Britain now has a very strange relationship with protest. Some protests are treated as if they were an existential threat to the state. Others, which are often smaller, angrier, and far more violent, are seemingly indulged as if they had a democratic legitimacy that their behaviour does not deserve.
Why is this?
First, consider the scale. When tens of thousands march in London for equality, climate action, or peace, the political establishment barely notices. Recent protests about Gaza are a clear indication of this. At most, the media dismisses these as “fringe events.” Yet when a few hundred people gather outside an asylum hotel, waving flags and shouting abuse at families who have already been stripped of their rights and dignity, the government and opposition alike rush to recognise their “concerns.” The double standard could not be clearer.
Second, look at the response. Councils and ministers line up to argue that asylum centres should close because their existence supposedly provokes unrest. The logic is perverse. They are blaming the vulnerable, rather than those who are attacking them. Instead of condemning racist thuggery, politicians find ways to accommodate it, hoping that if they grant its demands, the mob will disperse. This is appeasement, pure and simple, and there is no evidence it has ever worked.
Third, there is the wider political dynamic. Both government and opposition are now very obviously gripped by fear of the far right. The Tories dress this fear up as “stopping the boats.” Labour echoes the same sentiment in lines about detention and deportation, desperate not to lose ground to Reform. In doing so, both parties normalise the language and demands of those who would turn fear and violence into a political programme.
The consequences are dangerous.
Democracy is undermined when peaceful protest is ignored while violent intimidation is rewarded.
The far right is emboldened because it can see that aggression works. Every time a council or minister capitulates, the lesson is reinforced.
Social division is deepened, because refugees are scapegoated for the failures of government rather than recognised as people seeking safety and dignity.
Trust in democratic institutions withers, because the message is clear: power listens only to those who threaten disruption, not those who demand justice.
So what is to be done?
We have to insist that the right to protest applies equally, regardless of cause. That means non-violent protest must be defended and respected, not criminalised. It also means that violence and intimidation can never be rewarded with policy concessions. This is fundamental. Confidence in government and our democracy will evaporate unless this happens.
We also have to call out the political cowardice of so many of our supposed leaders for what it is. If our political parties are too afraid to confront the far right, then they are abandoning their responsibility to protect this country and our democracy, which is one of their most fundamental and primary duties. Appeasement never works. It simply invites escalation.
And we need to remember something deeper. Protests are always about more than the numbers who turn up. As political economy makes clear, they are about the signal they send to power. If the state continues to listen to mobs while dismissing movements for justice, then the responsibility falls back on us, in whatever way we can, to keep raising our voices until they cannot be ignored. That way, the balance of power is maintained.
The choice is pretty stark. We either accept a politics that is now shaped by intimidation and fear, or we commit to a politics shaped by justice and solidarity. I would suggest that there is only one democratic choice, and that our politicians are enabling the wrong one.
In that case, what can we do? I suggest the following. We can:
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Refuse the false narrative that blames refugees for the violence directed against them.
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Support organisations working to defend the rights of migrants and asylum seekers.
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Write to MPs and councillors demanding that racist violence be condemned, not rewarded.
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Join and support peaceful protests that show solidarity, equality, and care for others if we are able to do so.
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Keep insisting that democracy cannot survive if intimidation sets the agenda.
No doubt others will have their ideas. This post is one where I strongly suspect the comments that will be posted below it will be of real value. Please share your ideas.
Taking further action
If you want to write a letter to your MP on the issues raised in this blog post, there is a ChatGPT prompt to assist you in doing so, with full instructions, here.
One word of warning, though: please ensure you have the correct MP. ChatGPT can get it wrong.
Comments
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Might those who seek power and those who aim to retain power for groups rather than for equitable, effetive and transparent power resulting in the general well-being of all in or connected witj our society, a.k.a deep democracy, be using/trying to use managed ochlocracy?
The rise of the hard right in Britain and elsewhere goes hand in hand as always with the rise of real fascism. This is not new. I knew it and opposed it on the streets of London in the late 1970s and throughout the 1980s, and it was much harder then – which doesn’t mean it can’t become so again. The chances are that it might – for Thatcher in the 80s, bringing in ideas about personal greed and “the enemy within” read Farage in the early 2030s – maybe. The fascists ride on this, it normalises their opinions, their xenophobia, their racism and extreme patriotism and nationalism, which excludes almost everyone not white, Christian, long-term British. Certainly followers of other ideologies like socialism (including trades unionism). For anyone thinking we are not there yet: at a hard right rally in Peterhead just a few weeks ago one speaker demanded outright that Britain be kept white; he was applauded – not by all his audience but no-one heckled. Bar us, opposing him from across the square. And this is the point, outside asylum seeker hotels the hard right are turning up regularly in growing numbers. We are opposing them as best we can with the police in between – and I’ll be honest, just as in the early 1980s, sometimes I was grateful for that, otherwise I would have been creamed. They are rallying each week up here, and in many places in Britain, and are again this weekend in Aberdeen, not at a hotel. We will again be there to oppose them – peacefully (and usually with food and music!) but our numbers need help. Everyone who is appalled by this hard right shift towards fascism, and all it entails, needs to be physically getting to these places to oppose them. The fascist aim is always “control the street”, meaning march around showing the general population their ideas are natural and normal. No matter how few, others must be there to oppose them, with speeches, leaflets, whatever. I’m in my 70s now, so if I can be there I surely don’t know why others aren’t. If you can’t, give money (SUTR for example). And please everyone remember – Robinson is planning a huge march of the hard right and fascists in central London on Saturday 13th of this month. We are planning opposition. Your choice.
We have just donated to SUTR, and shared it, had never heard of them before, thank you. And thank you for going to the demo, take a bit of my heart with you please.
I am still reeling from my haircut yesterday, here in Galicia, by my very talented and kind and pleasant hairdresser, an English woman who lives not far from me. At one point, mid cut, she was saying she supported Farage, then, and I nearly had a conniption, for she started praising “Tommy”. I know she voted for Brexit, because of “them immigrants”, and try as I could I was unable to get her to see that She is an immigrant here in Spain, like me. (And she would vehemently deny racism). Cognitive dissonance writ large. Try as I might, and I read so much trying to understand this, I am at a loss. It is scary too.
You might need a new hairdresser.
Immigration can be a treasure, the role of immigrants and their skills is difficult to replace, but I think the right is utilizing it for a win-win.
Import cheap labour damping labour costs and diluting the working class and then whoever opposes that, it is difficult not to be labelled as far right.
If you have to use only simplistic thinking (and political dialogue has downgraded to simplifications), you either want immigration led damping of salaries or you are a racist, so the left it is difficult to oppose it unless the system is fundamentally changed (good luck with that).
On the other hand eastern european countries are happy with their anti-immigration policies(?)
I have posted this, but I am not at all sure I follow the logic.
How is this for an over-simplification of problems facing the *die-hard left, progressive liberals and democratic-socialists:
If the progressive left encourages immigration, they are labeled as promoting low wage labor, displacing low-wage citizens in employment and increasing housing shortages by the voters they supposedly want to help (lower-middle class in the USA).
If the progressive left attempts to manage immigration, they are labeled as Fascist by the by the voters who actively support them with donations (leading liberals and educated upper-middle class in the USA)
*FootNote: The die-hard left, progressive liberals and democratic-socialists are three separate groups of voters in the USA though they tend to vote for the same candidates.
Cannot speak about the UK but in the USA I over simplify the problem as this:
The far Left and die hard progressives do NOT get verbally and physically violent.
The far Right (MAGAts) do get verbally violent by which they try to promote and/or generate physical violence to people and property.
Controlling protest to protect citizens is currently a legal quandary.
Having friends in both local law enforcement and local government, I can tell you that they have related to me that they have no idea how to control protest, and especially counter-protest, which have gotten out of control without ending up in court.
Thanks.
Worrying, to say the least.
“Every time a council or minister capitulates, the lesson is reinforced”: in reponse to anti-immigration agitation and the loss of the Smethwick parliamentary seat in the General Election, Harold Wilson published his white paper ‘Immigration from the Commonwealth’ (1965) gazumping the committee of enquiry he had set up. The white paper settled a then current argument by suggesting that immigrants were the cause of social problems, not the victims of them. This conceded any ground on which future anti-immigrant and racist demands could be resisted. Next came the 1968 Commonwealth Immigants Act, then the 1969 Immigration Appeals Act – which made appeals extremely difficult for dependents overseas. Callaghan’s 1969 measure, according to his diary, was because working class people were racist and needed to be appeased. How much racism and right wing agitation did any of this stop? There was only a very brief pause before they came back for more, including the demand that white people of UK or Commonwealth descent should be excluded from immigration restrictions. Then came the Immigration Act1971, drafted by the Labour government but taken up and implemented by the Tories. From then on history repeated itself, in a cyclical manner (punctuated with nasty tweaks to the administration of immigration control).
As a minor footnote to the history; at a meeting where the Immigration Minister spoke, around 1968, I said that we were on a downwards slippery slope. This would eventually lead to the vilification of refugees and demands for their exclusion. The Minister was most indigant and said my suggestion was outrageous and irresponsible, no such thing could ever happen in Britain.
Thank you.
Have you written this history more comprehensively anywhere?
Only in bits and pieces, over the years. In 1975 I published an account of the early years, ‘Slamming the Door: The Administration of Immigration Control’ (with Tina Wallace) publ. Martin Robertson.
I suppose I ought to document it in much more detail, but of course the devil _is_ in the detail of administration, not in the legislation and parliamentary debates. As always, late in life, one realises one should have kept a diary.
That is, quite literlly, life. I don’t, and this blog is no record of what I actually do each day.