THE DEMONSTRATION today is a great opportunity to bring together all the strands of the movement, both long-established and newly emerging, in the fight for a better society and against the policies of this government.

We are united against the Tories. But we should also be clear that we are not fighting the individuals that comprise this government, or even Tory rule. We completely oppose the entire reactionary agenda of this government.

This means opposing it root and branch in terms of all its attacks, coming to the defence of all working people and those suffering discrimination and counterposing progressive policies of our own to the Tories’ extreme right-wing agenda.

The latest Tory tactic in its so-called “culture wars” is the abuse of public reports to support their ridiculous claim that institutional racism does not exist. The aim of this offensive is to create and exacerbate division and discrimination.

All of us in the labour movement, campaigners, NGOs and others must respond with unity against division and discrimination, fighting all injustices including racism, sexism and homophobia.

As we have suffered a series of defeats with the election in 2019 and the removal of Jeremy Corbyn as leader, I want to register first that victories are possible, even if we have got out of the habit a bit. We struggle and sometimes we win. And I think it is important to register that.

We are an international and internationalist movement. So I make no apology by focusing first on the horrific treatment of black people and other people of colour in the US. Because we are also inspired by the resistance to those attacks.

It is important to register a great triumph and a triumph of the Black Lives Matter movement in particular. One person who will not at all be happy with the events of the past year is Donald Trump.

Trump was defeated fair and square at the polls and Joe Biden is now the President of the United States.

Trump tried to run on a “law and order” ticket, threatening the black and Latino communities and other ethnic groups in the country with the full force of the state.

In effect it was an attempt at creating a civil war atmosphere where various far-right and white-supremacist groups acted above and outside the law. This was supplemented by the activities of the police, National Guard and other Federal agencies.

This civil war atmosphere was carried on right into Capitol Hill after the result was known, in an effort to overturn a democratic election.

It failed spectacularly. An early examination of the exit polls suggests that it was black people who came out in droves for Biden, along with increasing numbers of Latino voters.

In places like Arizona it seems to be the votes of the daughters and sons of immigrants that were decisive. This is a justice against a president who caged migrant children and who broke up literally hundreds of families. It was Black Lives Matter that dumped Trump.

In this country and despite an 80-seat majority, various campaigners have also shown that this government is for turning. This is true on Free School Meals, on visa charges for NHS staff, on A-level testing, on the reopening of schools in January and many other issues.

This shows that all that is required is real opposition to this government. But all of these U-turns were forced by great campaigners operating outside Parliament and they achieved their victories without much parliamentary support.

Scandalously, the government has not yet been properly held to account for the 150,000 dead from Covid, for the 2 million with Long Covid, the hundreds of thousands made unemployed, or the fact that half the workforce has seen a real pay cut.

Aside from very honourable exceptions, there has also not been much parliamentary leadership opposing the increasingly authoritarian drive of this reactionary government, which is removing itself and many arms of the state from any democratic accountability, including for the most serious crimes, torture, rape and murder. The right to protest and to vote are under threat.

There is a myth in this country that Biden’s economic policy was not radical and we in Labour should limit our ambitions to achieve electoral success as a result.

It is impossible to say whether Biden can or will implement his policies, he is already being thwarted on major public-sector infrastructure investment.

But a massive investment to tackle climate change, infrastructure spending, big new spending on health and education and support for a federally-mandated minimum wage of $15 an hour sounds pretty economically radical.

Maybe not quite Corbynism, but not completely opposed to it either. By contrast, this government has no plan on climate change, zero-hours contracts are soaring, real pay is being cut and “fire and rehire” encouraged.

There is also a myth that it was the association with the radicals, the socialists and Black Lives Matter that cost the Democrats the landslide a decent opposition should expect vs someone like Trump.

Yet all the Democratic Congressional candidates who espoused Medicare for All got elected, every single one of them.

In Europe, we see a similar pattern. Labour’s sister parties who work with the left remain in office. Labour’s sister parties that embraced austerity and anti-migrant rhetoric are peripheral forces, often in single digits in the polls. The claim that voters are deterred by the left has no factual basis.

Unfortunately, in this country and in others there is nothing comparable to the size or scope of the Black Lives Matter movement. As yet, there is no mass movement that is going to lead to the rapid dumping of Britain’s Trump.

But that means the onus is on us, the people on the demos today and the wider movement, to lead real opposition to this government, which daily increases its authoritarianism, its mistreatment of refugees, its grotesque undermining of public health and its widening of inequality and discrimination. This is a government so steeped in the mire, it even denies that institutional racism exists.

We have to rise to the challenge Black Lives Matter has set us. To demand justice, to demand equality and to demand peace, opposing the wars that further engender racism. We need to be up to that challenge.

One of the oldest and best slogans is, “An injury to one is an injury to all.” As this government is stepping up its attacks all across the board, that must be our response.

To carry through their reactionary agenda this government is whipping up racism, marginalising women, denying young people a future and increasing scapegoating.
 
Fighting all of these injustices is imperative in themselves. But they also contribute to the wider struggle for unity against a government not fit to govern.

Diane Abbott is MP for Hackney North.