"Here to stay, Here to fight"

Many people are shocked and frightened by the growth of the far right. In London, over 100,000 marched for Tommy Robinson. It was the largest far-right demonstration in British history, backed by Apartheid Clyde, the richest man on the planet. Anti-racist counter-protests were outnumbered at least by ten to one. But that isn’t the full story.

They want us to feel small. They want us to feel afraid and alone. But we are not alone. We are the majority. We have already brought millions together—for Black Lives, and for Palestine. What we saw in London was not strength. It was a racist backlash to our collective power.

This white supremacist turn isn’t spontaneous. It is funded and supported by powerful interests. Most of the national press are portraying people seeking safety, stuck in hotels, as predators. We must confront their lies with the truth. The proven threats to women are men like Elon Musk, Trump and their supporters. In recent days, a Sikh woman has bravely spoken out about her rape in Oldbury, West Midlands. During the brutal attack, her abusers yelled that she didn’t belong in the country. This racist and sexist violence, reveals the nature of this movement.

The pattern is clear. Last year, almost half of those arrested during race riots in Britain had records of domestic abuse. This year, almost half of race riot suspects in Belfast, also had a history of domestic abuse. The violence they unleash in the streets begins at home. The far-right don’t care about women’s safety, they want to control our bodies. Those trapped in hotels are far less dangerous than the men protesting outside them.

They march for a violently backward past. They march to soothe their fragile white male egos. We say Black Lives Matter because everyone of us deserves safety, dignity and the resources to live. The rich want to divide our communities to exploit us. We want to unite our communities to defeat the rich ruling over us. We organise to build a future rooted in care, justice and solidarity. They want despair, we choose courage. They want division, we choose solidarity. They want hate, we choose love.

Previous generations faced and overcame worse violence and racism. Mosley’s Blackshirts in the 1930s. The White Defence League in the 1950s. The National Front in the 1970s and 1980s. The BNP and English Defence League in the 1990s to the 2010s. Each time, our communities came together. Each time, they resisted. Each time, they overcame and won. This is our heritage, this is our fight. 

Billionaires may fund their hate but we carry the hope of billions. Their weakness is in their ideal narrow image of the white man. Our strength is the fullness of humanity, in all its diversity. To win, we must organise across religious beliefs, racial identities and gender identities. We must build grassroots anti-racist networks in every town and city. We must centre community safety and self-defence.

The right is stirring up racist agitation. We live in organised state abandonment. So we must rely on each other, friends, neighbours, colleagues, to protect Black and migrant communities and to push the far right back.

Black Lives Matter UK is working to support and develop community groups across the country. These groups connect anti-racists in the same areas and support them to build collective self-defence. You can sign up here to get involved. On the 28th October in London, we will hold a public meeting – register here. There, we will learn from key organisers of the Black Liberation Front who beat back the National Front in the 80s, alongside Black Lives Matter UK activists, to discuss actions that move us forward.

All is not lost. Like our parents and grandparents, we must determine the future by echoing their words:

We are here to stay.
We are here to fight.