A RADICAL political turnaround that can rekindle hope in working-class neighbourhoods, sustained community activism including trade union activity and a willingness to fight for multiculturalism and anti-racism were urged as antidotes to the rise of the far right at Labour conference this week.

The gravity of that challenge has only been underlined since by the shocking murders at a synagogue in Manchester the day after it ended.

Reform’s commanding poll lead could hardly be ignored in Liverpool — and nor could the presence of a hundreds-strong far-right protest at the gates of the conference. Keir Starmer’s Union Jack backdrops and Yvette Cooper’s patriotic tablecloths hadn’t cut any ice with this crowd, given their abuse of delegates to the conference as “traitors” and “scum,” and chants of “Keir Starmer’s a wanker” to the Seven Nation Army refrain that channelled Corbynism and hope at Labour conferences past.

What motivates and mobilises these rallies needs breaking down by the left. Undoubtedly Starmer’s pitch for compulsory digital ID was a gift to the far right: No to Digital ID was the most common placard held up by the flag-wavers, and it was a sentiment most on the left would agree with.

But the specific demands of the rally were clearly not the animating force: an attempt by a Defend Our Juries protester to explain that the left, too, opposes digital ID cards was met with indifference or sneers, and if the far-right mob fear an overbearing authoritarian state their concerns don’t extend to its repression of peace activists — some berated police for not moving to arrest peaceful Palestine Action demonstrators more quickly. “That’s a banned terrorist organisation” a man in a Union Jack cape snarled at an elderly woman on the grass, obviously untroubled by the fact it was banned by the same Starmer government he was protesting against.

There is growing recognition of just how dangerous this moment is. “I think we are facing the most serious threat ever from the far right,” Hope Not Hate’s Nick Lowles told one of the many fringe meetings on the subject. “Racial violence might have been more prevalent in the 1970s, but the rhetoric and the policies are mainstream now.”

Hope Not Hate is not especially associated with the left — Lowles was no friend to the Jeremy Corbyn leadership of Labour — but he shares the view that “economic insecurity and economic pessimism” are the root cause of alienation from the political system, and attributes that to “15 years of austerity and 40 of economic upheaval,” the neoliberal revolution that has gutted our industries and disempowered the working class.

People feel “the political system is broken, both parties have failed — the Tories have had a go, Labour have had a go, nothing works, everything is broken in Britain.” Labour had lost its way and few people any longer felt they knew what the party stood for: and echoing Reform on immigration was a disastrous approach, reinforcing the narrative that it’s Britain’s biggest problem — when polling shows that despite Reform’s line dominating the airwaves, public opinion on immigration is far more nuanced than the media would have us believe.

Starmer’s rhetoric is in fact “enabling Reform,” argues Fire Brigades Union leader Steve Wright. “I’m not sure the Labour Party are the ones to stop them … trade unions have a big part to play in this, we can’t rely on Labour.” This was partly about telling positive stories about communities, which unions representing key workers like firefighters were in a good position to do. The right were spreading fear and confusion — “saying it’s not safe to go out at night, not safe to get on the Tube in London,” and blaming it on immigrants or Muslims to undermine community relations — the “Londonistan” racist scaremongering sometimes directed at London’s Mayor Sadiq Khan, he told the Stand Up to Racism (SUTR) fringe meeting.

These poisonous narratives are being driven by super-rich tycoons — “who does Elon Musk think he is, trying to create a war on the streets of London?” asked Labour MP Dawn Butler. “Who the hell is Donald Trump to come and tell us about our streets?”

Lowles warned that hyping up fears around immigration was mainly a front for the international leaders of the far right, observing that the speeches at Tommy Robinson’s September rally pushed more extremist messages about a clash of civilisations and the “great replacement theory.”

The latter, which claims white people are being deliberately replaced in Western countries by non-white, generally Muslim people and their cultures, often points to this process being masterminded behind the scenes by Jews — an important reminder that despite the common framing of Middle Eastern politics, Islamophobia and anti-semitism can go hand in hand.

Some explicitly pro-Israel politicians are also anti-semitic — Viktor Orban is often given as an example — while Trump’s own rhetoric about Jewish billionaire George Soros plays to traditional anti-semitic tropes (“If you look at Soros, he’s at the top of everything … he’s in every story that I read, so I guess he’d be a likely candidate” (as mastermind of an alleged rise in left-wing political violence in the United States).

This of course underlines one of the most dangerous aspects of the modern far right — its endorsement by the richest man in the world in Musk, and a president of the United States who is fawned on by the very British government he actively undermines. That dynamic speaks to the incapacity of liberalism, which remains wedded to the transatlantic alliance, to lead the fightback.

The far right themselves — as was clear in Liverpool — identify the Palestine solidarity movement as their foremost enemies: and that movement, numerically the biggest in Britain, should be at the core of building an anti-racist coalition of the willing. Attempts to separate anti-imperialist campaigning from anti-racism — even if motivated by an honest desire to bring everyone into an anti-racist alliance — fail to confront the geopolitical reality of a global far right with its headquarters in the White House.

Numbers are key, and speakers at the SUTR meeting stressed the importance of physically mobilising to block the far right as East End communists and Jews did at Cable Street 89 years ago. PCS leader Fran Heathcote saluted the successful anti-fascist mobilisation in Newcastle last weekend, which massively outnumbered the racists. “I was really proud of our city — we stopped the racists being able to march where they wanted to march.” Mobilisations like Newcastle’s are essential to demonstrating that, however loud and genuinely numerous the far right now are, there is still an anti-racist majority in this country which needs to stand up and be counted.

The far right’s huge social media reach was discussed, and both Lowles and Muslim Council of Britain secretary-general Wajid Akhter felt the left had a lot of catching up to do when it comes to effective use of new media. But the role of figures like X (formerly Twitter) boss Musk in championing the far right, and the realignment of even formerly liberal “tech bros” around Trump, means that this will often be compromised by the very tools we use — besides the tendency of social media to tribalise audiences and broadcast messages only to the faithful.

Ultimately, it will be on the streets and in the community that the battle will be lost or won, in real-life interactions. As Newcastle showed, there is a lot we can do already: but the very name “Hope Not Hate” points to our biggest problem.

Ben Chacko is editor of the Morning Star.