Hastings takes on the Far Right
JENNY SUTTON, SECRETARY HASTINGS STAND UP TO RACISM
Hastings Stand Up to Racism supporters went to London to join the counter-protest to Tommy Robinson’s ‘Unite the Kingdom’ demonstration on Saturday 13 September.
This was the biggest far-right mobilisation in British history with over 150,000 marching behind the criminal thug who founded the English Defence League. Fascist organisations like Patriotic Alternative and White Vanguard paraded openly. Starmer has denied the racist nature of the event, but the speakers left us in no doubt – from the stage came demands for mass deportations and hatred against refugees, Muslims, migrants and trans people.
French far-right politician and Holocaust-denier Éric Zemmour raged about the so-called “great replacement of our European people by peoples coming from the south and of Muslim culture” and said: “You and we are being colonised by our former colonies.” Elon Musk declared: “Violence is coming to you – you either fight back or you die.”
The violent language became all too real. Although 2,600 officers had been deployed against non-violent pro-Palestine protesters the previous Saturday, there were only 1,000 to control violent agitators who’d called on supporters to ‘take their country back’. Anti-racists were kettled in Whitehall, while Robinson’s mobs attacked police lines.
As the Hastings group were waiting for our return train at Charing Cross station, we were attacked by Millwall and Charlton football hooligan firms who had agreed to unite to march with Tommy Robinson. They identified us by the trans flag on a pole with HASTINGS across it that we were using to keep our group together. This marked us out as ‘fair game’. Our flagpole was seized and destroyed. A man in our group was attacked by a woman from their side, and I (a woman in my 60s) was punched in the eye. If the police had not intervened, we would have been badly hurt.
I am glad we stood against the far right on Saturday. But the scale of Robinson’s mobilisation shows we need far more. We need hundreds of thousands on the streets – trade unionists, faith groups, campaigners, students, and all who believe in an anti-racist, trans-inclusive Britain.
The far right believe this is their moment, and Reform UK top the polls. But there is a majority in Britain who reject bigotry and division. The task now is to unite that majority into a movement capable of stopping the far right on the streets and at the ballot box, as we have done before.
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