To take on racism in the street, we first need to confront it in the state

The start of last month saw decades of reactionary politics explode into horrifying riots that many dubbed “pogroms”. But just a week later, thousands of people turned out across the UK to defend the rights, and lives, of migrants. Since then, the far right has failed to turn up to many of their planned protests. But instead of taking a more positive line on immigration, the government seems to be trying to placate the racists by ramping up its own anti-migrant violence.

Despite warning counter-protesters to stand down, newspapers and politicians greeted the anti-racist mobilisations warmly. This included the Daily Mail, infamous for once endorsing the Blackshirts and for their vitriolic anti-migrant headlines, and the chief of the Metropolitan Police.

• I’ve been a refugee twice – seeing the response to racism makes me proud to be British
• Would banning the EDL actually work? Here’s how to tackle the racism and far-right ideology behind UK riots

This apparent approval hasn’t stopped brown antifascists from being caught up in “tough sentence” policing of the riots. In Leeds, Samir Ali and Adnan Ghafoor were jailed for 20 and 18 months respectively after getting ambushed by violent racists at a protest after police funnelled the two groups together. In Birmingham’s Bordesley Green area, Shehraz Sarwar – a local character who carries a religious staff – was arrested for possessing a deadly weapon during a community mobilisation against an attack planned by out-of-town thugs. He is currently remanded to custody and awaiting trial without legal representation.

Keir Starmer has discussed extending police powers and facial recognition to quell future unrest. This will likely result in further over-policing of marginalised groups and crackdowns on legitimate protest. During the week of the riots, 22 climate protesters were preemptively arrested at Drax Power Station for public order offences. Such broad-brush policing wasn’t used to nip far-right demonstrations in the bud.

Some have debated using the term “pogrom”, which normally denotes a state-sanctioned riot targeting ethnic minorities. Clearly Starmer didn’t call for the riots. Still, it’s hard to ignore that they occurred in the context of politicians pushing increasingly outlandish and inhumane immigration policies. This is why counter-protesters dubbed them “Farage riots” and demonstrated outside Reform UK’s headquarters.

The problem runs deeper than Farage. Although Labour quickly scrapped the Rwanda plan on grounds of cost, they’ve kept the Tories’ messaging of “stop the boats”, the rallying cry of the rioters. In his interview with Laura Kuenssberg on Sunday (8 September), Starmer said he was “worried” by the rising far right and that there “was racism there” in the “totally illegitimate” riots, but he still highlighted what he saw as a need to address immigration. On 21 August, home secretary Yvette Cooper announced the biggest expansion of the hostile environment since Theresa May was PM. Over 14,500 irregular migrants will be deported. The controversial Haslar and Campsfield House detention centres will be reopened despite government minister Annaliese Dodds having celebrated Campsfield’s closure in 2018. When at least 12 migrants drowned trying to cross the Channel on 4 September, Cooper said this showed the need to “strengthen border security”.

In short, while the riots weren’t state-sanctioned, they intimately connect with forms of racism and racist politics which are. And despite claiming the rioters won’t change policy, they clearly haven’t given the government pause for thought, either.

There are parallels with the US in the ‘90s, when right-wing domestic terrorism increased sharply despite ultraconservatives having already decisively shifted the national agenda rightwards under Nixon and Reagan. As scholars like David Plotke, Nicole Hemmer and John Ganz observe, there was still a gulf between what was promised and what was delivered. For example, Republican platforms hadn’t simply promised restrictions on abortion and curbs on state spending: they’d promised to end abortion and smash the welfare state. These unfulfilled promises fed a betrayal narrative on the far right, who increasingly resorted to violent, extralegal measures. We’re now seeing a similar dynamic in the UK.

Thanks to an accommodating political centre, the far right has set the agenda on immigration. But no matter how much racist violence the state inflicts through raids, deportations and border patrols, the far right will feel that the government hasn’t gone far enough and respond to this “betrayal” by taking matters into its own hands. This is why being “tough on immigration” will never placate the far right. GB News and shadow home secretary James Cleverly immediately expressed doubt in Cooper’s plans.

On top of that, a law-and-order crackdown frames the far right as simple hoodlums rather than a political force. This is how establishment voices managed to rehabilitate themselves by switching tracks to praise the anti-racist demonstrations. Depoliticising the far right impedes understanding how their ideas become attractive and, by extension, how to undermine them.

This is why we need to confront both street and state racism with a politics of solidarity at the workplace, community, and national levels: one that squarely addresses the material conditions that generated the riots and puts forward a bold, positive, and class-orientated alternative.

Dan Davison and Sacha Marten are scholars and activists in the Labour Campaign for Free Movement. They are currently researching the contemporary far right. 

Do you have a story to tell or opinions to share about this? Get in touch and tell us more. Big Issue exists to give homeless and marginalised people the opportunity to earn an income. To support our work buy a copy of the magazine or get the app from the App Store or Google Play.