SINCE the general election Britain has seen an increase in racist incidents and anti migrant protests. Such happenings aren’t new of course as over recent years we have regularly witnessed violent protests outside and inside hotels across all our nations.

The flames for this violence have been fanned by the media and politicians who have sought to blame people escaping poverty, war and environmental damage rather than their own failings.

Capitalism and imperialism are the root cause of these failings. Likewise the collapse of social democracy as a system that attempts to ameliorate the worst aspects of mass exploitation continues.

In France Emmanuel Macron and his government — which, let’s not forget, consists of ex-members of the once massive Socialist Party — has now reached a pact with National Rally, the heirs of the National Front.

Starmer was content to be seen with Giorgia Meloni, in Italy the leader of the Brothers of Italy and the heir of Mussolini’s Fascist Party. The once hard “cordon sanitaire” which restricted fascist parties from government, at least in Europe, has cracked wide open.

In Britain both Labour and Tories have used right-wing populist rhetoric in seeing mass migration as a law and order issue rather than one that must be dealt with politically and economically.

Most recently the cutting of the winter fuel allowance has turbo-charged the far right. Reform UK has made its retention a centrepiece of its electioneering attacking overseas aid.

A few weeks back overtly fascist Britain First were in Tamworth linking immigration with the need to defend pensioners. This Staffordshire town saw some of the worst attacks on a hotel housing asylum-seekers. 

Labour appear to have walked into a trap – seeing immigration as a problem while at the same time cutting benefits of those who are not well off.

[[{"fid":"70624","view_mode":"inlineleft","fields":{"format":"inlineleft","field_file_image_alt_text[und][0][value]":"THEY SHALL NOT PASS: Activists from Stand Up To Racism Scotland gather in Glasgow's George Square, in a counter protest to a far-right rally on Saturday September 7 2024","field_file_image_title_text[und][0][value]":false},"link_text":null,"type":"media","field_deltas":{"1":{"format":"inlineleft","field_file_image_alt_text[und][0][value]":"THEY SHALL NOT PASS: Activists from Stand Up To Racism Scotland gather in Glasgow's George Square, in a counter protest to a far-right rally on Saturday September 7 2024","field_file_image_title_text[und][0][value]":false}},"attributes":{"alt":"THEY SHALL NOT PASS: Activists from Stand Up To Racism Scotland gather in Glasgow's George Square, in a counter protest to a far-right rally on Saturday September 7 2024","style":"float: right;","class":"media-element file-inlineleft","data-delta":"1"}}]]As the Morning Star’s editorial stated on October 11 the runoff between two right-wing Tory leadership candidates is no laughing matter. It exemplifies the move to the right in Britain’s larger parties. It also makes an accommodation with Reform UK more likely.

Particularly since the Covid pandemic and the failure by most states to put the needs of people first we have seen a massive growth of all things online.

Recently the BBC identified a Finnish far-right social media activist using a false name spreading conspiracies about the murders of children in Southport. These online tropes fed into the attack on a local mosque.

But we would be wrong to see online activism as something that comes to Britain from elsewhere. British far-right activities are at the centre of the anti-migrant narrative.

The far right feed off people’s grievances making them see things through the prism of race, not — as we would want — through the prism of class. They state that they are discriminated against.

That pro-Palestinian marches pass by unheeded when they are kettled. They say there is a two-tier Britain. There are tiers of course but these are based on class not race.

A recent report into Windrush eventually published by the Home Office shows that racism has been at the centre of Britain’s nationality laws since 1947.

This is why the Communist Party has joined forces with allies to argue for anti-racist immigration and nationality laws. We know that the current system sets worker against worker.

Guest workers will not have the same employment rights even under Labour’s heralded improvements. We see people put in empty hotels and camps.

The activities of the fascists and far right must be opposed on the day of Robinson’s anti-migrant demo today, in the run-up and afterwards.

The Communist Party is calling on all its members and allies to mobilise. We are also calling on the labour movement to ensure that union members and their friends oppose Reform UK not just because it is a racist party, and not just because Reform UK gives succour to the far-right thugs, but because it is an anti-union and anti-working class party.

Their policies are the same as other far-right parties in Europe. The Communist Party’s pamphlet Unmasking Reform UK is a must-read as is Stand up to Racism’s Fact Sheet.

In opposing the far right at this time we must challenge austerity, anti-worker laws, war and imperialism.

Dimitrov’s definition of fascism in 1935 as the open terrorist dictatorship of the most reactionary, most chauvinistic and most imperialist elements of finance capital remains true in 2024.

But over the last period a new far right has developed internationally as described this year by VJ Prashad in Tricontinental.

The new far right seeks to exert dominance in the arenas of culture, sociology and the economy.

Neoliberal austerity policies in countries with liberal electoral institutions vanquished the social welfare schemes that had allowed liberal sensibilities to exist. The state’s failure to take care of the poor turned into a harshness toward them.

Without a serious commitment to social welfare and redistributionist schemes, liberalism itself drifted into the world of far-right policies.

These include increased spending on the internal repressive apparatus that polices working-class neighbourhoods and international borders alongside the increasingly stingy distribution of social goods, disbursed only if the recipients allow themselves to be stripped of basic human rights.

In this terrain, the far right of a special type found that it became more and more accepted as a political force given the turn by the parties of liberalism to the policies which the far right had advocated. In other words, this tendency to draw from far-right policies allowed the far right to become mainstream.

Finally, the political forces of liberalism and the far right unified across the board to diminish the left’s grasp on institutions. The far right and its liberal counterparts have no fundamental economic differences regarding class.

In the imperialist countries, there is a very high confluence of viewpoints on maintaining US hegemony, hostility and contempt for the global South, and increased jingoism, as seen by the full-throttle military support for the genocide Israel is conducting against Palestinians.

Across all the continents we see such political parties and movements. They must be opposed from the left. We must build the united front. The Communist Party of Britain says unequivocally No to Racism and Fascism.

Ever since the Soviet Red Army smashed the Nazis on the battlefield in a WWII alliance with Britain, China, France and the US, fascism has been on the back foot.

Today’s fascists in Britain have a twin-track strategy that combines street violence and racist intimidation with election campaigns often drawing support from electoral successful political parties.

Britain’s home-grown fascists feed of the toxic climate created by the anti-immigrant and refugee narratives fostered by government and the media.

In 1936 workers in London’s East End blockaded Cable Street and the police were unable to to force the way for Mosley’s British Union of Fascists. In the 1970s the neonazi British Movement were isolated. Since then the BNP and NF have been defeated.

Asylum-seekers and refugees are protected by international treaties. Britain’s Communists say our country should accept its international responsibilities and end its role in foreign wars. No human is illegal.

Attacks on places housing people waiting to be granted status leads to racist and Islamophobic attacks.

Communists argue that Britain’s problems are caused by capitalism, not from where people come from.

We demand cuts to arms spending, investment in green jobs and manufacturing, the NHS and education. Wages, benefits and pensions should be raised.

We call for an end to the oppression of women and black people and attacks on LGBT+ communities, and the restoration of all trade union rights and the right to protest.

Above all we call for a united working-class fight back.

Join the anti-racist anti-fascist protests. Build community and workplace resilience against racism and fascism.

Tony Conway convenes the Communist Party’s anti-racist anti-fascist commission.