UK

Southall revisited

 

Labour Hub Editors

Frank Hansen joins a protest against racism in a place where the fascists were driven off the streets over 40 years ago.

AUGUST 16, 2024

On Saturday August 10th,  I took a trip to Southall Town Hall (now the ‘former Town Hall’) to a attend a Stand Up to Racism rally to show solidarity with those under threat from the extreme right.  There is not much of a direct threat from the fascists in Southall as they were literally kicked out of there in 1981 and haven’t really been back since – although Reform UK did have the gall to stand  in the recent election, where they got 5.5% of the vote compared with 49% for Labour and 9.1% for George Galloway’s Workers Party.

I took a bus to Southall – I then planned to go via the Elizabeth Line to the rally outside Farage’s office in Victoria. As soon as I got off, the politics began. Acton Vale was choc-a-bloc with over 100 cyclists on a Free Palestine  bike ride – they had started in Mile End and were working their way around London. They received a warm reception from local people on their way to Ealing Broadway. Here are some photos I took of the day.

Going to Southall Town Hall was both symbolic and nostalgic.  As some may remember, in April 1979 the National Front held an election rally in Southall. It was met by a mass protest which culminated in the death of Blair Peach, who was killed by the police – there is a plaque commemorating him nearby. 

In those days, the police’s main role seemed to be to defend the NF and their ‘freedom of speech’ (that is, provocation) and many police were sympathetic to them. In the 1970s, a friend of mine used to repair TVs in Southall and recalls that when he visited a police flat they tried to recruit him to the NF!

With Thatcherism on the rise,  the extreme right thought they could do what they wanted in Southall and the local police provided no real protection for the community. There really was “two-tier policing” in those days! 

So the local community continued to organise to defend itself. In 1981, racist skinheads turned up, smashing shops on their way to an ‘Oi gig’ at the Hamborough Tavern. The local community rose up and managed to stop the fascist rampage in its tracks.

Ironically the police are now being attacked by the extreme right who are being arrested for violent racist attacks – including on the police itself, as the racists chant  “You’re not English anymore.” The police can thank the likes of Farage and former Home Secretary Braverman for empowering and unleashing racism and fascism against them.

The Town Hall rally was a fairly modest event – although welcomed by locals. Many of the people there had participated in the events of the 70s and 80s – including Southall Black Sisters and Southall Youth Movement members plus John McDonnell MP from nearby Hayes. 

Walking to Southall station, it was clear that a massive private sector development was underway with many tower blocks of flats and offices going up – no doubt spurred on by the station being a hub on the Elizabeth Line with fast links to London and Heathrow and the local council’s keen willingness to do deals with landlords and property developers.

The anti-Farage rally was much larger and more lively, 4,000 to 5,000. As for Farage’s HQ – 82 Victoria Street – you wouldn’t even notice that it was there.  I asked John McDonnell how he was going to tackle Farage inside Parliament – we agreed that just ranting at him wouldn’t work. As a mini-Trump he thrives on publicity, attention and portraying himself as a victim standing up for the ‘oppressed’ – perhaps ridicule and a few one liners from Mick Lynch would be the best approach.

All in all, it was a hopeful end to an appalling week of racist violence – where across the country the number of anti-racist rallies vastly outnumbered the fascists. 

Yet this is certainly a new era, where we have to learn lessons from the past in building a mass anti-fascist and anti-racist movement, while recognising that things have changed.  

The impact of neoliberal economics and climate change is fuelling the rise of right wing populism and fascism across the globe. In the UK, the impact of Thatcherism – deindustrialisation, a massive fall in trade union membership, inequality, deprivation and the run-down of public services – has left a fertile soil for right wing populism, particularly in ‘Red Wall’ areas. Even in Wales, where the Tories were wiped out, the Labour vote fell to 37%.  Now that Reform has a platform in Parliament, their politics need to be challenged across the country and at grassroots level. 

There is also the new challenge of what the US left call ‘surveillance capitalism’  – the rise of the Big Tech robber barons and of social media monopolies which provide ‘free services’ in order to rip off and monetise people’s behavioural information. Their business model is to stimulate as much ‘participation’ as possible – the more emotional and controversial the posts the better in terms of responses, behavioural information and profits.

While Musk is using an openly right wing agenda, using lies and disinformation, it is the business model itself that is the root of the problem. Ironically it was President Obama who accepted that these companies could be legally defined as ‘platforms’ rather than publishers which allowed them to blossom in a toxic way. They are now virtually unaccountable and untouchable – a place that politicians fear to tread in terms of regulation. 

While the left obviously needs to use social media to organise, disseminate ideas and combat the right, it also needs to develop a more sophisticated critique – as in the US -and a programme for challenging and regulating these companies so that they are, at least, more accountable and less toxic. 

Above all, we need to demand that this new Labour Government takes real measures to tackle the economic and social issues that enable right wing populism to grow. Starmer may be tough on racist crime but he’s shown little inclination to be tough on some of its wider causes. Suspending Labour MPs for demanding an end to the two-child benefit cap is hardly a good start! The recent riots should serve as a wake-up call to the entire labour movement, including the Parliamentary labour Party, that ‘things can only get better’ when a more radical economic and social programme is introduced.  

  Frank Hansen is a former Councillor in the London Borough of Brent.

All pictures c/o author.