By​ Hsiao-Hung Pai

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In this issue

Far-Right groups target Muslims and refugees
EDL, its evolvement, and the mainstreaming of Islamophobia
Successive governments mainstream the Far-Right
The media and its role in normalising far-right ideologies
Islamophobia and anti-migrant racism under Tory rule
Fighting back           

Spotlight, Issue 03, Vol 4, August 2024, The Cordoba Foundation

Far-Right groups target Muslims and refugees

When the horrific stabbing and murder of children occurred in Southport on the 29th of July, online speculation and fake news went wild straight away. My instinct told me that this terrible killing that happened in an innocent community would instantly be exploited by racists and neo-fascists in this country, in one way or another. Before the suspect’s name was revealed by the authorities, disinformation and online mobilisation put thousands of white men in the streets. Within days, the rioting has taken place in Liverpool, Hull, Leeds, Manchester, Blackpool, Middlesborough, Nottingham, Bolton, Sunderland, Rotherham, Tamworth, Belfast, Plymouth, Darlington. The list goes on; the riots show no sign of abating.

The rioters targeted local mosques, such as in Southport where white thugs threw bricks at a mosque last Tuesday night. Islamophobic abuse and violence has become so frequent that members of the Muslim communities across the country are fearing for their safety. In Manchester, three Muslim girls were spat at and were subjected to attempts to rip their hijabs off. And six Muslim graves were splashed with grey paint at Burnley Cemetery.

The rioters were targeting the most vulnerable in society: asylum seekers. Hundreds of these white men descended on a house that has been used to house asylum seeker in Rotherham, breaking windows and setting bins on fire. It was heartbreaking to see the footage of the scene. These are people who have risked everything to come to seek refuge and to improve their lives.

Meanwhile, politicians were “adding petrol to the fire.” Nigel Farage, Reform UK MP sympathised with the far-right rioters, while Labour MP Sarah Edwards made comments in parliament about “doing something about asylum seekers’ hotel accommodation in Tamworth.” Soon enough, the rioters descended upon a hotel that was housing asylum seekers in Tamworth and set fire to a doorway and smashed the hotel windows, with onlookers clapping and cheering, clinking their beer bottles. “Get out of England” was graffitied on the side of the hotel building.

These angry white men created street scenes in towns and cities across Britain that were chillingly alarming the public that the “EDL is back,” that racial violence is back on the streets of Britain.

Several Black and Asian individuals were also attacked in the past week: a Black man was attacked by white gang in a park in Piccadilly Gardens, Manchester, knocked to the ground and kicked, before police arrived. One of the white attackers was wrapped in an England flag. Another Black man was attacked in the street in Bristol. It was also reported that Asian taxi drivers in Hull were racially targeted, some unable to work due to the abuse. 

Healthcare workers were also among those targeted in racist attacks over the weekend. On Friday evening, two NHS nurses were on their way to work, via a taxi through Sunderland. White rioters in the city centre attacked the taxi containing the nurses, who were Filipino, with rocks.

Far-right groups were planning to target immigration advice centres. The Law Society and Immigration Law Practitioners’ Association (ILPA) said their members were at risk, after a list of 60 immigration centres across the country was circulated on Telegram with a message suggesting they should be the target of riots on Wednesday (7th of August).

These angry white men created street scenes in towns and cities across Britain that were chillingly alarming the public that the “EDL is back,” that racial violence is back on the streets of Britain.

EDL, its evolvement, and the mainstreaming of Islamophobia

Although the EDL (English Defence League) no longer existed in its original structure, the grouping of those who joined and sympathised with it remains. The EDL itself was formed in 2009, in response to a protest of a group of local Muslim men in Luton against the Iraq War. The protest occurred during the homecoming parade of the 2nd Battalion, Royal Anglian Regiment. The Muslim protestors held up placards saying, ‘Anglian soldiers: Butchers of Basra’ and ‘Anglian soldiers: Cowards, killers, extremists’ (referring to the killings of civilians), as the soldiers passed through. Those angered by this protest went on to form United People of Luton (UPL), which organised a 500-strong anti-Muslim demonstration in Luton town.

EDL, from the start, has always been a loosely-organised grouping, led and administered by a few at the top, who preach racist ideologies.

In 2009, most British media, tabloids and broadsheets alike, painted Luton’s anti-war protest as an Islamic protest and an Islamic issue – nothing to do with Britain’s foreign policy and the catastrophic consequences of the Iraq war, but according to the media, all to do with religion. Luton’s anti-war protest was de-legitimised as a case of clashes between belief systems, i.e., civilisational clashes.[1] The anti-war side was depicted as people who don’t want to “integrate.” When I visited Farley Hill Estate where many sympathisers and supporters of the EDL came from, this was their description, too. The majority of the media representation of the issue echoed their views.

At this point in Luton, seeds were being planted for the spread of anger directed at Britain’s Muslim population as the imaginary enemy. It was in this context that United People of Luton (UPL) and Casuals Unite were born, made up of primarily young men from the Farley Hill Estate and other places in Luton. They were brought up in an enclosed, army-loyal, gang culture on the estates and see allegiance to “their own” as important. Their strong local identities then evolved with the ultra-nationalist thoughts and sentiments typical of neo-fascist groupings, to become the mainstream ideologies of the EDL. The leadership of the EDL intentionally emphasised the composition of the grouping as “English working-class.” Their allegiance lies with their ethnicity rather than class. As EDL supporter Billy Blake said in his book, EDL: Coming Down the Road, “the English working-class is a distinct ethnic group, with its own traditions and culture.”

EDL, from the start, has always been a loosely-organised grouping, led and administered by a few at the top, who preach racist ideologies, via online disinformation. The street movement came into being with the muscle of a bitterly frustrated, misinformed, misled and bigoted white mass. The ideologists and strategists of the group were able to tap into the marginalisation and alienation of large numbers of its working-class members. It is the “English way of life” which they are led to imagine is under threat and which they are aiming to defend.

In its heyday 2009-2011, the leadership was able to organise marches in towns and cities across the country via social media mobilisation. Even when Tommy Robinson left the group in October 2013 and went to work with the Quilliam Foundation, the previously government-funded counter-extremism think tank, the EDL model continued and lasted.

Now, faced with rioting in the streets, government and society responded to the violence with shock and disbelief. However, the surge of far-right activities can be well predicted – in Britain as well as across Europe.

This June, some were shocked when seeing the European parliamentary election results when anti-immigration far-right parties made significant gains. In Italy, France and Germany, for instance, what was fringe in the past are now mainstream. Far-right parties no longer needed to talk about leaving the EU. EU’s centrist parties have adopted far-right narratives on migration at both national and EU levels, and have hoped to retain voters by doing so. The centre-right has successfully integrated the far-right into the club. Neo-fascist parties like Giorgia Meloni’s Brothers of Italy (Fratelli d’Italia, FDL) want to change the EU from within. Parties like them now work perfectly within the bloc and have become more and more able to set the bloc’s agenda, as historian David Broder said.

Becoming mainstreamed was always Robinson’s wish. He reiterated it during our meetings (in which I interviewed him for the purpose of researching the book) during 2013-2016. At one point he said: “Because it’s too important to ignore. What we want to do is to give a credible platform… If you continue to live out at the fringes and continue to alienate people, then you’re going to create big problems… These issues have to be spoken about in a wider arena and a wider platform, and that arena is not on the side streets of Tower Hamlets or Luton. It’s not. It needs to be spoken about on a mainstream level. I want to reach a wider audience.”

Successive governments mainstream the Far-Right

In Britain, successive governments, state institutions and centre-right political forces have been mainstreaming the far-right for decades. It can be dated back to the years following 9/11, 2001. In the context of War on Terror, the Prevent strategy was introduced in 2003 as part of the British state’s counter-terrorism approach (CONTEST). In 2015, Prevent became a legal duty for public sector institutions in which surveillance was an essential feature. In the practice of Prevent, extremism and terrorism are intrinsically tied to Muslims and Islam. “Radicalisation” is seen as literally part of a conveyor belt to terrorism. According to Prevent, “terrorism is the symptom; ideology is the root cause.” The terror threat is seen as rooted in the ideology, i.e., the religion. The terror threat is therefore seen as an Islamic threat.

This is Islamophobia, which has at its core the essentialisation of Muslims and Islam as threatening and culturally incompatible with civilisation in the West. As a result, the Prevent strategy practices Islamophobia, institutionalises it and provides justification for it. This, no doubt, has intensified and deepened the insecure position in which Muslims already found themselves in Britain. Indeed, Prevent is the main state actor in disseminating Islamophobia and instilling it in society. It has contributed to the normalisation of Islamophobia, elevating it from the status as discourse of the far-right to become acceptable language and practice of state institutions.

Under this framework, Muslims have been the main target of the Prevent strategy. Between April 2007 and December 2010, 67% of Prevent referrals involved Muslims; and between April 2012 and April 2015 at least 69% of the referrals involved Muslims, and between April 2015 and April 2016 at least 68% of the referrals involved Muslims. This is despite the fact that, according to 2011 census, Muslims make up 4.8% of the population of England and Wales.[2]

The Prevent strategy practices Islamophobia, institutionalises it and provides justification for it.

This situation led to the increase of Islamophobic hate crimes against British Muslims. According to government data in 2023[3], no religious group in Britain has faced more hate crimes linked to faith than Muslims. In the year ending March 2023, more than four in ten of all (recorded) religious hate crime offenses were targeted against Muslims.

Islamophobia always involves the racialisation of Muslims and the “Othering” of Islam. Seeing Muslims as a race has always been at the heart of ideologies of the EDL and other far-right groups. Resisting “Islamisation” is their major perceived task. These have been Robinson’s views throughout.

This was written on the EDL website in May 2013 as the group exploited Lee Rigby’s death:

“We have reached a stage where even simply acknowledging the link between Islam and terrorism makes you an ‘Islamophobe’ or even a racist. No wonder David Cameron refers to ‘Islamist extremism’, as if Islamic extremism can only come in one form and is easily distinguished from more mainstream forms of Islam … The problem is that Islamic extremism has deep roots and cannot simply be brushed aside as if it were ‘nothing to do with Islam’… The Islamic community must accept and acknowledge its share of the blame and its responsibility to confront and defeat extremist attitudes… Our leaders must start addressing the consequences of their policy of unrestricted immigration or there is a very real danger that they will face the ‘backlash’ we all fear…”

This statement is a clear manifestation of how far-right groups attempt to link terrorism with Islam, immigrants and immigration in general. As I came to realise through my conversations with the EDL, this is their consistent theme. Linking terrorism to Islam and immigration revealed their attempt to “Other” and racialise Muslims. In the rioting in the past few days, we often heard them shouting out “Defend our way of life” – against asylum seekers as the Muslim Other (who arrived here on an unsafe boat, and then sent to a overcrowded hostel to wait endlessly for an asylum decision, without the permission to work during their limbo status – but the white racists in the streets aren’t going to know about this or care). You would imagine that Brexit had got what these angry white men wanted? But no, closing doors isn’t enough. Under Boris Johnson, Priti Patel, Suella Braverman, and the like, these white men’s white supremacy has become more vocal and confident, and they’re showing us that they want to kick the last foreign-looking person out. They want to have the last (essentially Muslim) asylum seeker sent back or sent away.

The media and its role in normalising far-right ideologies

The media have always been part of this Othering and racialisation of Muslims. One of the ways in which it works is by treating religion as the centre while making Britain’s foreign policy completely irrelevant. In this way, in the popular media, “Islamic extremism” can even be placed in the same category with far-right extremism and neo-fascism.

When Robinson left the EDL in 2013 and worked with the Quilliam Foundation, most of the media were talking up Robinson and Maajid Nawaz’s common ground: equating radical Islam with neo-fascism. Quilliam was quoted repeatedly when commenting “Tommy investing his commitment in countering extremism of all kinds.” It was a comic-tragic show to watch. It was only two months prior to Robinson’s departure from the EDL that he proudly told me “the EDL has created the biggest street movement Britain has ever seen” and he never expressed any opposition to the neo-fascist presence in that movement, or any wish to leave the group. The media went along with the Tommy-Quilliam show, reinforcing the soundbite that “ideology [i.e. religion] is driving radicalisation.”

Predictably, Robinson’s Quilliam project didn’t last long. It fell apart. In early 2015, he set up Pegida UK, as a British extension of the German anti-Muslim movement Pegida that was set up in October 2014. Pegida UK is a loose aggregate of ultra-nationalists, loyalists and white supremacists. So “Tommy” was back in the streets again. He had hoped that Pegida UK would attract a more “middle-class” demographic. Behind the façade, some EDL men reveal that some of the splinter groups from the EDL have been organising Pegida UK. In particular, Northwest Infidels and Northeast Infidels, consisting of Loyalists and white supremacists. Other splinter groups like the English Volunteer Force and South East Alliance also got involved. “A lot of them are neo-Nazis. They’re fed up with Muslims,” a London-based EDL man told me. “But to be honest, their ideas, a lot of them, are respected by mainstream society.” Pegida UK was launched again in early 2016. By the end of that year, the group had essentially disappeared.

When Robinson left the EDL in 2013 and worked with the Quilliam Foundation, most of the media were talking up Robinson and Maajid Nawaz’s common ground: equating radical Islam with neo-fascism. 

In February 2015, just before Pegida UK was formed, I went to observe an EDL march in Dudley in west Midlands. This was another example of how media narratives amplified the rationale used by the far-right in victimising and abusing Muslim communities. That day, more than 1,200 people turned up, back to the level of the two demos it held there in 2010, and represented its first surge since the stagnation caused by Robinson’s departure. These angry white men came from the midlands and the northeast. What were they here in Dudley for? To oppose the building of a mosque.

They saw this as symbolising the taking-over of their culture and demographic landscape, although the 2011 census finds that of Dudley’s population of over 300,000 (including 80,000 in the town itself), only 4.1% are Muslims. The EDL also talks of “Islamification” again, though by far the most numerous religious group in the borough, at 63.5%, identify as Christians.

But the sensationalist media made a big deal reporting the issue of the building of the mosque. UKIP’s Bill Etheridge, MEP for the area, also opposed it being built. The local Express & Star published a cropped image of the proposed mosque without showing the entire plan of the complex. The plan included an enterprise and education centre, a community centre, a sports centre and a 120-space two-storey car park.

At this point, EDL’s street movement was benefiting from the events of 2014 and early 2015: first of all, the Trojan Horse investigation (2014, which was later discredited) into Birmingham’s schools during Michael Gove’s term as education secretary. Gove had “promoted a state-sanctioned attack on a vulnerable Muslim community in inner-city Birmingham, destroying the careers of many Birmingham teachers, as well as wrecking the education prospects of thousands of largely Muslim children,” journalist Peter Oborne reminded us. The whole thing was launched on a fabricated story based on a fake letter, that British “Islamists” were “plotting to take over” Birmingham schools. The popular media reproduced the lies over and over again.

Then, new terrorism threats in Europe in 2015 hugely benefited the EDL, too. The coverage of these events in the media and the political discourse around them enabled ideas that were propagated by the EDL to become increasingly acceptable in society. The “clash of civilisations” argument, once again, dominated mainstream coverage of the Charlie Hebdo debate, and the “religion-radicalisation” narrative was the norm (as displayed by the BBC Panorama programme on ” The Battle for British Islam” in January 2015). These fitted well with the EDL racists in Dudley, who claim that Islam is the problem.

Robinson told me: “When we were talking about these issues five years ago, we were shunned and called racists. Now, in the last twelve to eighteen months, they, the politicians and media, are all talking about the same issues… My speech at Oxford Union was very well received… These ideas become more mainstream. People are listening to us now. We’ve been proved right.”

Robinson was confident in asserting that the EDL is “a force that isn’t going away”, though he himself was looking for a more respectable platform.

Islamophobia and anti-migrant racism under Tory rule

With help from their friends (the media), centre-right parties have come a long way in their practice of Islamophobia. The fourteen years of Tory rule firmed up what was “achieved” under New Labour and deepened it. The Tories put in place a structure of control and surveillance over British Muslims, while granting legitimacy to what would traditionally regarded as the far right, Oborne commented.

Boris Johnson, under his administration, procrastinated on the matter of adopting the 2019 definition of Islamophobia that had been adopted by the All-Party Parliamentary Group (APPG) on British Muslims, which had defined Islamophobia as “rooted in racism and is a type of racism that targets expressions of Muslimness or perceived Muslimness.” Instead, Johnson aligned with those who use “freedom of speech” as a way of shutting down any discussion of Islamophobia in the UK.[4] 

In Tower Hamlets where I live, Gove, for the second time in a decade, sent someone to investigate the council. The council is led by independent mayor Lutfur Rahman. Rahman is a Muslim.

Rishi Sunak went further. The APPG definition of Islamophobia on British Muslims[5] was officially rejected only days after the Sunak’s government took office.[6] As the APPG inquiry report said, Islamophobia is the term of choice among British Muslims to describe their experience. Islamophobia is anti-Muslim racism. Placing Islamophobia in the anti-racism paradigms is crucial in combating it as structural. The two decades of lack of a widely adopted working definition of Islamophobia, APPG recognises, had lowered the threshold for discrimination and prejudices to be recognised, and led to normalisation and increase of Islamophobia in society which leaves Muslims vulnerable to abuse without recourse to legal or political remedy.[7]

The coming into power of the likes of Braverman and Gove, the latter known as the major architect of British Islamophobia (the then Secretary of State for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities) under Sunak, said it all about the Tory approach to Islamophobia. As Oborne pointed out, Gove shaped the Tory policy towards British Muslims and was turning them into “an enemy within,” to use Margaret Thatcher’s phrase about the coal miners. Gove set apart Islam from so-called “Islamism,” asserting that the latter was a form of “totalitarianism” incompatible to western liberal values. 

In Tower Hamlets where I live, Gove, for the second time in a decade, sent someone to investigate the council. The council is led by independent mayor Lutfur Rahman. Rahman is a Muslim. Gove sent in Sir John Jenkins this time, who was British ambassador to Syria, Libya and Saudi Arabia. Jenkins is a senior fellow at Policy Exchange, the right-wing think tank founded by Gove and others in 2002.

Under the Islamophobic politicians, Britain ended 2022 with the debates on Islamophobia disappearing from the political mainstream. Meanwhile the Tory government was working behind the scenes to defend PREVENT and to refocus it on the threat of so-called “Islamist extremism”.[8]  The Shawcross review of the PREVENT strategy, published on the 8th of February, 2023, has had huge consequences. It reinforces the focus of the government’s counter-extremism policy on so-called “Islamist radicalisation.” At the time, when explaining the new focus in the Commons, Suella Braverman praised Douglas Murray, the far-right bigot, for his “mainstream, insightful and perfectly decent political views.” (Douglas Murray was a director of the Henry Jackson Society, known as adopting an anti-Muslim agenda. Today Murray is a senior fellow at the right-wing think tank Policy Exchange. As Oborne reminds us, these are the two organisations which have done more than any other to frame official thinking about how Islam is perceived in the UK.)

Under the Tory rule, the most regressive migration policies were put in. The Illegal Migration Bill was passed by the parliament and it was the most brutal piece of immigration legislation I have seen passed ever since arriving in this country. The human rights violations involved in this Bill have even invited UN criticism. Yet the British media are complacently quiet; there has been no analysis, no inquiry, no asking questions about what this Bill is about and the impact it will have. Anti-migrant discourse throughout the Tory years was racist and appalling. The inhumanity reached its peak in the Tory government’s Rwanda policy which was absolutely despicable. Racism and Islamophobia have been completely normalised. Bigotry has gained mainstream position in British politics. Sunak and Giorgia Meloni praised each other for their work on “stopping the boats.” Sunak said “Grazie” to her, showing how much he was inspired by her. The British far-right has been thoroughly emboldened. “Stop the boats!” the white supremacists chanted in the riots in the past week, repeating their politicians’ words.

When Keir Starmer condemned the violence in the streets, what he should do is call out the racist nature of these riots, and undo the very damaging policies that have been put in place by successive governments. But our hope cannot lie with Labour, whose leader has continued to pander to racism, even in the first week after the general election – by reiterating its border policy, with Border Force sending a group of thirteen migrants rescued from the Channel back to France as Starmer sought an asylum seeker returns deal with Europe. Starmer said he would also explore sending migrants intercepted in the Channel to countries abroad, to have their asylum applications processed. After scrapping the Tories’ Rwanda policy, Labour also deported 55 Vietnamese migrants back to Vietnam under a returns agreement. We can expect far-right groups to roam British streets every now and then now, and their voices are only getting louder, as their ideologies have been endorsed and put into practice for years by those in power.

Fighting back           

There comes a time when we have to say to everyone in society: it is simply not enough not to be racist. Anti-racist campaigning and collective action is the way to fight the far-right.

In Tower Hamlets, it was the years of collective hard work of many campaigners and activists that kept the EDL away – in the typical East End tradition of resisting the far-right. The local Muslim communities and groups such as the East London Mosque and London Muslim Centre, Islamic Forum of Europe, United East End, Tower Hamlets Interfaith Forum, Unite Against Fascism, The Cordoba Foundation, and Stop the War jointly fought the racists and fascists, which eventually led to the demise of the EDL. EDL tried to march past the East London Mosque several times, but every time they were thwarted by the local community working together. The most poignant was when faith leaders stood in front of the East London Mosque saying, “this is our mosque and we stand together to defend it.” The rioters have announced that they plan to protest at the mosque again. No doubt, mosque leaders, local groups and communities of all faiths will be fighting against it.

It is simply not enough not to be racist. Anti-racist campaigning and collective action is the way to fight the far-right.

Anti-racist activists and local trade unions who represent millions of minority and migrant workers have expressed their anger. United Voices of the World (UVW) is one of them. The grassroots union whose membership consists mainly of migrant workers, “expresses its solidarity with communities that continue to be targeted by ongoing racist violence against migrants, Muslims and other minorities across the country.”

UVW said: “We work hard as cleaners, security guards, waiting staff, porters, seasonal fruit pickers, couriers, carers and in many other vital roles. And when we fight for better pay and conditions, we fight for all workers to receive the same. Yet we are often disparaged, looked down on and treated and paid as second-class workers. Many of us often experience racism in overt and institutionalised forms. Many of us have also often felt invisible and have fought hard to be seen as equals with the same fears, hopes and needs as everyone else. We make valuable contributions to society not only in the work we do, but in the culture we bring and share in.”

“Now we are no longer invisible, but because of racist, anti-migrant and anti-Muslim rhetoric from the highest echelons of our society: from government and from our media institutions, we are no longer invisible for all the wrong reasons.”

“Our strength lies in solidarity and unity – a unity of those who work and struggle to keep the country moving, whilst barely making ends meet, regardless of where we’re originally from or what the colour of our skin is…

“While never an excuse, poverty and despair provide fertile grounds for racism to flourish and for the messages of the far right to take hold. That’s why just as we have united and beaten the bosses, we must now unite and beat the racist upsurge in violence we are witnessing overwhelmingly in working class communities. These are communities which have suffered at the hands of the same powers that seek to impoverish and disempower us and the working class in general. Working class unity is the foundation on which we must seek to build a movement to root up and destroy racism at every level of society.”

“NO PASARÁN!”

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Footnotes

[1] “The Clash of Civilisations” came from Samuel Huntington, a political scientist who believed “the great divisions among humankind and the dominating source of conflict will be cultural.” “Nation states will remain the most powerful actors in world affairs, but the principal conflicts of global politics will occur between nations and groups of different civilisations. The clash of civilisations will dominate global politics.” The most influential part of Huntington’s theory concerned Islam. Huntington argued that with the end of the Cold War between Soviet Union and the West, it would be replaced by “a new struggle between two irreconcilable enemies: Islam and the West.” Huntington drew on the work of the Orientalist historian Bernard Lewis, who coined the phrase “clash of civilisations.”

[2] See https://www.nature.com/articles/s41599-017-0061-9#:~:text=For%20instance%2C%20data%20published%20following,69%25%20of%20the%20referrals%20involved

[3] Hate crime, England and Wales, 2022 to 2023 second edition – GOV.UK (www.gov.uk)

[4] See ‘European Islamophobia Report,’ 2022, p.555-6

[5] See ‘Islamophobia Defined,’  https://static1.squarespace.com/static/599c3d2febbd1a90cffdd8a9/t/5bfd1ea3352f531a6170ceee/1543315109493/Islamophobia+Defined.pdf

[6] See ‘European Islamophobia Report,’ 2022, p.552.

[7] See ‘Islamophobia Defined,’ p.10 and p.25.

[8] See ‘European Islamophobia Report,’ 2022, p.555-6

Cover Image: The Epic Battle of Cable Street Mural, East London, FlickR