By Manthan Pathak.
After the storm comes the calm.
The early morning sunlight pours through the window as I reflect on the past week of protests and counter-protests. A bright beam of sunlight stretches all the way across the room to the chair I sit on, reflecting onto the screen. For a moment I am blinded by the light, my eyes awash with a sudden warmth.
If the protest on Sunday the 17th felt overwhelming, an almost bruising encounter, last Friday’s counter-protest was the balm of kindness so many of us needed. These demonstrations by members of the far right outside the Highfield House Hotel had, until Friday evening, been exercises in attrition, a battle to sing and shout the loudest, sometimes to make the most pointed accusations at each other.
That has always been the way, and we subscribed to it. There is no criticism of that approach here, because it’s been effective before. But the frequency of these protests, more than once a week – and their increasingly aggressive nature – compelled us to rethink, and so in discussions we agreed to take a visibly non-confrontational approach.
It worked so much better than expected, and provided a vital template for how we can resist their aggression; not with reciprocal force, but the complete absence of force.
In a social media post later that night, a friend in Southampton Stand Up to Racism described the evening’s event better than I ever could. He wrote that: “This wasn’t an hour of standing still. It was a living, breathing act of solidarity. And it worked”. To me, it felt like going back to my childhood, being back in the playground, and this time being able to confuse the racist bullies that stalked me then into submission.
We know this isn’t over, and it would be a mistake to think that we’ve won. Because even as the summer evaporates into autumn and the conditions for protest on the street deteriorate, the crisis we face isn’t limited to Friday evenings at the hotel. Hate crimes are being committed with a casual pervasiveness across the city, and the mass raising of St George’s flags signal this group’s intent to continue their campaign of intimidation.
Many people are afraid, me included.
With each new flag raised, it feels like our national identity is being stolen from us, appropriated to subvert the values of tolerance and compassion that make this country great. The author Matt Haig captured how I know many of us feel: “The people who say ‘you should be proud to fly your country’s flag’ are usually the reason why I’m not proud to fly the country’s flag.”
I can only say that I’ve never felt less patriotic, and my indifference is much less directed at the ‘patriots’ we face every week than the government who have failed so emphatically to speak out against another summer of extremist terror on our streets. It’s as if their collective memory of last year has been surgically extracted, replaced by a zealous compulsion to protect the right to protest at any cost.
When the cost is the safety of some of the most vulnerable people entrusted to the state, enshrined in international human rights law, we know they have not only lost their moral compass, but their mandate to govern at all.
They fail to recognise this is the simple act of bullying on a grand scale; not the punching-up of genuine political protest aimed at those in power, but a punching-down aimed at the powerless. That is what they are protecting, and what so many politicians have so recklessly been encouraging.
They need no more encouragement, that much is clear. The closure of the Bell Hotel in Epping following a court ruling last week, and the potential for that to become a precedent, arms far right groups across the country with a newfound confidence that we will need to repel. If the country found itself sleepwalking into another summer of unrest, now our eyes must be wide open.
Meanwhile, quietly, by a creeping stealth, Reform are now nine points up in the opinion polls. In the shadows, Tommy Robinson rubs his hands with glee as he plots to mobilise half a million disillusioned bigots to march on Downing Street in September. This is a government on the ropes against the far right.
I admit I have more questions than answers. In anti-racist circles, the aim is to vanquish these far right groups whenever they spring up. To keep opposing them until they give up, that’s always been the way.
It doesn’t seem to me to be the end point, because what comes after that?
The inconvenient truth is that behind every far right thug on the street, there is a ‘concerned citizen’ with the same views.
This means that as a movement we will need to mobilise in even greater numbers to effectively resist the rising far right. The urgent work for other movements is to make the connection to anti-racism, because oppression is the universal fight for us all. The urgent work for everyone is to recognise the dangerous moment we’re in, and to act accordingly.
Anti-racism gives us the language to make the most convincing arguments against fascism. Ultimately, our struggles are interwoven. For now we are grateful to have a clarity of vision and purpose.
There is always hope when good people stand up together.
That’s what we’ve done, and that’s how we will win.
In the dying sunlight, we go on.
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