The Daleks are a fictitious race of intergalactic robots. In Bridgewater Place in Leeds there’s a giant building overlooking Holbeck Moor called ‘The Dalek’. The Daleks are a highly xenophobic neo-fascist regime who seek to destroy all non-Dalek life in the universe. I don’t think I’m struggling for metaphors here… Fascists sadly aren’t fictitious. In 1936 Leeds anti fascists assembled here to kick Oswald Moseley and his British Union of Fascists out of Leeds. A week later the more well-known Battle of Cable Street happened when Moseley tried to march through the predominantly Jewish communities of that part of East London. They were met by anti-fascists who outnumbered them and the tradition of standing up against fascism became embedded in our culture. Socialists, radicals, liberals, trades unionists, migrant communities, the working class all knew and know that unity is strength, and fascism is division and destruction. In many cases ‘extermination’.

Fascists have always done this. They’re not respectable in their own right-everyone who saw the death camps, the gas chambers, the repression, the wars, the executions, all know what fascism means. So, they try to latch on to other ideas and groups as a cover.

No Nazis!

In 1986 Fascists tried to hijack a ‘Friends of British Ulster’ march through Bridgwater. This was a protest against Tom King, Bridgwater MP of the day and then Northern Ireland secretary who was trying, modestly, to equalise the power balance in Northern Ireland at the time and annoying both communities. Whether you support Ulster being British or Ulster being Irish, either view is legitimate. But because the fascists of the day tried to hijack the march, we organised a counter protest. The Police provided a security cordon of 4. When the first ‘Fascist’ was arrested (he later stood for the National Front in a parliamentary by election) the police realised they’d under calculated and couldn’t arrest anyone else. The march turned into a bit of a scrap.

Last weekend I joined a protest in Taunton organised by Somerset anti Racists which included trades unionists and community groups. The ‘far right’ group was targeting ‘illegal migrants’ and ‘2 tier policing’. But they said they weren’t far right. It didn’t help when leader of Britain First, an actual far right group, Paul Golding was advertised to speak. He didn’t turn up. And it got worse when one of their local members was filmed clearly saying the problem was the increase in the number of black children in the schools.

Oh Yes There are!

To define far right you go back to its origins. During the French Revolution the groups that wanted change, equality, liberalisation and power to the lower classes sat on the left and the groups that were happy with the status quo and supported the traditional system, the landed gentry and the aristocracy sat on the right. The divisions have persisted so today if you put the LibDems in the centre, Labour and the Greens are to the left and the Tories are to the right. Communists and anarchists, you can call far left and anything from Reform through Restore to the actual neo fascist groups on the murky fringe of politics are clearly far right. They’ll never come to power unless they convince the majority that they are credible…and ‘not fascist’.

How do we challenge and expose them? Holbeck Moor, Cable Street, well, unity and solidarity plus facts and information are always a useful starting point.

Ohhh No there’s not!

However….when I turned up at the demo the first thing I saw was LibDem Cllr Richard Wilkins with a bunch of flowers. ‘Ha ha!’ I said, ‘you should try giving them to the fascists!”. ‘Yes (he said) , that’s what I’m going to do’. He wasn’t joking. I had this vision of the Blackshirts marching towards the barricades in Cable Street armed with clubs and batons to be met by a line of workers suddenly putting down their fists and producing daffodils and tulips and everyone suddenly loving each other.

In November 1989 Czech students calling for the downfall of communism marched up Narodni street in Prague and when they met the line of riot police, they sat down lit candles and gave them flowers. The police battered them.

Wilkins gave the leader of the march a hug. They did engage. It was filmed. I wondered ‘if only someone had thought of this at the siege of Stalingrad…’

OHHHHHH Yes there are!

Meanwhile this time the Police had over 100 on the streets and they kept the two sides apart. I counted 69 in the far right/’we’re not far-right’ group and 250 in the ‘you are far right/no far right in Taunton!’ group.

Britain has had a 10-year spiral of large numbers of people moving further to the right. Largely because they haven’t sussed where the direction of travel will lead them. But the evidence is in the groupings that these parties made when lined up alongside their European sister parties. UKIP, and the Brexit Party all lined up in the EU with the far-right groups that were and are on the rise in other European states. Both were rebranded in whatever current image Nigel Farage has. I’d say it’s far right. They’re certainly not as soft and cuddly as….er…the Conservative Party. That said they did have quite a lot of Tories join them in the last year…..the Juries out.