16 May: TUFF puts down a marker

On 16 May Trade Unions Fighting the Far Right (TUFF) held a protest in Trafalgar Square in opposition to Tommy Robinson’s Unite the Kingdom (UTK) march and rally. TUFF’s protest was about laying down a marker about where to be when the far right march — in the same space, confronting them head-on.

Turnout on the UTK event was much smaller than last September’s — the police estimate 60,000. Hope not Hate report that it was a lacklustre affair with Robinson’s grifting operation on full display — “the official livestream displayed the logos of sponsors… while the big screens also ran an advert for Iron Trinity, a clothing brand run by Lennon’s [Robinson’s] daughter and one of his old school friends.” But it was still a huge display of ugly, dangerous ultra-nationalism with the participation of openly neo-Nazi and fascist elements.

It is very good that the demonstration organised by Stand Up to Racism (SUTR) and Palestine Solidarity Campaign (a SUTR counter-protest was folded into the annual Nakba Day march), outnumbered the far right on this occasion. However we can be neither satisfied with the tactics nor complacent about the relative sizes of the demonstrations.

The Palestine Solidarity Campaign and others had every right to march on this day free of intimidation either by the far right or the police. But SUTR and our trade union leaders should not have let the far right march through London without a direct confrontation led by the unions, protected by union-organised stewards, with a message offering a political alternative — for jobs and homes, in defence of migrants, against the inequality and poverty caused by capitalism.

We think SUTR and the unions failed to build such a response because they were worried about seeming weak. But that is a self-defeating stance. Only by organising to take on the far right effectively can we grow stronger. Moreover, in this case, those who oppose the far right had the numbers.

The success of Reform in the local, Welsh and Scottish elections on 7 May only underlines the urgency of our tasks:

On the streets we have to overcome the culture, which SUTR foster, of relying on the police to dictate where we march and to defend us when we march. The police will not keep us safe.

In our communities and workplace we have to campaign against the organisations of the far right and their divisive, racist and anti-working class politics — against Reform, and also against the further-right Advance UK and Restore Britain, groups which are growing.

TUFF and other trade union initiatives around the country are not trying to reinvent the wheel, they are trying to reorient the labour movement. They want the direction of anti-far right activity to come from the labour movement, not hived off to a yearly or twice yearly SUTR event dominated by “top-table” speakers.

In the coming weeks and months union branches, Labour Party branches, local committees, student groups and others need to work out how to march, how to defend our communities, how to develop a socialist message which can undercut the whole of the far right and underpinning all of this, how to organise in a democratic way.