On 26 July, to coincide with the visit of US president Donald Trump, competing protests were staged in Glasgow.
On one side of the city centre, the United Kingdom Independence Party (Ukip) held a gathering that took an explicit stance in favour of mass deportations of “migrants” and declared its support for the policies of President Trump. On the other side of the city centre was a static protest staged by ‘Stand Up To Racism’ (SUTR), which was there to demonstrate against both the Ukip crowd and Trump.
Between the two stood a mass mobilisation of various police forces from across Britain, who had been brought into Glasgow to provide security for the US president’s state visit.
The whole event demonstrated the farcical nature of what self-identifying ‘antifascism’ has become in the imperial core nations. While around 300 leftists gathered on one street, surrounded by the police, and a smaller number of reactionaries gathered across the city centre, prime minister Sir Keir Starmer and President Trump met untroubled by any protest.
During their meeting they felt quite comfortable to declare their ongoing support for the proxy war on Russia in Ukraine and the war against the Palestinian people.
Some issues brought up by these protests merit closer examination.
Forces of the right serve the ruling-class agenda
Ukip was a major political force across Britain leading up to the Brexit vote of 2016. After the referendum on European Union membership was won by the Brexit side and Nigel Farage quit as party leader, Ukip fell into a rapid decline, going through a series of splits and dwindling to a membership of around 3,000.
In recent years, its leadership has been taken over by a man called Nick Tenconi, who is the chief operating officer of a group called ‘Turning Point UK’. This is the British spin-off from Turning Point USA, which is funded by ultra-reactionary bourgeois circles including the notorious Koch Foundation. In its current incarnation, therefore, the so-called party of ‘United Kingdom independence’ can in fact best be described as the British wing of a US operation.
The Ukip crowd consisted of about 50 people kettled by the police on the town hall side of Glasgow’s George Square. The majority were the type of assorted eccentric reactionaries who can be observed on every right-wing demonstration – Trump fans, followers of David Icke, Infowars types and supporters of notorious state asset Stephen Yaxley Lennon (aka Tommy Robinson).
Beyond these there was a hardcore who looked as though they were there to start a fight. These were mostly Glasgow Rangers fans gathered around a banner celebrating ‘King Billy’ and singing Rule Britannia. There was also a single individual from a group of self-proclaimed “paedo hunters” calling themselves ‘The Trojans’, who have been popping up at meetings on women’s safety held in areas like Parkhead in Glasgow’s working-class East End.
Several heavy-looking men were reported to have come in from the occupied six counties (and were sporting more tattoos than any human can reasonably accumulate in one lifetime). And there was an ultra-reactionary group of christians holding crucifixes – which gave a rather retro feel to the whole affair.
Looking at the slogans being held up by the Ukip crowd, one could see the usual anti-migrant calls for mass deportation, but there were also attempts to link migrants with the grooming scandals that have recently been brought to prominence in towns like Rotherham.
The right-wing mobilisation in Glasgow was consciously trying to pick up on local working-class concerns about public safety and to racialise them. This is not just a tactic of the likes of Ukip, of course; it is standard practice amongst all British bourgeois politicians and parties. The more nakedly reactionary parties are just more open about their intentions.
Forces of the fake left do the same
On the other side of George Square were the left counter-protestors organised mainly by SUTR. There were at least 300 of them, so they far outnumbered the fascists. The focus of the SUTR slogans was ostensibly to oppose the racism of both Trump and Ukip.
The occasional chant of “Tax the rich” was heard, but what struck this reporter was the way in which the question of racism was totally separated from the question of imperialism. This should not be a surprise given that the organisers are very close to the Labour party and there was also a Green party presence.
Since both these parties are imperialist to the bone and rabid supporters of Nato, it should come as no surprise that their influence promoted an entirely false understanding of racism – ie, that it is the product of individuals, parties and policies and not of the system of capitalist production for profit and imperialist plunder of the globe.
The role of the Trotskyite SWP is also crucial, as its leadership and members have always been the primary organisational influence within SUTR. The SWP has a long track record of promoting the Trotskyite ‘interpretation’ of global economics and politics, which pretends to be Leninist, but in fact denies Lenin’s analysis of imperialism as the highest (and final) stage of capitalist development.
Ultimately, what is being promoted by SUTR is utterly divorced from the realities of the role played by British imperialism at home and abroad. It does nothing to promote the real working-class politics of workers v capitalists, and instead plays a culture wars game of two opposing working-class sides – ‘enlightened’ workers v ‘fascists’.
The SWP’s slogan during the cold war period was “Neither Washington nor Moscow”, and this twisted logic, which always refused to recognise or support any of the revolutions that were actually made by workers in the last century, always refused to recognise the mechanisms by which imperialism oppresses whole nations abroad (including their bourgeois), and always refused to recognise the mechanisms used to bribe the upper stratum of workers at home (making them loyal to the imperialist system) continues to serve imperialist interests today – even as it continues to present itself to potential recruits as the most ‘revolutionary’ force imaginable.
Trotskyist ideology offers no explanation of the connection between racism and imperialist war, and does nothing to promote the goal of class unity in the face of the non-stop racist propaganda of the ruling class. (For more see our party pamphlet: Harpal Brar, Trotskyism: Tool of Imperialism, 2024)
What does real antiracism look like?
Our task as communists is to conduct antiracist work in a different way to the fake, purely performative, culture wars version of ‘antiracism’ that has been promoted in bourgeois media. We must resolutely oppose the racism of reactionaries such as the leaders of Ukip and Reform, but we must at the same time show where their racism originates from and help workers taken in by their narrative to see how they are being lied to and duped against their own interests.
We must clearly explain to the working class that racism is driven by the British ruling class and always has been, and that its purpose is twofold:
1. To justify wars of aggression against other nations.
2. To keep the working class within Britain divided on the basis of race and religion.
The British capitalists have been playing this game since the days when Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels observed the divisions being created between local British and migrant Irish workers in the 1840s. It is the primary means by which they achieve the social peace needed for stable class rule and exploitation at home and incessant war, looting and rapine abroad.
Those who really have the interests of the working class at heart must put forward clear demands that undercut the false arguments propagated by reactionaries about the inherent scarcity of resources available to working people.
On the question of housing, for example, it can be shown that the housing crisis is the inevitable effect of successive governments’ (of all parties) attacks on social housing, which has once more turned housing from being something we are all entitled to by right into a commodity available only to those with money to pay for it. Proof of this can be seen in the huge volume of empty housing in Britain, which continues to grow alongside the number of homeless and inadequately housed.
A state of endemic and permanent housing crisis for the working class is, in fact, the natural state of affairs under capitalist relations of economy, as was brilliantly described by Friedrich Engels 150 years ago.
As the capitalist system sinks into an ever deeper global economic crisis, the housing situation is exacerbated by the financiers’ need to keep the housing price bubble fuelled – to the benefit of bankers and property developers and the detriment of those unable to pay the astronomical prices now being demanded for the most modest of dwellings.
The housing crisis is just one of many similar problems facing working people. Their roots are all the same, but huge efforts are put into convincing working people that the problems they face are owing to ‘scarcity’ and an artificial boom in demand that has been caused by allegedly ‘uncontrolled migration’.
Beware wolves in sheep’s clothing
Working-class anger is growing as the situation worsens, which is why the ruling class promotes racism and anti-immigrant sentiment ever more aggressively. The financial oligarchs in whose interests Britain is really run know that if the working class unifies against them their system will be brought down and their rule will end.
That is what we as communists must work towards, rather than tamely playing the game of ‘fascist v antifascist’ that has been set up for us by our class enemies. The only thing that can stop racist and anti-immigrant sentiments infecting our ranks and diverting our energies is working-class solidarity, which means unified action around a real programme of action that addresses the needs of our class.
Workers need to be brought face to face with the truth: neither the EDL/Ukip/Reform agents of imperialism nor the Trotskyite/social-democratic agents of imperialism have their interests at heart. Both claim to care about the problems of the working class. Both claim to know how these problems can be solved. But the real goal of each is the same: to keep workers’ anger directed at other workers instead of at the capitalist-imperialist system.
These apparently ‘opposite’ camps are in fact directed from the same centre, their leaders are all bought and paid for, and they work in partnership to keep the working class fighting amongst itself instead of unified and fighting its exploiters.
