Reform Labour Tory – all the same – change the system not the party!
British chapter of the Anti Fascist International joins today’s Together against the far right march with a clear message – The responsibility for the rise of the far right in Britain rests entirely with the parliamentary parties who have whipped up racism for decades.
In recent years we have seen violent, premeditated riots and threatening racist protests targetting Mosques, Asylum accommodation and Black and Asian businesses across the country. Far right activists use every opportunity to whip up a racist furore and unleash unbridled violence and aggression on our streets. In August 2024 they burned libraries and Citizens Advice bureaus, smashing windows and torching cars. Providing oxygen to this, in every election the Labour party and Conservatives have competed with each other about who could promise the toughest crack down on immigration whilst offering uncritical support for Israel and Britain’s imperialist interventions against Iran, Yemen, Syria and beyond. Profiting from this situation, since its creation in 2021 Reform UK has won seats in elections across the country. The plot was clear, blame all the problems in crisis-ridden Britain on immigration and whip up racism to win votes.
Meanwhile, energy companies are profiteering from crisis, private companies and funding cuts are tearing apart the NHS, housing developers are seeking profit from constructing luxury apartments whilst council house building is at an all time low. The Labour government is hell-bent on continuing austerity and pummelling working class living standards in Britain. Although asylum seekers and migrants bear no blame for the collapse of the NHS, shortage of council housing or soaring fuel and food prices, they continue to be the government’s scapegoat of choice. Racist thugs feed off this racist bile spewing from the main capitalist parties.
British bombs = devastation and destruction
There have been over 140 separate British military interventions worldwide since the end of the Second World War. Millions killed in Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, Yemen, Syria, Lebanon, Palestine and Iran. Millions made refugees, forced to migrate to find safety. Britain’s involvement in these wars have left whole countries in ruin. Racist anti-Muslim narratives have both drummed up support for these bloody campaigns AND criminalised dissent to these wars here in Britain through successive anti-terror laws specifically targeting Muslim communities. When Tommy Robinson’s English Defence League were formed in 2009 a spokesperson explained ‘The (British) soldiers are fighting Islamic extremism in Afghanistan and Iraq and the EDL are fighting it here’ The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan had nothing to do with ‘extremism’ and everything to do with geo-politics and natural resources. It is no coincidence that Robinson, the EDL and successors have always been supporters of Israel.
Immigration – divide, rule and private profit
British capitalism has always encouraged migrants because of the need for cheap labour, like those from Eastern Europe who came to Britain for work between 2004 and 2020, often at or below the minimum wage, in temporary jobs with no holiday or sick pay. Overseas labour has long been the backbone of the NHS where 50% of workers are migrants. They form an international reserve army of labour, working for low pay during economic boom times and kicked out when capitalism goes into crisis. Private companies like MEARS, Mitie, G4S and SERCO make massive profits from the asylum system – running immigration prisons and asylum accommodation for profit. Private hotels have jumped on the gravy-train – housing people seeking asylum in totally inadequate ‘temporary’ conditions through juicy contracts from the Home Office.
Immigration controls have forced many migrants in Britain into extremely exploitative conditions, isolating migrants from other workers stripping them of their rights at a time when wages, welfare payments and services are being cut for everybody except the rich. Successive Labour and Tory governments have introduced punishing Immigration, Asylum and Nationality Acts. Even those who have settled here for decades are targeted by immigration laws and denied citizenship rights, as the appalling treatment of the Windrush generation of British Caribbean communities demonstrates. These workers were invited to join the postwar British workforce then wrongly detained, denied legal rights and threatened with deportation with at least 83 people wrongly deported. Predictably, protests demanding justice for Windrush were attacked by the far right and the racist police, having been complicit in criminalising the black community for years, turned a blind eye.
Racist immigration controls at home and imperialist exploitation abroad are central to British economic policy. All British immigration controls are therefore necessarily racist and we demand they are scrapped! Migrant rights are worker rights!
Labour, Reform, Tory, same old story
We are made to believe that the Labour Party are an alternative to the Tories and Reform UK. The reality is that Labour have proven that they are willing to do whatever necessary to defend British imperialism and in power have pledged to be even more racist than the Tories. Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood has been pushing through increasingly restrictive laws and measures targetting migrants. This is nothing new, when Labour was last in power 1997 to 2010, it boasted of deporting one person every eight minutes, made it illegal for asylum seekers to work and built 11 immigration prisons, increasing the capacity of the immigration detention system ten-fold. Any attempt to resurrect ‘left’ Labour MPs as part of a credible alternative to Reform via the ‘Together against the far right’ alliance must be opposed. No unity with representatives of the very same government that in January unleashed dogs and tear gas on a peaceful protest of migrants in Harmondsworth and Brook House. No unity with representatives of the very same government complicit in war and genocide across the Middle East. Instead we call for unity against state racism! This is how we can fight the far right.
The system that we live under is a system of exploitation and oppression – a system where the rich get richer by making sure that the poor face intensifying racism and poverty. British state racism is inseparable from Britain’s imperialist wars and plunder throughout the world.
As Malcolm X said: ‘You can’t have capitalism without racism.’ To fight back we need to organise against racism, austerity and war, building solidarity and resistance to the implementation of racist immigration laws, austerity and benefits cuts.
The British Chapter of the Antifascist International is inspired by the principles of revolutionary internationalism in order to unite and promote the struggle of progressive humanity to preserve life, save the human species and the planet from fascism, neo-fascism, zionism and similar expressions. Standing against the war-mongering, racist British state, we support the struggle against war and imperialism around the world, in Cuba, Venezuela, Iran, Palestine, Lebanon and beyond. We affiliate to the Anti-fascist International, formed in Caracas, November 2024, by 1,100 delegates from 76 countries to counter these threats to humanity.