A powerful and dangerous racist storm is being whipped up across Britain. The Labour government, the far right and the media are using each other to create a climate of intensifying hatred. The initial target is asylum seekers, and particularly those temporarily housed in hotels, but the xenophobic rage will not stop there. NICKI JAMESON reports.
Throughout the summer, protests took place outside hotels warehousing migrants pending consideration of their asylum claims. The last weekend in August saw protests at 34 such locations. Some protesters claim to be ‘protecting women and girls’, following a small, but highly publicised number of accusations of sexual harassment involving male hotel residents. Others complain about asylum seekers being housed at all, amidst an all-pervading shortage of affordable housing. Racism, xenophobia and flag-waving ‘patriotism’ infuse the demonstrations, with mantras such as ‘We want our country back’ reflecting a failure to understand why housing cannot and will not be provided for all workers by capitalism, and the belief relayed daily by the press that the problem lies in an insufficiently draconian immigration policy.
On 19 August Epping Forest Conservative council temporarily obtained a High Court injunction meaning asylum seekers would have been removed from the Bell Hotel in Epping by 12 September. Other councils, Conservative, Reform and Labour, rushed to announce they would be filing similar applications. Anti-migrant protests then escalated in tandem with ‘Operation Raise the Colours’, a right-wing drive to display Union Jacks and the individual flags of England, Scotland, Wales and the occupied North of Ireland on lamp-posts in a drive to ‘bring back patriotism’.
This is not simply a fringe movement, as was made clear on 13 September when up to 150,000 ‘patriots’ joined the central London ‘Unite the Kingdom’ march, called
by far-right poster-boy Tommy Robinson. A counter-demonstration called by Stand Up to Racism (SUTR) mustered less than a tenth of that number.
Labour government – racist government
Labour came to power in July 2024, following a disastrous election for the Conservatives. Outgoing Prime Minister Rishi Sunak had hitched his political standing to the impossible claim that he would ‘stop the boats’, ie block off the sea route by which asylum seekers arrive from northern France. Not to be outdone, Labour’s Keir Starmer promised that his government would ‘smash the gangs’.
Through July and August 2025, then Home Secretary Yvette Cooper made a series of announcements of impending anti-migrant measures, culminating in a speech to Parliament on 1 September. Cooper’s successor Shabana Mahmood now has the task of following through with the government programme which consists of:
- Ending the use of ‘asylum hotels’, both by speeding up deportations and by returning to the previous government’s use of ‘a range of cheaper, more appropriate sites like disused accommodation, industrial and ex-military sites’, ie prison camps, as well as by evicting and cutting off support for those who refuse to move from one temporary site to another.
- Implementing the ‘one in, one out’ deal with France, under which Britain captures new arrivals and, without processing their asylum claims, trades them for other migrants whose cases have already been assessed in France.
- Suspending the right to ‘refugee family reunion’, meaning that someone who makes the dangerous and expensive journey to Britain and successfully claims asylum cannot prevent the remainder of their family being stranded in the warzone they have fled.
- Introducing a new fast-track appeals process to replace the current Immigration First Tier Tribunal system.
- Stepping up the hostile en-vironment for overseas students, who on arrival at their universities at the start of the new term are being greeted by aggressive text messages and emails, warning that they will be summarily deported if they overstay their visas, even if they claim asylum.
- Increasing imprisonment in im-migration removal centres. Campsfield House and Haslar detention centres are being re-developed to provide yet more prison capacity.
Britain receives a tiny number of asylum seekers compared to most European countries, and even fewer compared to oppressed nations adjacent to war zones. Approximately 95,000 asylum seekers arrived in Britain in 2024 (approximately one seventh of the number arriving for work or study), as opposed to 229,700 in Germany and 158,000 in France. Nonetheless, when interviewed by BBC Breakfast on the day of her speech, Cooper insisted that ‘small boat crossings’ and ‘asylum hotels’ are ‘some of the biggest problems we face’.
The far right in parliament
Cooper’s timing was designed to steal a march on right wing populist party Reform UK, led by long-time demagogue Nigel Farage, whose annual conference was being held that week. Farage in turn upped the ante by declaring in his rabble-rousing closing speech that, if it were to win the next general election, Reform would ‘stop the boats in two weeks’. He was later forced to qualify this considerably; however, the boast was out there.
Reform UK grew out of the Brexit Party and has been contesting elections since 2022. It now has four members of Parliament, one member in each of the devolved Welsh and Scottish assemblies, and controls 12 local councils. Many of its councillors defected from the Conservatives or crossed over from the United Kingdom Independence Party (UKIP), Farage’s earlier political home.
Reform markets itself primarily to small businesspeople, with a list of promises to ‘Free Over 1.2 million Small and Medium Sized Businesses from Corporation Tax… Support Small and Medium Sized Enterprises… Slash Red Tape to Boost Industry and Exports…’etc. Reflecting the generally reactionary political views of this layer, it promises to viciously attack not only migrants but the whole working class, by initiating a ‘Clampdown on all crime and antisocial behaviour’, locking up more people for longer, ending ‘woke policing’ and so on.
Despite its hard-edge presentation, Reform’s promises are not substantially different from those of the Tories or Labour, as they also vie for the votes of small business owners and well-paid workers, particularly those who profited from Margaret Thatcher’s council housing right-to-buy and nationalised industry share sales policies, but whose relative privilege is now threatened by the stagnancy of capitalism since 2008.
The far right on the streets
Using not dissimilar rhetoric to Reform UK, are those grouped around the figurehead of Tommy Robinson or behind Operation Raise the Colours. This movement is growing in strength and has the potential to be extremely dangerous. While not all the hotel protests – any more than the racist riots which swept across England in 2024 – have been initiated by organised forces, these groups are quick on the scene with political agitation and material support. Robinson’s central London protest was well-financed, with the burgeoning British far right chan-nelling money from the same sources that have sustained the US MAGA movement. The 13 September White-hall rally featured a video link speech from multi-billionaire Elon Musk, who told the crowd he wants Britain to ‘remain Britain’ in the face of a ‘rapidly increasing erosion’ and failure by government to ‘protect… children who are being gang-raped’. Musk and Robinson together whipped up the crowd to ‘fight for the future’.
While Farage has tried to distance himself from Robinson, particularly after 13 September predictably ended with an outbreak of violence in which the ‘patriots’ attempted to attack the counter protest and ended up scrapping with the police, their standpoints are closely aligned.
In practice, the government’s position on ‘illegal migration’ is also that of Farage. Calling for a ‘patriotic renewal’ and announcing his plans for digital ID, on 26 September Starmer told the Global Action Progress Summit that ‘for too many years it has been too easy for people to come here, slip into the shadow economy and remain here illegally’ because ‘frankly we’ve been squeamish’.
Racism and imperialism
Britain is an imperialist nation which became rich by plundering the rest of the world. To perpetrate this plunder, it had to sow the myth that ‘foreigners’ were inferior and less deserving of full human rights. British immigration controls are the continuation of this imperialist propaganda. As such they are necessarily racist in nature. This is the system that those waving the Union Jack, aptly termed the Butcher’s Apron, are celebrating.
Immigration controls under capitalism are designed to ‘manage migration’ in the capitalists’ interests. The EU referendum expressed a dispute between the Remainers’ European-wide ‘Fortress Europe’ version of this and the winning Brexiteers’ ‘Little Britain’ approach. The Brexiteers’ idea of pulling up the drawbridge is a pipedream, however. No amount of state brutality will stop people fleeing war, environmental collapse, imperialist theft, un-repayable debt and exploitation. The conditions which result in migrants crossing the Channel are the direct product of imperialism and cannot simply be wished, voted or legislated away.
Capitalism is in crisis. The ruling class, which cares only about extracting profit from workers both domestically and internationally, has made it clear over the last 17 years that niceties such as a well-functioning welfare state and an immigration system which conforms to international law and provides sanctuary to victims of conflict, are no longer on its agenda. Whichever party is in power has no option but to push through spending cuts and draconian policing measures.
Dividing the working class
Immigration controls create a hierarchy among workers. By denying rights, work and security to migrants, the state isolates them from their fellow workers and prevents collective organisation. Many are forced to live undocumented and precarious lives, unable to challenge exploitation. The existence of this super-exploited layer of workers enables employers to discipline all workers, to depress wages and conditions, and assign unprofitable but vital jobs in the capitalist economy – care, cleaning, healthcare – to the lowest paid and least protected.
It is to reinforce this segregated system, which sustains the existence of the predatory British ruling class, that racist hatred is being whipped up. The solution to the lack of housing is not more racist controls, but the unity of all workers. The fight against the growing far right cannot be separated from the fight against state racism and state violence. While their language may be oppositional, in practice Tommy Robinson’s boot boys aspire to be the street auxiliaries of a ruthless ruling class, represented in Parliament yesterday by the Tories, now by Labour and perhaps in the future by Reform UK. Contrary to the claims by SUTR and others that the Labour government is ‘capitulating’ to far right racism, it is in fact creating the conditions in which such reactionary forces can flourish.
The likes of SUTR still claim that it is possible to build an anti-fascist movement that includes leading figures from the Labour Party left and refuse to break with that racist, imperialist party, even as it condones genocide in Gaza and commences another round of state attacks on migrants. They wilfully refuse to accept the link between British imperialism and the racism it foments and the continuity of state racism and street racism.
We oppose all Britain’s immigration controls. We demand equal rights to work, live, claim benefit and access healthcare and education for all workers in Britain regardless of immigration status.
All migrants have the right:
here to stay, here to fight!
Fight racism! Fight imperialism!
FRFI 308 October/November 2025
