THE disgraceful conditions at Manston in Kent provide a focus to 40 years of Tory racism. With Suella Braverman as home secretary and a terrorist-style attack on a Dover immigration centre by an individual with far-right links, the relationship between institutional racism and street racism becomes clearer. 

When Enoch Powell made his “rivers of blood” speech in 1968, he was a senior Tory MP who found himself with no future in the party. This was the tail end of a period when the government was welcoming migrants to fill mostly badly paid gaps in the labour force.

After the oil-focused economic crisis of 1973, matters began to change. The racism inherent in much Tory politics began to be more openly displayed. 

In the mid-1970s, organised fascists regrouped around the National Front (NF). It had some electoral success but also engaged in a series of highly provocative street marches in inner-city locations such as Lewisham and Wood Green. The NF was opposed by the Anti-Nazi League, Rock Against Racism and others.

Before the 1979 general election, where the NF failed to make much impact, Tory leader Margaret Thatcher made a speech claiming that people felt “swamped” by those of a “different culture.”

This led to a discussion on the left as to how far street opposition to the NF had achieved their demise compared to Thatcher’s promotion of state racism, which demonstrated that racists could feel comfortable both with voting Tory and the actions of a Tory government.

Fast forward several decades and the policy of former Tory prime minister Theresa May, architect, when she was home secretary, of “the hostile environment” towards ethnic minorities. It was a policy which led directly to the abuse of numbers of the Windrush generation, who were in Britain completely legally, but harassed by the authorities.

Those who had arrived without complete paperwork in the 1960s found themselves targeted for potential and sometimes actual deportation, splitting them from families who had been born in Britain.

This example of institutional racism went in parallel with the rise of the English Defence League (EDL). Again, their trademarks were street marches and general thuggery. Again, they found themselves opposed by anti-racists such as Stand Up to Racism — and eventually, like the NF before them, they fell apart.

Now Braverman is talking the language of the fascist right about an “invasion” of migrants into southern England. 

Braverman is a hard-right Tory politician and the language is designed to provoke and stir racist sentiment. She stands accused of a dereliction of her duty as a minister in respect of the situation at Manston, but there is considerable evidence that this was a deliberate act on her part rather than an oversight or incompetence.

She has doubled down on her plans to deport legitimate asylum-seekers not only to Rwanda, but to other countries too.

It is a Tory policy that arguably goes further than the words that got Powell excluded from the party. At the same time, it is promoting a rise in street racism. The attack at Dover may be a sign of what is to come — and underlines that, far from it being one or the other, state racism and street racism go hand in hand.

Both need to be opposed by anti-racists and the left. Racism is integral to a market-capitalist society — but how much it is promoted varies. The success with stopping the NF and the EDL underlines how important anti-racist activity has been and still is.