Members and activists from across the labour movement will have been shocked by the violent responses to the terrible murders in Southport this month, including street violence in many communities where our members live and work.

The response to these far-right mobs in collectively organising cleaning and rebuilding work, and importantly solidarity protests to confront future violent mobilisations has been inspiring, but their are lessons to learnt too.

The labour and trade union movement has a unique role to play in combatting the far-right both ideologically and physically.

Ideologically, unions including PCS by their nature are both rooted in communities and workplaces and are are expressions of the unity – working-class unity – that the ideologues of the far-right like Tommy Robinson wish to divide on arbitrary lines. Lines of race, religion, gender etc.

Equally, trade unions are able to express and give voice to the interests and concerns of disillusioned workers who have faced the biggest collapse in living standards in centuries, having to cope with a low-pay economy where secure jobs and prospects are rapidly decreasing. Where the NHS is crumbling and where the cost of housing is skyrocketing and the supply of good quality housing is plummeting.

These are the conditions in which fascist and racist ideologies grow. A political alternative is required to combat them.

Unions need to be unwavering in their solidarity with those being persecuted. These attacks initially were against refugees and immigrants. Not an inch to this rhetoric: PCS is for freedom of movement. Refugees are welcome here and are not the cause of poverty, unemployment and austerity.

The mobs then went after our Muslim brothers and sisters. We will defend each and every mosque and home from these thugs. Muslims are not to blame either.

Many of the mob are also engaged in the ‘culture war’ against trans people. Again, no ground should be given to this pernicious attempt to divide working-class communities: Trans women are women, trans men are men, non-binary folks are non-binary.

Physically, the far right have been driven off the streets by mobilisations of much larger counter-protests. Trade Unions are again in the unique position as the largest membership bodies in the country, rooted in local workplaces and communities to mobilise at pace counter-protests to defend homes, workplaces and places of worship from far-right thugs.

Unfortunately, recent events have demonstrated that the trade unions in this country are not performing these roles as well as they need to. This week has shown we can’t simply farm-out our antiracist responsibilities to outside organisations, some of which don’t have the desire or will to articulate the social and economic demands which are required.

Many PCS activists and members, including IL supporters, have been active in mobilising our members over the last weeks, but PCS and the wider movement needs to act fast to ensure it’s organised for the future. On that basis IL supporters proposed the following motion to the unions emergency NEC on the 12th of August which was passed.

We hope it is enacted and in the meantime we hope branches are busy building their own antiracist/antifascist strategies.

NEC ARAF Motion August 2024

The NEC is gravely concerned about the mass mobilisations of the far right seen across the UK since Saturday 27th July.

Whilst most of these riots are being ostensibly presented as a response to misinformation surrounding the horrific murders of three little girls in Southport on Monday 29th July, it’s key to understand the far right have been on the ascent for years across the UK. Audiences for their racist, anti-immigration rhetoric have undoubtedly grown due economic crisis, crumbling public services and the collapse of living standards following austerity, Brexit and the economic impact of the covid pandemic.

However, we should also not fool ourselves into believing that this problem is purely one of economic disenfranchisement. Fascism and racism are ideologies which a growing cross section of the country are being (at least in part) convinced of. These ideas are also being further fuelled by the normalisation of anti-immigrant sentiment in the media and from prominent political figures.

Successive governments unwilling to provide positive alternatives to the brutality of Neoliberal economic policy have instead focused on attacking immigrants and refugees. This has all led to a situation where a rabidly right-wing, anti-immigration party is able to take the 3rd largest percentage of the vote share in the UK, Tommy Robinson is able to mobilise thousands on the streets of London and cities across England have seen over a week of racist rioting, including the attempted burnings of inhabited refugee hotels and mosques.

Keir Starmer’s ‘law and order/tough on crime’ response to these racist riots is wholly incapable of actually dealing with the spread of fascist ideas in our communities. The left cannot rely on the Labour Party or the Police to change the fact that we are losing an ideological battle.

There is only one force in British society that is capable of reversing this process and that is the organised labour movement.

We are of course heartened by the scenes from Wednesday 7th of August when thousands of anti-racist protestors took to cities and towns across the UK in order to defend their communities from the treat of the far-right. PCS members, including members of this NEC, played a significant role in mobilising for those protests.

We should feel proud because they were important mobilisations and indicative of what can happen when the labour movement, wider left and working-class unify around anti-racist and anti-fascist ideas. However, we can not afford to be complacent about the scale of the threat we face. We won one battle; the war is ongoing.  

Therefore, the NEC Instructs the General Secretary:

• To raise a motion at the TUC GC that calls for all affiliate unions to mobilise against all far-right mobilisations; a TUC-led national Saturday demonstration in London, with full mobilisation of all TUC unions; and a national week of action across the UK trade union movement.

• All these actions and mobilisations should all be based on raising positive workers’ demands such as (but not limited to) mass social housing programmes, a functioning and well-funded public healthcare system, fair wages, well-funded community services, an end to child poverty and the lifting of the two-child benefit cap etc. As well as the defence of migrants and other minorities under threat by the far-right.

The NEC further agrees:

• To work with all relevant bodies within the union to ensure PCS plays a leading role in building the broadest possible coalition of groups capable of mobilising against the far right whilst also ensuring our ARAF work is always under the democratic control of the union and not subsumed into any other organisation’s activities.

• To work with the Comms and Campaigns committee to fully implement the aims of the anti-racist and anti-fascist strategy 2022

• That any week of action called involve a series of workplace activities to explain what racism is, how workers can unite against it, and how workers can unite to defeat the underlying drivers of rage in our society – e.g., collapsing community and public services, falling living standards, rising prices especially of housing, loss of quality jobs, domination by hyper-exploitative “gig” work, and so on.

• To use that week of action to reassert our union’s position that attacks on the rights and freedoms of migrants do not protect British workers – they instead undermine all of us by making migrant workers more precarious and so vulnerable to hyper-exploitation, driving down wages and conditions for everyone.

• To use that week of action to reassert our union’s position that dividing the working-class with suspicion and hostility only makes it harder to unionise and push back against exploitation and low-wages – migrant workers have always been central to vibrant and successful trade union campaigns

• To work with all relevant bodies of the union to consider what materials would support such a week of action. It must be one of the union’s top priorities to win the support of workers in the civil service, devolved and not, and in our private sector areas, to an anti-racist, anti-xenophobic, anti-austerity agenda, and to involve the greatest possible number of members in that conversation.

• To work with all relevant bodies to create an educative comms strategy that is capable of dominating more media space and presenting our positive vision for the working class to the wider public beyond our membership

• To work with all relevant bodies of the union to consider how to link our anti-fascism work to the union’s national campaign

• To work with all relevant bodies of the union to consider how to apply pressure to the 

government to urgently meet our needs for housing, healthcare, benefits and fair wages

• To explore the possibility of providing basic self-defence training for members

• To ensure all mobilisation that our members are asked to attend are properly stewarded, providing our own stewards if necessary    

• To empower and work with branches to create their own ARAF strategy capable of creating the ability to mobilise large parts of their membership and communities in support of ARAF demonstrations and community defence