WELL over 100,000 people gathered in London last weekend under the banner of “Tommy Robinson” — actually Stephen Yaxley-Lennon — a notorious and violent fascist and grifter, with several criminal convictions.

It must behove the left to ask why. Are there that many fascists in Britain, bearing in mind that several people likely agree with the aims of the protest for every one that actually attended?

It seems improbable. Whenever the far right attempts a local mobilisation outside asylum hostels, they are generally outnumbered by anti-racist counterprotesters.

The racist core of Robinson’s support is a small minority in most communities, and its attempt to stir up violence generally falls flat.

Saturday’s rally was actually called not to protest about the arrival of asylum-seekers on our shores, the issue which Reform’s Nigel Farage had been majoring on all summer. Its main theme was, ostensibly, “free speech.”

And underlying it was certainly an expression of popular powerlessness and national decline, sentiments which powered the Brexit vote in 2016 but which have only been exacerbated since, since the assertion of sovereignty does not in itself guarantee that it will be wielded to any good effect.

On the matter of free speech, it is a vital value to be defended. Historically, it is the working-class movement which has suffered most from its absence. Today, cancel culture, “trigger warnings” and “microaggressions” not only curb debate, they also risk infantilising those seeking protection behind them.

“Hate speech” is a more difficult concept. Remarks like those made by the inappropriately lionised Lucy Connolly, including clear incitements to violence, are criminal in any context.

Social media has made the issue exponentially worse, since views which would previously only be expressed privately are now shared with the world willy-nilly.

Nevertheless, when police crack down on ill-judged and offensive comments on X, they are often intruding where they have no business. As events in the US show, the left will be the biggest losers from this, and between individual rights and the capitalist state, socialists should know where they stand.

It is ludicrous that this issue should be championed by the far right, whose attitude towards opinions they disagree with was amply represented by those who tried to attack anti-racist counterprotesters at the weekend.

Nor should the incongruity of right-wing academics and writers claiming they have been “cancelled” or gagged from the bully pulpit of national newspaper columns be overlooked.

In reality, the left has always focused on winning arguments rather than banning contrary views, but it needs to double down on that approach today as part of the general defence of democracy.

The particular argument it urgently needs to prevail in today is the responsibility for the national malaise affecting so many areas of ordinary people’s lives. It is not down to the impoverished refugees arriving by boat.

It is down to the ruling class and the global super-rich, seen fawning on the leader of the far right internationally, Donald Trump, in Windsor Castle this week.

It is they who have spent 15 years slashing living standards to protect profits, who squeeze public services dry to promote private interests, and who slash support for the neediest the better to fund their imperialist aggression abroad.

What Farage and Robinson are doing is, in large part, a manoeuvre of deflection. Farage is himself a very wealthy Thatcherite, while Robinson is the well-funded plaything of the multibillionaire manchild Elon Musk. Their populist demagogy is just a mask.

Their job is to prevent masses of working people drawing class conclusions from their plight and that of the country. Our job is to expose them.