WORKING-CLASS communities have followed their clear-up crusade with another impressive mobilisation that could checkmate any far-right provocateurs who might have thought they could leverage another night of rioting out of the summer evenings.
A change of mood is evident. The largely spontaneous movement responded to nights of far-right rioting with brush, broom and an impressive round of bricklaying that brought to mind the spirit of the Stakhanovite shock workers who built socialism in the USSR.
A sisterly spirit of solidarity saw thousands, moved by horror at the political violence — orchestrated by shadowy far-right factions and enabled by malign social media actors — to rally in defence of targeted advice centres and community resources.
An almost unanimous array of newspaper front pages now lauds precisely this spirit of community mobilisation.
The more innocent among us will regard this unprecedented personality change by the Daily Mail, Express and the Daily Telegraph with charitable grace, considering it a timely repentance for the malign intent, racist rhetoric and poisonous scapegoating of migrant workers and refugees that is the mark of their distinctive brand of billionaire fear-mongering.
We do not.
The nationwide community response drew on huge reserves of campaigning spirit that have been nourished by years of anti-austerity campaigning; decades of anti-racist action; an anti-war movement that has grown despite demonisation by these same media; and a deep-seated hatred of fascism grounded in the wartime experience and horror at its crimes most especially the Holocaust.
Months of mass action against British government complicity in Israel’s genocidal assault on Gaza and the deep reservoirs of human solidarity that exist in our nations mean that a big section of the population is alert and armed with a clear understanding that the defence of community values requires both understanding and a willingness to act.
But. The list of targets that was widely circulated was, it seems, the work of one person. There was, according to the people who make monitoring the fascist undergrowth their business, little in the way of fascist organising. We know the domestic intelligence services and the political police, Special Branch, have existing fascist organisations thoroughly penetrated and surveilled.
The matter was taken up by a popular movement that excelled itself in its bold initiatives.
At the same time, there is a concerted effort by the state, the police, the prosecution authorities, the monopoly media, the state broadcaster and its commercial rivals to ensure that this popular movement remains subordinated, as far as possible, to an agenda at the service of the Establishment.
There is a striking parallel between the response of our state and mass media to a similar process in Germany earlier this year when the coalition parties policing Germany’s economic and political crisis made a huge effort to corral a popular anti-fascist resistance to the AfD under their control.
Like Germany, we have a far-right political movement that plays to millions of workers experiencing a housing crisis, devalued wages, price inflation, a collapsing NHS and public services while our privatised utilities are plundered.
Labour in government is mistaken if it thinks the far right can be combatted without tackling capitalism’s crisis with measures that meet the people’s needs at the expense of the rich and propertied.
Make no mistake, the threat to migrants, people of colour and refugees is real and present. But when the big business media and Establishment politicians with a record of pandering to racism and Islamophobia suddenly embrace a mass movement for which they have hitherto displayed hostility, we should be vigilant to make sure that our autonomy and freedom to organise remains in our hands.
