On 10 February, a racist protest against asylum seekers housed in the Suites Hotel in Kirkby on the outskirts of Liverpool ended in a near-riot, with a police van burned out. The police that night were quickly overrun by the mob; the protest had descended into violence by the time it was due to begin at 8pm. Videos circulated online showing participants shouting ‘let’s have it then!’ and ‘get them rapist ISIS bastards out of that hotel’. The smoke was accompanied by the sound of ‘get them out!’ and ‘burn it down!’ coming from the 400 or so protestors. Although the racist Patriotic Alternative was involved in organising the event, the overwhelming bulk of the pack was made up of local residents, as the addresses of the 15 arrested were to show. Further protests across England followed during February and March, including in Rotherham, Newquay, Skegness and Wallasey on the Wirral. Hundreds joined some of the protests, but none involved the violence witnessed in Kirkby.
These events clearly follow the racist language that is being used by the likes of Home Secretary Suella Braverman in her references to an ‘invasion’ of asylum seekers crossing the English Channel. Her language is echoed on Patriotic Alternative placards saying ‘Stop the invasion – we will not be replaced’ and ‘We want our country back.’ Such groups are feeding off deeply-held racist views of sections of the working class, and their mobilisations are both incited and then excused by Tory leaders: on 21 February Braverman declared that ‘it is clear and undeniable there are really, really serious pressures in communities and saying so does not make you racist or bigoted.’
Such ‘serious pressures’ have been created quite deliberately by the Tory government in the form of years of funding cuts to local councils. Over the past decade, Labour-run Knowsley council which includes Kirby has lost 45% of its government funding – a £100m cut equivalent to £485 for every person in the borough – more than double the England average of £188 per person. That the Labour Party has refused to lead a fight against austerity over the last 13 years means that local people have been left without the services and amenities they need, a situation which has left people desperate and inclined to accept racist notions about the situation they are in.
Others have denied that there is a deep well of racism for the likes of Patriotic Alternative to draw on. When Labour leaders like Shadow Secretary of State for Levelling Up Lisa Nandy say that ‘this not who we are’, they miss the point: it is exactly who the Labour Party is. In government over the decades it has passed numerous laws imposing more and more restrictions on migrants and asylum seekers. Nor is its rhetoric different. It was David Blunkett as Home Secretary who claimed asylum seekers were ‘swamping’ British schools, then Yvette Cooper as Shadow Home Secretary who said the ConDem coalition Government ‘[was] right to look at’ so-called benefit tourism – although no evidence was ever provided for its existence.
The notion that such racism is alien to the British working class is reinforced by the left’s refrain at these events ‘Nazi scum – off our streets’. Few if any of the people involved in the Kirby event were fascists – but they were racists. And the notion that racists in Britain should be dubbed ‘Nazis’ merely implies that there is something foreign or un-British about racist views. As the record of the last Labour government showed, racism is neither peculiar to the Tories, nor to the Labour Party. They run a state which is necessarily racist, and which constantly through its policies and the efforts of the mass media, fosters and encourages racist views in the working class. Recognising this is the first step to fighting it.
Aidan Keiteley
FIGHT RACISM! FIGHT IMPERIALISM! 293 April/May 2023
