A MONTH or so ago, Establishment figures such as Greg Dyke and Baroness Patience Wheatcroft responded to the Gary Lineker debacle by calling out the BBC for its glaring double standards and hypocrisy and for breaking its guidance on impartiality — something the socialist left has been yelling about, and being ignored over, for decades.

On Radio 4’s Today programme on March 11, Baroness Wheatcroft accused the BBC of allowing the “rabid right-wing” rhetoric of the Tory-supporting press to go unchallenged.
 
When economically wealthy and socially secure people such as Lineker, Dyke and Wheatcroft are moved to point out fascistic moves made within governments and media institutions, we know we are in a very bad place.

But it is not so easy for ordinary people on low or average incomes to be able to spend time analysing and reflecting on the political machinations of the Establishment. They are at the sharp end of social disintegration — trying to cope with the depletion of local health and care services, the homelessness crisis and having to juggle the heat-or-eat dilemma. 

Many people struggling with the daily grind of just about surviving are prime targets for hard-right factions wishing to whip up anger and hatred against even poorer, even more traumatised people from other parts of the world who are trying to escape even worse conditions.

Extreme poverty, regardless of geography, is caused by the same common enemy: a capitalist, warmongering, imperialist system, set up and maintained by the super-rich to ensure that most of the world’s resources and wealth remain exactly where it is — in their coffers — forcing the vast majority of humanity to squabble over what little is left available.

But let’s face it, refugees are a much safer and easier target to vent anger at than the rich and powerful. Under such conditions, it is all too easy for far-right political groups, whose own participants are often unwittingly manipulated and controlled by the very same system which robs all life on this planet, to whip up ordinary people and get them to blame foreigners for all their woes.

And it has ever been so. It is exactly such conditions which allowed the Nazis to seize control in 1930s Europe and to turn citizens against each other by labelling certain groups as “outsiders” and othering vulnerable people. Lineker was right to highlight the similarity in the rhetoric used then and now.

In quiet, rural Cornwall, where I have the good fortune to live, the haters have been moving in. A far-right group called Patriotic Alternative has been busy whipping up local anti-refugee sentiments.

Cornwall, with its extremely insecure housing situation exacerbated by some of the lowest wages and the largest proportion of gig-economy jobs in Europe, is a prime target for such groups.

Last year, the number of second homes throughout Cornwall was estimated to be almost 13,000, with holiday lets numbering more than 11,000, and Airbnb listings were well over 10,000.

Local people being forced to live in short-term temporary housing is commonplace. Homelessness is rampant. Rough-sleeping is now a common sight on Cornish streets. Given this reality, it is unsurprising that people are anxious, distressed and angry. And groups such as Patriotic Alternative offer desperate local people an easy scapegoat to blame for this social injustice.

On February 25, they organised their first protest outside a hotel housing refugees in Newquay. They managed to rally about 100 protesters, who for the most part appeared to be very poorly organised and carried badly spelt signs. Sseveral of them were adolescents and there was also one man manically waving a large Israeli flag, though most of his fellow protesters seemed confused about its significance and were reluctant to help him display and wave it!

Last Sunday, another protest rally was held by this same group, this time organised in response to a report of an alleged rape in Newquay by a suspect who had a foreign name; even though the authorities made it clear that the suspect was not an asylum-seeker or a resident of the hotel housing such people, this made little difference to the protest organisers, who continued with the planning and advertising of their hate-fuelled event.

Fortunately, counterprotests by a coalition of local anti-fascists, trade unionists, socialists and other groups opposed to racism also took place on both occasions, organised by anti-fascist organisation Cornwall Resists.

Arriving an hour or so before the racists’ rally and displaying well-written signs and banners and a proud array of trade union and political flags, the counterprotesters easily outnumbered the anti-refugee demonstrators by about three to one on the first occasion, and about 10 to one on the second one (though there were markedly fewer protesters on both sides last Sunday than at the February demonstration).

Both times, refugee supporters were able to make a stand on the pavement directly outside the front doors of the hotel, forcing anti-refugee protesters to stand on the opposite side of the road well away from the hotel entrance. On March 26, anti-racist protesters also managed to hold a substantial section of the pavement on the opposite side of the road, forcing the anti-refugee rally to stand even further away from the hotel front.

On March 26, after most of the anti-refugee protesters had dispersed, one of theose remaining crossed the road and angrily confronted and lashed out at an anti-fascist demonstrator. This quickly escalated into a scuffle between several people and the police. Two anti-racist demonstrators were detained for a short time but no arrests were made.

Both counterprotest events were successful in as much as the far-right, anti-refugee block was kept at bay and was substantially outnumbered by counter-demonstrators. However, it would be a big mistake to feel self-satisfied and to become complacent.

Here in Cornwall, as elsewhere, we need to be continuously vigilant against this pernicious attempt to misdirect people’s justified anger and to do all we can to actively prevent the ripples of xenophobia from spreading and contaminating this peaceful region of outstanding natural beauty.