How education can stop Robinson and Farage's far-right

Defeating fascists and confronting the rise of the far-right is personal to me.

When I helped set up the Justice for Stephen Lawrence campaign and led the Anti-Racist Alliance’s successful action to close down the ‘nazi bunker’ headquarters of the British National Party, its Combat 18 paramilitaries threatened to kill me.

So, I’m sorry to say, as a Gold Badge member of the National Union of Journalists for my half century of service to it, there’s been some pretty poor journalism with my colleagues not always properly interrogating the far right currently threatening our democracy.

As journalists we have a public duty to stop the rot by exposing the myths, the lies being spouted. Shine a light on what the late great A. Sivanandan described as the state “racism that kills”.

Some people are saying what we’re experiencing is like fascist leader Oswald Moseley’s fringe but frightening Black Shirts of the 1930s.

But it’s not. It’s mainstream now. Close to becoming our government.

Racism and fascism are like an amoeba. They’re able to morph into something new.

And what we’re seeing today is the misuse of the immense power of social media, which can either be a force for good or a cesspit of hatred. 

That’s how the Robinsons and Farages of this world, backed by the owner of X, Elon Musk and other billionaires, are managing to mobilise masses of people.

They reportedly had 150,000 on their demonstration in September.

Laughably Tommy Robinson claimed it was three million. But either way, it was an extremely alarming spectacle.

Robinson calls himself a journalist. But, like Robinson’s politics, some of his X posts are illiterate.

We must deal head-on with the current phenomenon of White supremacy, nationalism in its rawest and ugliest form of Robinson, formerly of the English Defence League, real name Stephen Yaxley Lennon, and his ilk.

You may notice from Lennon that his parents are from Ireland, same as John Lennon. I’m glad I was in court with Kneecap, the pro-Palestinian Irish rappers, the other day, supporting them. 

For many decades I’ve backed the Irish struggle. 

During the Troubles, I visited West Belfast as a guest of Sinn Féin. 

My point is there are some charlatans around. Farage, like Heseltine, is actually French Huguenot, the descendants of refugees who came to this country to escape religious persecution. The wife Farage abandoned is German. His current girlfriend is of Italian descent. And I hear that after Brexit, he went off and got German passports for himself and his children as a plan B.

And I don’t even want to talk about Nigerian-descended Tory leader Kemi Badenoch. My partner is Nigerian and you can’t mention that name in our house. 

It’s not a new phenomenon. Hitler was from Austria. My mother is Finnish and her wartime leader was called Mannerheim, which is German not Finnish.

So you’ve got populist politicians who want to be ultra-accepted as British or German or Finnish or some other nationalistic brand. 

We have to call out their dangerous far right nationalism when it’s bogus flag-waving patriotism.

Sky News presenter Trevor Phillips, who I  helped get a job at Thames Television years ago when I ran a campaign to recruit Black journalists, was once suspended from Labour membership for Islamophobic comments.

He said on his programme, in an attempt to normalise the Robinson mob, that they were just people you might meet in the pub or at a music concert queuing at a Portaloo.

But we mustn’t make the mistake of saying that they’re all racists. Some of them are deeply misguided.
The real enemy? Billionaires not migrants

They’ve been let down by a Labour government, which fails to tell them the real enemy is not Black people, migrants or asylum seekers.

It’s the capitalist class that oppresses 99% of the population.

The economic crisis we have in this country is not brought about by people in boats. It’s billionaires in private jets who are stealing from the national purse.

Sadly, we’ve got a Starmer Labour government  that’s been attacking its core support not the billionaires. 

For instance, Britain has one of the lowest pensions in Europe. And now they’re talking about ending the triple lock and taxing our paltry pensions.

I’m proud that at TUC Congress this year the NEU and the UCU, a union to which I belong as a lecturer, were fantastic on Gaza, migrants, asylum seekers and refugees, winning conference support.

As educators we have a big role to play which involves providing solutions.

The main source of our woes in Britain is the capitalist class smashing our rights as pensioners, the vulnerable, the elderly, disabled, families, mainly single women with more than two children.
Labour’s failure and the rise of Reform

This isn’t Labour. In fact, I would say they’re labouring on behalf of the elite. 

Labour is not what it says on the tin anymore. 

And let’s be clear: Reform is the parliamentary wing of the 150,000 mob you saw on the streets who should have been calling out for a much-needed rise in living standards, taxing the wealthy, including the utility companies that are ripping us off. 

These are class issues that I don’t hear Robinson mention at all.

What he’s doing is being a crude demagogue. It’s very easy to scapegoat people. He’s like ‘Oh, the reason why I haven’t got a job is because of a Syrian, Afghan, Eritrean, Somalian, or Southeast Asian migrant.’

Who keeps the NHS going? My mother is 94 and in a care home. I hardly see a White face amongst the staff unless it’s in management because most Britons don’t want to do the job Badenoch abusively calls “bum wipers”.

It shocked me Prime Minister Keir Starmer went on the missing list when Farage made that atrocious speech at his conference attacking migrants and asylum seekers. 

Starmer has since belatedly called Farage “racist”. And Labour conference this week passed a motion calling out Israel’s Gaza genocide, which the government has so far refused to do.

The answer is not to tilt towards Reform and their rotten politics, but as socialists stoutly to oppose their racism, bigotry and Islamophobia, included on the streets defending migrants being attacked in their temporary government accommodation.

If we seriously want to tackle the killer mosquitoes we must attack the swamp from which they came. 

And it starts with education. I learnt a lot during the Stephen Lawrence justice campaign about the alienated White working class, and this is by no means an excuse, an apology for Stephen’s murderers.

Their families were shipped to Eltham, where Stephen was murdered, from the East End to south-east London on the other side of the River Thames.

They felt marginalised, alienated. Nobody cared. Labour didn’t care. 

Stanley Kubrick’s dystopian Clockwork Orange was filmed on the nearby bleak Thamesmead estate, where Black teenager Rolan Adams was murdered a few years before Stephen Lawrence.

So, when you are in a situation where the local Labour council and national government don’t help you start to look for reasons why.

And the easiest thing to do is to scapegoat people around you.

The White thugs who murdered Stephen Lawrence used to eat at the homes of Black friends. But something snapped in their heads. 

They became embittered, bigoted, racist and murderous. And we can’t solve these problems in a four-yearly cycle of elections. It’s a long-term thing.

At home children must be taught respect. Taught Black history in school. Told that a white skin doesn’t make you superior to someone with a darker skin.

As Black people, people of colour, to stay alive, we must be in the leadership of the anti-racist fightback. It’s non-negotiable.

That’s why I’m proud to be co-founder of The Liberation Movement (TLM) based on that principle.

* Marc Wadsworth is a Black British race equality campaigner, journalist, filmmaker and radio producer. He founded the Anti- Racist Alliance in 1991. This is an edited version of a speech he gave to a Croydon National Education Union (NEU) branch meeting. If you’d like a TLM speaker email: info@liberationmovement.org.uk