On 10 February, FRFI supporters attended the ‘Together Alliance’ launch meeting in Hackney, London. Our aim? To challenge keynote speaker Labour MP Dawn Butler, a former cabinet minister who supports the genocidal Labour government, moreover a government which boasts of deporting 50,000 migrants since coming to office in July 2024.
What is the Together Alliance?
The Together Alliance is a new attempt by the British left establishment to save its own skins from the far right under the guise of fighting racism. Its motivation is terror at the prospect of a Reform UK government in the future. There is nothing positive about it, nothing about changing the conditions which create racism, nothing about challenging either the Labour government or the racist British state. Quite the opposite: it deliberately censors any mention of Labour racism or state racism, let alone organises to campaign against them. Stand Up To Racism national organiser and senior member of the SWP Samira Ali summarised the Together Alliance’s explicit purpose at the launch by declaring ‘We’re here to tell Nigel Farage, Donald Trump, Tommy Robinson, “You aren’t going to get away with it anymore”’ adding ‘I look at the United States and see Donald Trump and see his murderous ICE gangs—that is what will happen here if we don’t get organised against Reform UK.’
Together Alliance is not about challenging state racism.Its claims to be ‘standing with migrants and refugees’ is therefore just a posture. It may complain like Socialist Worker that ‘The home secretary, Shabana Mahmoud, has adopted the language and policies of the far right in a bid to “out-racist” Farage.’ During the launch there was not a word from speakers who included Diane Abbott (independent MP), Zack Polanski (Green Party leader), Lewis Nielsen (SWP national secretary) and Dawn Butler (Labour Party MP) about the deportations, immigration raids and arrests being carried out by the Labour government right now. None of them described the vicious reforms to the asylum system by the Labour government. The only reference any made to Labour was to its rhetoric. And that reveals an undeclared purpose of the Together Alliance: to rehabilitate the racist, genocidal Labour Party by inviting its representatives to speak on its platforms.
Hence the presence of Dawn Butler and our challenge. She was a keynote speaker, and the organisers – in reality, the SWP – were her close protection. We were clear in our purpose: we wanted to highlight Labour’s racist crimes by heckling her speech and demanding that she resign from the racist, genocidal Labour Party while reminding the audience of the 50,000 migrants Labour had deported. Her response was equally clear: she would not leave Labour, and defended its record – without saying a word about its support for the genocidal war on the Palestinian people. She ended her tirade by saying ‘you have to be in a position of power to make decisions and to make things work’. Well, the Labour Party is in power and it is making decisions – to carry out record-breaking numbers of deportations while supporting the Zionist state’s ethnic cleansing of the Palestinian people.
SWP goons evicted our comrades; after the rally ended however, we spoke to some of those who attended; nearly all of whom agreed with our disruption. One trans woman stated ‘I’ve lost more of my rights under Labour than under the Tories.’ Speakers had made reference to the struggle in Minneapolis against the paramilitary ICE deportation operation, saying we need to draw on its spirit in fighting racism. This is a smokescreen: the campaign of resistance in Minneapolis and across the US is a massive campaign directly against state racism. The Together Alliance is the antithesis of the Minneapolis movement. It rejects such a struggle and so makes empty words of its supposed defence of migrants, refugees and asylum seekers.
Postcript
Socialist Worker posted a report of the rally the next day. It did not mention Dawn Butler at all! How could it, given that FRFI had put her completely on the back foot? And Socialist Worker certainly wasn’t going to mention us, since it would expose the collusion of the SWP with the Labour Party and Labour government.
