violence”. The government sending refugees into those hotels just shows their contempt for refugees and for residents in those communities. By implicitly calling to keep the Bell Hotel open, the SWP ends up on the side of the government!

The status quo in Britain means no jobs, falling living standards and people fighting each other over the crumbs from the bosses’ table. This, not racist ideas in people’s heads, is the cause and real strength of divide and rule. Converging on small towns chanting “refugees are welcome here” and calling anyone who disagrees a racist does not combat divide and rule, it feeds it. It only convinces locals that you want to put the needs of immigrants above their needs, which drives residents in these towns further into the arms of the right. The question of industrial revival, of jobs, is central both to the needs of the working class and to combating the growth of the right. But scolding any concern as racist while appearing like defenders of the government is a guarantee that all the SWP’s good words about “housing, healthcare and welfare” will fall on deaf ears.

The basis for the unity of the working class is internationalism. This is not a moral appeal. The conditions people are fleeing from in their countries are the result of the imperialist rulers, very much including the British ruling class. The ruination of the working class at home is caused by these same capitalists. Immigrants and workers have a common enemy. The fight for the freedom of the Global South, and for a decent life here, is against this same ruling class. The working class doesn’t need unity because it wants to be good and noble, it needs unity to win this fight. In order to convince the working class to join that fight, it is first necessary to convince them we are serious about making it. But any tie to the status quo, to the hated government which carries out the wishes of the ruling class, will convince workers we are not serious.

Dodging the hard questions does not help

We also must face head-on the rallying cry for the anti-migrant demonstrations: the “protection of women and girls”. Remember that these protests started over accusations of sexual assault. What do SUTR and the SWP have to say about this? The short answer is next to nothing. There is a longish article about the historical uses of such accusations to breed racism and divide the working class (“How the ruling class racialised sexual violence”, Socialist Worker, 25 July). This is true enough, but hardly convincing to, say, the people in Epping where a real accusation of assault exists.

To the extent it is mentioned in articles about the current protests, they simply paint the people raising it as unrepentant racists and the right as the real threat to women. As an example, they quote one of the counter-protesters who “cited the statistic that 41 per cent of people arrested at the race riots last year had convictions for domestic violence. ‘They pretend to stand up for women and children. The so-called defenders of women are misogynists. They are looking to Andrew Tate, Elon Musk and Donald Trump, the biggest haters of women in the world’” (“Cheshunt anti-racists say ‘we won’t let the fascists divide us’”, Socialist Worker, 29 August).

This does not respond to the right’s argument that refugees endanger women, but only deflects it, which many interpret as downplaying violence against women. In turn, the right answers with their own deflection: “we have enough abusers of women, we don’t need to import any more”. Pointing out that native-born people also abuse women does nothing to counter this.

But this question does need to be answered. To do this we need to be clear. We were not there during Kabuta’s alleged offence. But he has now been found guilty. Refugees come from all kinds of backgrounds: some were workers, some were hoods, some were even the local lackeys of failed British occupations, like Afghanistan. Further, the very difficult journey here and the extreme isolation on arrival, which groups like the SWP are good at pointing out, can and do mess people up psychologically. Being blind to this is counterproductive and acknowledging it is, in fact, the first step in undercutting the right. Poverty and isolation feeds violence against women. This is true among the increasingly impoverished working class and poor in Britain and among migrants confined to hotels and unable to work.

The only thing that can combat this is integration into the productive life of the country, that is, real and decent jobs. Both for immigrant and native workers. This obviously requires a fight against the ruling class. And this is why supporting deportation—as many working people do—is dead wrong. It will further divide the working class, making this struggle impossible. This is the argument to be made, based not on moral appeals and liberal platitudes as SUTR does, but on the principles of the class struggle.

Look to workers, not bureaucrats

For many workers, the most immediate tie to the government and the status quo is their very own union leaders (if they even have one). They led the last strike wave to defeat, refusing to pull the plug on the hated Tory government. Then they put all their energy and money into electing the now hated Labour government. The union leaders are themselves a key part of the establishment. At every step they have shown they are unwilling and unable to take on the City of London. They are rightfully hated by many workers as pillars of the status quo.

Yet, a core part of SUTR and the SWP’s strategy is to court these union bureaucrats, which is also why SUTR demos never raise slogans against the government—or Zionism—fearful of upsetting their backers in high places. Their strategy for mobilising the working class is not a direct appeal to workers for their own interests, but an appeal to the union bureaucrats for endorsements. This means that their politics must be acceptable to these same bureaucrats. It may lend them some prestige, but only further alienates the mass of the working class.

The problem with this approach was on full display at the October 2024 march against Tommy Robinson. SUTR’s own generous reckoning is that their march, which was endorsed by nearly every trade union, and which had the character of a pro-government rally, got 20,000 people, while Tommy Robinson got 25,000. Further, it is very likely that more workers were on Robinson’s side. The upcoming September march, called on the same politics with the support of the same bureaucrats, will be lucky if it only fails this badly. Despite the blood and sweat of SWP activists, and even though we will march with them, this is what you get when you rely on liberalism and union bureaucrats.

There is no quick-fix solution to this mess. For militants who want to stop the right, and are willing to put themselves in harm’s way to do so, we do not want those efforts to be in vain. We must tie the plight of immigrants and refugees to that of those left behind in Britain. We must fight in the movement for our watchword not to be “refugees are welcome here” but “jobs for all, rebuilding broken Britain”. A small start would be a call to create jobs by finishing and expanding HS2, addressing the isolation of the North and the lack of decent jobs. If we show at every turn how this struggle runs right up against the City of London, and our determination to fight, we can begin to win workers to our cause.

This struggle must be brought into our own workplaces. Not on moral grounds, but in opposition to our union leaders and for a new leadership. This is crucial for rebuilding union strength and convincing workers that we are serious about breaking from the status quo. For a return to the traditions of the working class: workers of the world unite! To the left: break with the status quo, fight for the working class!