IF ONLY Donald Trump, Nigel Farage and Stephen Yaxley-Lennon had been able to make it to a Baptist church in London last weekend, they might have learned a thing or two.

The Bloomsbury venue was not hosting a religious revival, but the Morning Star conference on Race, Sex and Class Liberation.

The three politicians (well, two plus one recent convict) would have heard speeches on racism, fascism, imperialism, war, patriarchy and women’s liberation.

Speaker after speaker issued the same warning: the lurch to the far right witnessed across the globe will be devastating for all of us.

Nupur Paliwal from the Student Federation of India-UK, said her organisation was set up in the face of “increasingly racist and xenophobic attitudes towards migrants and international students.”

She told the conference: “Coming from a nation where we have a far-right, fascistic government in power, our organisation’s experiences in India have taught us that reviving public consciousness after a regressive ideology takes root is very difficult.

“It is not inaccurate to say that fascist formations are gaining traction in this country at a very high speed.”

The government’s white paper on immigration sought to restrict healthcare workers coming to Britain, a move which would seriously damage the sector.

Keir Starmer’s recent reference to Britain becoming “an island of strangers” evoked memories of Enoch Powell’s infamous “rivers of blood” speech, she said.

Her organisation and others issued a joint statement, and, she said, “it’s at times like these that we appreciate the Morning Star’s role as an organiser and agitator in its own right.

“We have to resist the vitriol that the right puts out — but also offer an alternative which is socially inclusive and economically viable.”

On the platform alongside Paliwal was Myriam Kane of Stand Up to Racism, who denounced Reform MP Sarah Pochin’s recent call to ban the burqa.

“The only thing this has achieved is violent, Islamophobic, and misogynist attacks on Muslim women. We must reject and stand up to Islamophobia, and build a united front to mobilise against Reform. We must also resist racism coming from the Labour government. Labour cannot out-racist the racists.

“Labour must also do what working people want it to do — to invest in people, in public services, and to make people better off. The fundamental reason why Reform is doing so well is that Labour is continuing with austerity.”

Kane also called out Tommy Robinson (real name, Stephen Yaxley-Lennon) for his protests against so-called grooming gangs.

“This has nothing to do with standing up for women, but everything to do with stirring up racism and Islamophobia.

“I want to say that I have no confidence in Labour — but I do have confidence in working-class people, the people that stand against racism and fascism, the people that believe in justice and freedom, so let’s mobilise; let’s do our part.”

Another stalwart anti-fascist taking no nonsense from the far right’s claim to protect women was historian Louise Raw.

“I don’t know if you know, ladies, but the far right have our backs. I bet you all feel a lot better, knowing that!”

The far right, she said, “present themselves so hard as the protectors of women and girls. We’ve seen what they’ve done with the crisis in child sexual abuse — turned that into ‘Muslim grooming gangs,’ a completely false narrative. What a gift this has been to the far right; they’ve recruited on it. It’s allowed them to use that ‘foreign men coming after our women’ trope.”

As Tommy Robinson’s ovine followers were posturing as saving girls from paedophiles, said Raw, it was tough to counter-protest. At a demonstration in Telford, she was spat at and called a ‘paedo.’ By the next demo, she had set up Survivors Against Fascism, with a fellow victim of child sexual abuse, outing herself as such in the process.

Giving quotes to the media, she said, countered the narrative that the far right spoke for victims. Far from being protectors, many were convicted sex offenders, often guilty of violence against women and girls.

Another speaker damning the far right for their appropriation of the devastating harm done to victims was David Rosenberg of the Jewish Socialists’ Group.

“Not so long ago,” he said, “anti-fascists would spread knowledge of the Holocaust far and wide, an essential part of our armoury in persuading others why they should be actively anti-racist, and oppose fascism, wherever it reared its head, whoever its immediate target.

“But we are in a period where that history has been abused and weaponised by pro-zionist propagandists, attempting to justify another genocide. That is not history, but can be witnessed today, live-streamed from Gaza.”

Rosenberg had recently taken a group of National Education Union members on a visit to Poland, including Auschwitz. Several of them told him that they had expected to come out “feeling really sad and devastated, but they actually felt angry and determined — angry that the world allowed this to happen, determined to turn that anger into activism against the likes of Robinson and Farage today — those spivs and charlatans who hold the torch for Britain’s far right. With the help of a feeble and spineless centrist, they are winning new adherents every day.”

In a session on Imperialism, Racism and War, Lindsey German, of the People’s Assembly and Stop the War, put the focus on what she called the failure of imperialist interventions in the Middle East.

“Look at all the wars — the first Gulf war, the so-called war on terror, the invasion of Afghanistan, then Iraq, Syria, Libya. You’re talking about a catalogue of failures that have only made the situation in the whole region much, much worse.”

With Israel’s attacks on Iran only the day before, she said: “Israel is now bombing five countries in the Middle East. It’s astonishing, and nobody comments on it much, on the BBC on anywhere else.”

Her call for Israel’s ambassador to the UK, Tzipi Hotovely, to be expelled from the country brought applause from the audience.

Said German: “Every day, she defends a genocide. You imagine if that were any other country in the world. There would be diplomatic uproar.”

Focusing on the situation in the US, the paper’s parliamentary correspondent Andrew Murray said it was there that we could see “that close alliance of monopoly capital with increasingly untrammelled state violence.”

With the recent riots in LA, he said, Trump was provoking violence.

“We can see this Trumpian movement as incipient fascism in the most powerful imperialist state in the world.”

Britain, he claimed, was “still a hyper-aggressive world power,” and was “so entwined with the US that if America goes in this direction [towards fascism], then certainly Keir Starmer will find it very hard to resist slotting into that world order that Trump is building, no matter how depraved it may be.”

The conference also heard from actor and writer Maxine Peake, saying she was “a proud ambassador for the Morning Star. The free press is under constant attack. Let’s fight tooth and nail to keep the Morning Star alive.”

Stand Up to Racism has called a national demo against fascism in London on Saturday September 13 — Stop Tommy Robinson (standuptoracism.org.uk).