Yaxley already milking the latest American tragedy, religious camouflage and all, and thousands apparently ready to join his unpleasant throng, free of fact and full of fantasy. Are we in deep trouble, or is this just the crusty scab on a long lasting scratch that will eventually heal itself? Your thoughts?
100,000 deplorable reasons to stay indoors in London today.
by 106 Comments
This from an article by Matthew d’Ancona in the New World on the 3rd of September.
“Will the fever break? It might. But, then again, there is no intrinsic reason, no law of political science ensuring that it will. “We’re now,” according to Robinson, “bordering on a British revolution. I totally believe we are”. On September 13, that bold claim will be tested as never before.”
I think they now feel their views which were kept to themselves are in the mainstream now.
I’m not sure what the future is but I’m worried.
There’s a bad precedent in what’s happened in the US. And parts of the right wing press here, while not explicitly support Yaxley-Lennon’s mob, is stoking up the hate that fuels them. I hope it all blows over but don’t take anything for granted.
To learn from what happened in the US we (I’m including Australia here) need to actually listen to and try to understand the concerns of these people instead of instantly dismissing them as idiots or racists or ‘deplorables’. Obviously, a subset of them are, but if the situation in the UK is similar to over here, a lot of them have been pushed to the margins precisely because they feel unheard, and resent being dismissed and labelled.
Anyone who credits Yaxley-Lennon with enough credibility to warrant turning out to wave flags and listen to his ranting surely is behaving in a deplorable fashion?
Irrespective of how ‘unheard’ they feel, there are many ways to make oneself heard that does not involve flattering a fascist.
Couldn’t agree more. My brother’s middle son is a signed up member of Reform and has very racist views. He is 29 years of age, almost certainly Autistic but never diagnosed and socially awkward. He has never been laid and I think that might explain some of his angst. He was not bought up in a racist environment so I have no idea where his bigotry comes from but am pretty sure that the absence of a female counter view encourages his extremism.
The issue of why young, white males are flocking to the right is pretty easy to decode: they have been burdened their entire, short lives with the message that everything is their fault. The cause of every societal or global issue has been reduced to the same lowest common denominators: Western imperialism > white privilege > male privilege. And like third-generation detainees in a North Korean prison camp, they are expected to bow their heads and accept their generational shame.
I have two sons, one 19 and one 17, so I have seen the effects of this play out within their friend groups. My eldest son is grappling with one of his close friends ‘turning’ to the right, and attending an anti-immigration march in the city on the weekend. This is a smart, gentle kid with two very left, alternative parents, who has always been awkward and a bit of an outsider.
It’s much easier to digest the message that the world’s problems are somebody else’s fault rather than yours.
I think that’s exactly right. Educational achievement is terrible for poor white males plus job and salary expectations. It’s hardly surprising they are looking for a handy solution/explanation.
Exactly. Glib point scoring and projection of original sin onto white males who are not allowed to fight back. No wonder they want to join the gang that appears to stand up for them. The other way this goes in a problematic direction is to present yourself as a victim and to pathologise differences in temperament. So you’re more sensitive, more nerdy, less hairy-arsed. This means you have autism, mental health problems, a different gender identity. Nope, not necessarily.
What are some of the many things that they could do to make themselves heard, and why do you think they aren’t doing them?
Step one: Define the perceived problem. What are the specific claims being made? Is it that ‘foreigners are taking our jobs’, or that ‘foreigners are committing more crimes’ etc?
Step two: Actually try to find evidence to confirm or refute the claims.
Step three: At least try to engage in a fact-based discussion. Sure, lots won’t engage in this, but some might, and to be honest they are they only ones worth bothering with.
What I see over and over here in Australia (and in this thread!) is that the left hates (or is afraid of) being drawn beyond Step 1. Someone makes a claim and they are immediately branded as racist, idiots, deplorable, fascists (and whatever else Wabznazn says in his next post!) and that’s the end of the discussion. Immigration is driving up housing prices? Racist! An influx of foreign students has broken our tertiary education system? Racist!
In both these cases, we would have been far better off having a reasoned discussion a decade ago rather than dealing with the car crash we have now.
These steps will get them heard by who?
How about anyone who rejects arguments that are undefined in any specific detail, consequently have no reliable evidential basis, and are being made without reference to factual reality?
And what power do these people have to improve the lives of the protesters?
Most likely the same power that anyone else, who has set out their arguments in detail, with an evidential basis to back them up and has undertaken debate based upon facts, has to improve the lives of themselves and their peers.
They are ALL idiots, racists and deplorables. They are fascists, funded by American billionaire fascists.
Stop both-sidesing this. We fought a war over this shit, you might remember seeing it on TV.
A bit like all leftists and progressives being spiteful Mutants in the pay of Russia or billionaire Jews like George Soros, you mean? Polarised thinking is part of the problem here, I suspect. Unhappy people find an ideology and use it to blame the other side. The people in the political groups thrive on this for their power trips. Don’t encourage them
I don’t think these appalling views are anything new. Look at British history, a racist, violent country. Social media has certainly not helped, but I remember conversations in the past with people I thought had reasonable views and then suddenly realising how racist they were. I come from the Welsh valleys where Labour could pretty much field a cardboard cutout and win a seat. Doesn’t mean everybody in those places held non offensive, liberal views though.
A violent, thuggish and racist far right massing behind a weak democratic government on a fierce nationalist ticket. Thank goodness there is no historical precedent for this. Er, no, wait……
I thought Tommy Ten Names and his troops liked football?
Saturday’s football ain’t it?
Today’s Saturday.
It’s almost as if Tommy Ten Names and his troops are phoneys.
I was at football, won 4-0, but then I’m not a phoney.
Oh, and word to the wise, DO NOT on any account stand downwind of their record collections, you’ll regret it if you do.
Early kick off for Millwall, late kick offs for West Ham and Chelsea. 🤷♂️
And a big day for anyone selling Stone Island clothing, strong lager or gak in central London.
The only two times I’ve felt genuine despondency on this scale are the 1987 election, when there seemed to be no end to the Thatcher stiletto on our throats, and the Brexit result. The latter, and the ensuing decade-long shitshow, has clearly engendered the current degradation of our politics and the attendant societal schisms. I’m starting to consider the former to be some kind of Golden Age in comparison.
On the “hope” side of the ledger…
Andrea Jenkyns and Nadine Dorries and many many more got exactly what they wanted when Boris Johnson won his huge majority. Time to fully enact the policies they’d been banging on about for years – including Brexit.
What happened? They fucked it up. And now they blame other people – foreigners, mainly.
The same people are swarming over Reform, pitching in with their reckons and before long they’ll definitely undermine Farage. They’ll destroy Reform too. Basically they can’t organise a bun fight in a bakery.
The alleged killer of Charlie Kirk is called Tyler Robinson – which this weekend will cause “Tommy Robinson” no end of online profile anguish.
Came back through Waterloo from the football and found myself surrounded by these “protestors”, presumably making their way back to wherever it is they live.
As noted on other threads, I’m someone who has some sympathy for the electorate’s fairly clear and longstanding desire for the issue of immigration to be recognised/addressed. Nonetheless, I have to say that having surveyed the mob I have very little sympathy for these particular people, as – really – they appeared to be a proper pack of bellends. All the bleating about free speech is completely embarrassing, as is the suggestion that the British left, a group for whom I have very little time these days, are threatening and/or violent. Made up fairytale nonsense for people who have had their brains melted by too much internet.
Hopefully, they’ll have the effect that most protests in this country seem to – exposing the public to the general unpleasantness of the people associated with the particular cause. And hopefully the British electorate still retains the basic wit to spot an absolute walloper like Elon Musk coming a mile off. If appearing on a video screen in the middle of town to promote the violent overthrow of parliament isn’t legally actionable then I’m afraid we have the wrong laws, although it does make the free speech handwringing even funnier. On which note, if you’re still on Twitter, surely this is the time to get off.
Depressing stuff all round. If these people want to protest hopefully they can go do it in someone else’s back yard next time – you could feel the city’s average IQ dropping in real time over the course of the afternoon. Maybe clean up after themselves next time too. We live in stupid, stupid times.
An awful lot of those bleating about free speech can barely speak their own language.
They seem very exercised about the question of free speech – you should be allowed to Tweet for the burning down of hotels containing migrants, dammit! You can’t? POLICE STATE TWO TIER MIGRANT LOVER KIER etc etc
Thanks for the close-up observations – you’ve confirmed what I had thought I’d seen on the television coverage.
This mob looked uncomfortably like the same dullard convention I saw at Anti-Nazi League marches in London, back in 1975 or thereabouts, when they lurked in gaggles on pavements and lobbed occasional half-bricks. Back then a lot of them had their allegiances even more clearly shown, but I suspect that the swastika armbands are still tucked in a lot of sock drawers, waiting for the opportunity to get worn again.
Still a bit confused.
Tommy Ten Names’ football team – wot with ‘im not bein’ a toff n’all like wot I am guv’nor so to speak – were at home today, and I can’t for the life of me understand why he wasn’t there wot with him being a proper working class salt of the earth type like wot I ain’t.
He probably still doesn’t even know the Luton score wot with all that marching for his working class bods like wot he is… let’s tell him…
Your team are shite Yaxleypeterpaulandmaryandmarymungoandmidge, and they lost to something called Plymouth, and no one f******* loses to them!
Still, you’ve got yer marching.
Excuse me, tell that to Liverpool F.C. you potty-mouthed so-and-so. Up the Argyle!
I was amused to see “are Tommy” fawning over some bloke who’d flown in from Dubai to show solidarity. He lives in Dubai. 🥴
As does that waste of oxygen Isabel Oakeshott.
But Dubai does attract a certain type of British expat, whose attitudes to people from the Subcontinent and Asia display a yearning for the good old days of the Raj.
Even when I briefly lived and worked there in the early noughties Dubai was a toxic shithole.
To paraphrase Noel Coward’s dismissal of Singapore, “a third rate place ran by fifth rate people”.
One hopes that the return of this particular Dubai dullard is not some kind of one-man advance party
Prior to 2003 Dubai was a great place to live then they allowed foreigners to buy property and it all changed. I lived there for 20 years and I bet half the influencers, drug dealers and other dregs that live there now have never been outside the city.
I was there from around 2003 living in Bur Dubai for a few years. Easy to criticise the place but the sanctimonious bores harrumphing that there’s no culture there are the funniest.
There’s culture everywhere by definition …. Maybe not to your own taste or expectations but it’s always there. I’m into birdwatching and spent every weekend in the field from the mountains to the east coast up in RAK and as far away as the Qatari border. I loved it. Also a diver so there was quite a lot of that. As for football I followed Al Nasr home and away for a couple of years … that was an experience.
Was the Al Nasr ground in Oud Metha?
I made a few trips up to RAK (my then partner had a jeep, so we got out of the city pretty often) and I’ll always remember beautiful scenery, random shops and cafes, horizons, mountains, deserts, all of it.
I worked for Time Out Dubai, covering the nascent art scene, which was just really a couple of galleries in Bastikiya when I started. While I was there, we had a massive boost in the cultural economy spearheaded by DIFF, Art Dubai, Sharjah Biennale, Creekside art fair, the massive expansion of Alserkal Avenue, studios and mentors at Jameel centre, expanded art education and so on and so on. Artists who couldn’t work in their home countries for obvious reasons – from Iran, Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Palestine, Saudi etc – all contributed to this growth. So you had a potent combination of factors driven by a wonderful mix of people from all sorts of backgrounds, doing their thing.
It’s really, really worrying. It’s not just 100,000 idiots marching through central London it’s the daily smaller but very concerning incidents that make this current, horrible sense of so-called grievance such a pox.
One such example is in south-west London’s Sutton, where a successful local music venue, The Sound Lounge, had all it’s windows smashed by the far right last week. The venue isn’t just a place to watch music, it does other important and valuable community work. It emerged that their windows were smashed because they had previously explained to right wingers that they would rather not put up St. George’s flags. The right wingers have thus actively caused the pausing of the excellent work in that community which helps some of the poorest who live there.
I live in a fairly racially diverse area but it is now festooned with these bloody flags and frankly it makes me sick. Yes, there needs to be some listening- there are many who feel disenfranchised or just not heard-but let’s not forget that the marches themselves are definitely organised and facilitated by far-right scumbags.
It’s hit home in the last couple of weeks. Boris Johnson eulogising Charlie Kirk, saying he spoke a moderate ‘what we’re all thinking’ message. Running into the boorish marchers at Euston Station on my way back from a trip up North – I’ll be interested to see how many of them reported being mugged/stabbed/whatever in ‘Londonistan’ before they scuttled back to their market towns. And my band’s gig at The Sound Lounge getting put on ice after the event you mention above. Thankfully it’s now back on and they raised over four times the amount they needed for repairs.
Do I think we should sit down and talk to these flag-shaggers about these their grievances? Not right now. These thugs can do one. I’m proud to be a Londoner and happy to be part of a culturally rich, diverse Britain. They’re not.
Bravo! As a child, my dad (who was a toolmaker) threw clods of earth at Oswald and his ersatz Blackshirts, and it seems we may reach a time when the same humiliating treatment is called for again.
My Dad was a toolmaker too…I have mentioned it to people a few times in recent years.
Great post, @TrypF . I will be visiting your fine city in a few weeks and I’m confident that it will be a good experience as usual…
I have found this whole business of the apparent rise of the far right deeply depressing, so much so that it is affecting my mental health. I have avoided TV news for years, as well as stuff like Question Time ever since the Brexit wars, but it still inhabits my thoughts a lot of the time. It is probably part of my general increase in anxiety as I get older, but I try to think positively about where we are more widely.
The vast majority of people are decent, tolerant individuals who just want to a quiet life doing what they do, although I accept that there are many (including people I know) who harbour views which I thought, in my naive way, had disappeared years ago – those that are now emboldened to say things like ‘of course, we’re not allowed to say things like that any more’ or, as someone said to me recently, ‘he’s not really British’ about a person of colour. It is that latter group who are going to Reform, and are disillusioned with the Tories.
However, I cling on to some things in hope – extreme groups always splinter as they grow (both left and right) as you get arguments about compromises and the realities of actually doing stuff like formulating policies. Reform are already creaking under these stresses – their ‘conference’ was a bit of a disaster. Attracting defecting Tories is a double edged sword – get the likes of Truss, Braverman and Rees-Mogg on board and you start looking like Tories 2.0, and suddenly the insurgent aura disappears.
We have also been here here before with UKIP high in polls and winning council seats and Euro elections, and the likes of the BNP even on the rise electorally, but historically it hasn’t lasted. We are also years from a general election. There is a fundamental majority against the far right, although split across various parties – there is a need to come together in some form of progressive coalition perhaps, even if it is just sharing platforms. Perhaps the Tories are the key here – Boris got rid of all the moderates and they are now a Farage tribute act – if they stopped echoing this agenda then the far right would be more isolated.
I’m with you on the mental health side of things. Like you I gave up watching tv news some time ago, but it’s impossible to remain detached from what’s going on, and I find that the cumulative effect of world events affects me massively. I usually head for the great outdoors for a positivity reset, but even that isn’t helping much of late. I can’t see any of it ending in a good way for any of us.
Also me, regarding mental health. I can actually feel the algorithms pulling on my psyche when I browse the internet, even the harmless parts. Even here – conversations of any kind are now polluted by the shit machine, that creates these polarised viewpoints. I think we all need to take several steps back and try and think about our own personal values rather than carry on as we are. What do we really think? What do we believe? How can we embody that?
150,000 = largest far right rally in the UK ever.
I wasn’t there but reports and TV clips suggest it was well funded and well organised. They know how to use the internet to drum up a crowd. There was a religious element too, which strikes me as new and derived from America. They were careful to place as many non-white faces at the front as they could.
The message was anti everything, interested in chaos and insurrection. Violence is central to their approach. Thank goodness we can’t buy military grade guns in supermarkets.
25 arrests! Contrast that with the many hundreds of the Terror Nans speaking up for Palestinian Action. They claim they will make more but even the most violent will not be facing a prison sentence anything like the Nans.
Meanwhile, Starmer is hiding because he was stupid enough to appoint Mandy. That nice man from the US, who wants to declare civil war in his own country, is visiting the king this week. By the way, have you seen the bulldozers starting work on the White House?
Starmer is a dead man walking.
Andy Burnham is apparently rallying support for a challenge and should be a shoe in for the safe seat in Gorton when the disgraced incumbent heads for the exit
Billy Bragg, The Few, written 44 years ago:
At night the Baby Brotherhood and the Inter City Crew
Fill their pockets up with calling cards
And paint their faces red white and blue
Then they go out seeking different coloured faces
And anyone else that they can scare
And they salute the foes their fathers fought
By waving their right arms in the air
Oh look out, my country’s patriots are hunting down below
What do they know of England who only England know?
From the stands of the Empire Stadium
Come the heralds of the New Dark Age
With the simplicities of bigotry
And to whom all the world’s a stage
These little John Bullshits know that the press
Will glorify their feats
So that the general public fear them
And the authorities say give ’em all seats
And the wasted seed of the bulldog breed
Is chanting “Here we go!”
What do they know of England who only England know?
Our neighbours shake their heads
And take their valuables inside
While my countrymen piss in their fountains
To express our national pride
And to prove to the world that England
Is not as rotten as she looks
They repeat the lies that caught their eyes
At school in history books
But the wars they think they’re fighting
Were all over long ago
What do they know of England who only England know?
And the society that spawned them
Just cries out “Who’s to blame?”
And then wraps itself in the Union Jack
And just carries on the same
Oh look out, my country’s patriots are hunting down below
What do they know of England who only England know?
More Kipling:
“One secret of the success of the English was, perhaps, their imperturbable tolerance. A race that has been persecuted, or—what comes to the same thing—bored, by every persecuted refugee to whom they have ever given an asylum, naturally learns to tolerate anything. Their immensely mixed origin, too, made the English in a very real sense “akin to all the universe”, and sympathetic in their dumb way with remote Gods and strange people. Above all, their long insular experience of imported brain-storms had taught them that men should not try to do better than good for fear lest worse than bad might follow. And there has been enough of worse than bad in the world for the last few years. Our national weakness for keeping to the easiest road to the latest possible minute sooner than inconvenience ourselves or our neighbours has been visited upon us full tale.”
I don’t agree with the suggestions above that we should listen to or entertain these people.
I think we should listen to voters, absolutely. There are millions of them, they make up the vast majority of this country, and we’ve seen from the US what happens when you pretend their concerns don’t really exist because they’re inconvenient to you.
Yesterday was a hundred thousand or so people. About what the Trans rights march brought to London a few weeks back, and nobody showed much inclination to listen to them. About a quarter of what the countryside alliance brought once upon a time, and a tenth of the anti Iraq war march. Worrying to see so many people on a far right march, but no more political legitimacy than any of the above, particularly given that the above events weren’t being bankrolled by Bond villains and most of the attendees could be trusted to write without eating the crayons.
I defy anyone to physically stand in the middle of a crowd of these people and conclude that they are serious and should be heard. Comprised of bog standard football hooligan types (the centre of town is today awash with stickers boasting various far right slogans alongside the West Ham badge), the kind of individual who believe that pigeons are spying on them and the odd toff married couple presumably looking to add a spark to their love life with a little light fascism, these are deeply unserious individuals – cranks, nut jobs and meatheads who represent no one but themselves. I sat opposite a bunch of them on the train home and the temptation to tell them to fuck off back to wherever they’re from because they’re not wanted in London was enormous, although I suspect the irony would have been lost on them.
We should absolutely address immigration. It’s a massive concern that is sending polls rightwards across the continent and it’s not enough to simply wave it away any more. And it’s possible that – courtesy of social media – we’re going to see more and more people pushed to the political extremes, radicalised and sent out onto our streets. But I’ll be fucked if I ever have to pretend that Tommy Robinson and his Neo Nazi pals have anything to say that I need to hear, and as far as respect goes they can whistle. They get their free speech, which they use to call for violence, prejudice and hate. I get mine too, and I get to use it to say that, having clapped eyes on the purported master race, I was left deeply unimpressed.
How do we get Farage, Oakshot and Tice to STFU? Robinson will get himself banged up again eventually, I suppose.
No idea. From where I’m sat a far right government looks highly likely as long as we have unchecked algorithmic social media.
I’m surprised that Starmer hasn’t gone after the tax affairs of Rothermere and one or two others who shout loudly but pay no tax.
I’m not. He doesn’t seem inclined to go after anybody..
Dennis Healey’s description of Geoffrey Howe springs to mind
The problem with immigration is that it is complex, not easily compressed into a three word slogan.
Overall, it is good for the UK
https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2025/sep/14/what-do-the-immigration-figures-for-the-uk-really-show
That’s a six word slogan 😉
I think we start by moving beyond the generalities of immigration good/immigration bad to ask what are the opportunities and risks and how can we capture the former while avoiding or mitigating the latter. But we’ve covered that ad nauseum in other threads.
Indeed we have…
*Seven
Brilliant post Bingo.
It seems the movement in the UK is far more skinhead/football hooligan-centred than here in Australia. We have our share of that, but I suspect most of the support over here is from scared, ignorant people worried about housing prices, crime, AI and job security and looking for someone to blame. As I mention in a reply above, the one person I know (quite well) who has attended the marches/rallies over here matches absolutely none of the stereotypes.
Independent of whether we should be listening to Saturday’s demonstrators, I completely agree with what you say above regarding white privilege/anti-imperialism, etc.
We’ve had about a decade of identity politics and it’s no surprise at all that it’s resulted in a backlash and encouraged a certain category of white people to conclude that they too should agitate for their perceived common interests, just as other ethnic groups have been encouraged to do.
About five years ago, I and every other member of my company was summoned to a mandatory meeting in which we were informed by a guest speaker, the author of the book “White Fragility” no less. that every single white person present was a literal racist and that any attempt to argue against that classification would only provide further evidence of said racism.
The following day I met my manager and explained that, as a white person who has nonetheless unfortunately experienced racism in my youth, if I was ever spoken to like that at work again I would be seeking a new job. I also pointed out that this quasi-religious nonsense might fly in the US, but in the UK – which is approximately 87% Caucasian – it was asking for trouble, not least because once you’ve dissolved and collectivised racism to the point it’s completely omni-present, what’s the actual behavioural disincentive for the real racists, who are presumably merely expressing what every white person actually feels? That conversation jumped to mind on Saturday afternoon.
We’ve seen an absolute tidal wave of this stuff in the intervening years, although whenever it’s raised people deny it’s happening. From the notion that all men are collectively responsible for violence against women to the guilt of empire to white privilege and so on. I’m certainly not suggesting that racism and sexism are no longer live issues (far from it), but the solution isn’t going to be achieved by spreading around quasi-Catholic guilt and taking ideological purity tests. The notion that people of different ethnicities have such different “life experiences” that they can never truly understand one another is completely antithetical to any hope of a successful multi-cultural society, a project in which I feel personally highly invested.
I have no doubt that good has been achieved by these initiatives. That some people have considered their behaviours and mended their ways, that businesses have become more considerate of their employees. But a backlash of some description was inevitable, either at the polls or in the streets, and the types of people who are willing to decolonize their bookshelves were never really your major issue to start with.
Telling people who are genuinely struggling in life that they have “white privilege” was the sort of idea that plays well on the internet but was always going to be a disaster in real life. Not because there isn’t a germ of truth in the statement, but because no accounting of privilege, if we’re going to accept such a term, can ever be partial, and because to live in genuine poverty is comfortably the greatest blight of all, whatever your background.
I had a curious conversation on Threads about white imperialism today. No particular problem with the original thought, but then… (Penpontman, c’est moi.)
Is that a Mister Pastry avatar? Most excellent if it is!
It is indeed. I’m occasionally taken to task for hiding my real identity, but fuck ‘em.
Thank you – it’s an excellent example of what I’m talking about.
The mention of original sin is such a giveaway; this is Catholic guilt dressed up in the language of social justice, and it’s been used as an excuse for enormous callousness.
Interesting you mention “White Fragility” as it was the book a former CEO cited as his “awakening” to racial injustice. He was also a devout Catholic and I wondered to what extent his faith would have influenced his take on DiAngelo’s work. Or why it took a book to jolt him awake.
Had to smile when you said she’d been (I presume) flown in to speak to you. He offered to lend me a copy of her book and never did. Someone suggested the company buy copies and hand them out – he never got round to responding to that one either. He wasn’t known for his generosity – apart from when the church came calling, desperate for funds given the settlements they’d had to make as a consequence of all the abuse they’d covered up. I eventually bought one and got a severe attack of “meh” about a third of the way in.
To your point above, some good things did happen. After years of slapping each other on the back, and telling themselves “that kind of thing doesn’t happen here” our C suite finally found the plums to gather small groups of minority employees together (and they are small because we’re overwhelmingly a company of old white men) and ask the what is was really like working for us. Amazingly it turned out it did happen here. Some were low level, micro aggressions, some turned my stomach. It felt like a defining moment(s).
Except is wasn’t. Inevitably, complaints of anti-white, anti-male discrimination arose. Some of this was risible, like the guy that refused to come to work because the building had a gay pride flag flying for a week. Some I could understand. I wasn’t insulted by the handful of training modules that were subsequently mandated but as a response it was deeply uninspiring sheep dipping response where some open conversation and 2 way discussion was badly needed. But boxes needed to be ticked and the top marks always go things done quickly rather than better.
Roll forward a few years and thanks to Trump, all references to inclusion and equality have been excised from our websites, our training and anywhere else we might get caught out by Doge. And yet curiously those who felt so hard done by don’t seem to have cheered up any.
Yeah, we’re much the same. The high tide of DEI washed through and receded, taking with it good and bad. On the plus side, certain employee groups got to raise a voice and help people understand a different perspective, certain processes were much improved. On the other, we all got to sit through seminars in which we were literally told that it’s impossible to be racist to a white person (factually and legally inaccurate – that was a fun afternoon), and that un-diverse companies can never innovate (news to the Japanese, one assumes).
It’s a shame, because a lot of the intent was good, and some much needed progress did occur. But human beings are tribal, and even as they attempt to disassemble one unjust power structure they can’t seem to help rigging up another to replace it.
People definitely lost their jobs and had their careers capped because of their sex and skin colour, and, while you can probably make an argument for such things at a macro level, at a micro level it’s profoundly unjust and will ultimately only ever breed division and resentment. No one goes home having been fucked over because of who they are and thinks “well, guess I deserve it to help even up the score”. As others have observed, it’s like sticking one hand on the hob, the other in the fridge and claiming to be room temperature. Or, more simply; two wrongs don’t make a right.
Some years back, this notion of white people having to “admit that they were inherently racist” (or words to that effect…it’s a long time ago now) used to be a mandatory part of some social work training course interview processes. I wouldn’t do so, and as a result I ended up plumping for teaching instead where the process was a bit more sensible.
Brilliantly put. Have a thumbs up, Bingo.
Great points, Bingo.
I’ve had similar experiences in the workplace, including an especially painful 4-hour cultural heritage workshop (mandatory annual training) where an Aboriginal lady repeatedly said stuff like “Aboriginal people have a special connection with their relatives. You white people wouldn’t understand. We know the environment in a way that you white people wouldn’t understand.” before she started telling us that Aboriginal people had psychic powers (that we couldn’t understand) and could instantly tell from great distances that one of their relatives had died. Four fucking hours!
Dundee knew all that stuff too. Its in the movies to imply deep knowledge and cultural profundity. That’s either a cynical ploy or a display full of respect, depending upon whether you think it was included because the producer thought the audience would want to identify themselves with the hero and admire that degree of empathetic understanding, or because the producer really valued those cultural beliefs on their own terms. Either way, there is a tacit acknowledgment of their value. Forty thousand fucking years.
Trevor Phillips, who was there, presents a more nuanced picture. These observations are extracted from a longer article in today’s Times.
“If you were out looking for a ruck in central London on Saturday afternoon, you would have been disappointed. The “Unite the Kingdom” march, organised by the hard-right activist known as Tommy Robinson, offered slim pickings for those who like their nativist politics laced with a side helping of violence.The overwhelming majority of the crowds waving flags and carrying crosses weren’t there for a fight. But they do have a cause…
There was some hooliganism at the margins. The usual suspects, left and right, who always show up at events like this, took the opportunity to throw bottles at the police. When the inevitable arrests followed, a few bleated that they were being victimised by the jackbooted agents of the state. But for the most part, the 150,000 people who showed up to march the mile or so from Waterloo, across Lambeth Bridge and past the Palace of Westminster to Whitehall, were unaware of any commotion. Only the hard core stayed to hear Robinson’s peroration.
This was not an angry, activist crowd. And therein lies the danger for our democracy. When ordinary people are ready to brave the first cold weekend of the autumn at the behest of a serial convict and self-confessed fraudster, something is very rotten in the state of Britain.
These are the people you meet in a country pub with their dogs, or in a queue for drinks at half-time. They conjured the spirit of the cheerful British amateur, draped in a variety of flags — the cross of St George, the saltire, the Welsh dragon and, of course, the Union Jack. If LS Lowry were to paint the scene on Saturday, his canvas would be called something like “Middle Britain on a day out in London”.
One man in his forties told me he had come out to protest against the abandonment of British culture. His mother was English but his father had come from Gujarat to build a new life and had worked in a shop until he had his own. He complained that globalisation was destroying all the values that his Indian family had come to treasure, including freedom of speech.
The dozen or so people I met aren’t political activists. If anything unites them it is a loathing of the politicians who make promises that they never fulfil and then demand more taxes to pay for their failures. Yet there is little evidence that the leaders of either the Labour or Conservative parties, now polling less than 40 per cent between them, recognise their jeopardy….”
NB Personally, even if I felt sufficiently invested in the issues, there is no way I would attend anything organised by the wretched Yaxley-Lennon and his cronies. Then again, I wouldn’t attend a pro-Palestine demo for roughly similar reasons.
Meanwhile, here in Ireland, Conor McGregor has at last realised that in this country at least, an ignorant bigoted rapist has little or no popular support and has withdrawn from the Presidential race.
Recently heard the loathsome McGregor described as Andrew Tayto – a monicker that sums him up perfectly
Excellent!
Spud-U-Hate.
Aren’t we watching Capitalism Eating Itself? Billionaires get even more richer whilst ordinary, mostly decent, folks struggle to make ends meet and have lost all faith in politicians.
I grew up in a world where, sweeping generalisation coming up, things just kept getting better. Less wars, less famine, nuclear threat largely gone, the working class never in history had it so good, the planet is heating up but, hey, we’ll sort that out sometime in the next hundred years, plenty of time yet.
Given how Wrong all this turned out to be is there any wonder people are looking for a new way forward – let’s give that Farage a try, he can’t be any worse……God Save The King, Starmer is a Wanker, that Kirk bloke talked a lot of sense.
I’ve got no idea whatsoever how we get ourselves, our planet, out of this mess. I’m beginning to think it’s too late to stop now. Maybe just clamp the headphones on, turn up the volume, drink some wine, play some Wordle, walk in the vines and be kind. Most of all be kind
I’m not going to say anything derogatory about Wordle in this comment. Which is kind of me.
This is an interesting thought experiment on how Silicon Valley monetized social media, swept in and collected all the moolah, leaving everyone else to deal with the consequences of social and political systems deprived of the resources to support the basis of a safety net.
https://substack.com/@clairejhartnell/note/c-155795435
Defintely be kind. That is essential.
Interesting stuff – how do we get the genie back in the bottle though?
Ban algorithmic social media.
You get to see what your friends post chronologically, but what you don’t get is a line of code that says “you’ve clicked on a video about small boats/eating disorders/the Bee Gees, so now I’m going to serve you more and more of the same stuff forever”.
It’ll never happen – our government will probably never have the power or will to make such a change ever again, and the tech platforms have successfully convinced the public that, when it comes to free speech, the medium is even more important than the message.
Maybe once we crawl from the wreckage of whatever we’re heading towards the lesson will be learned though.
“once we crawl from the wreckage of whatever we’re heading towards the lesson will be learned though”
It would be nice not to have to go through another world war as the only way for the asset-owning class, in seeing their assets destroyed (would data farms be one of the main targets for drone strikes?), to be forced to limit their acquisition of all the wealth in the world, and for everyone else to demand that resources be distributed slightly more equitably.
The aligning of big tech with government, of oligarchs with Putin, sadly gives a sense of the direction of traffic. Austerity has stripped you of all your incipient security, now we want your lives, proles.
The medium is the massage. Scrolling soma.
I agree with you re. algorithmic social media.
And that is precisely why I deleted all my social media accounts.
Despite the example of Trump as to what populists in power can bring, there seems no second thoughts about heading down the same route in other countries. That must be ignorance or desperation or both. Shittier times, bring it on. At least he’s sending them all home.
I can’t really comment on what’s going on in UK beyond what I read in the papers. It all seems very different to the situation in Italy in many ways.
I’ve often discussed racism and immigration with Italian friends. (I’m not myself considered a “migrant” nor an “immigrant”, on account of being white and English – Yay! Go me!).
The prospects for immigrants living in Italy are very, very different to those for immigrants in the UK. This is largely because the UK has a long history of immigration and diversity, its visa policies focus on professional skills and its government does a lot more to protect minorities from discrimination, while in Italy the government’s policies regarding work visas are all about quota and seek principally to fill manual jobs.
As regards illegal immigration, in Italy the numbers fell by 60% between 2023 and 2024, while in UK they increased. The decrease is largely attributed to Meloni’s policy of sending illegal immigrants to Albania.
Italians are forever informing me that the UK is a much more racist country than Italy. They say the same but tenfold of America. Absolute bollocks, I say, politely. The UK and America are much more violent countries than Italy and their racists are more violent too. But at least racism in the UK and America is examined, rather than denied and swept under the carpet. It’s true that racism is generally condemned here and it’s quite rare to meet anyone with openly racist views (at least in the south) but most Italians happily tolerate the idea that immigrants work almost exclusively in the fields and the factories, without questioning it.
Unlike the UK, I don’t see us having a right-wing, fascist government in the near future – but that’s only cos we’ve already got one.
Probably said before I used to work closely with my Italian colleagues: being colleagues of mine they were naturally all university educated, spoke many languages and dressed impeccably, Armani head to toe. We’d have big European meetings where the policy for next year was set. The Italians would agree to strictly follow the guidelines then spend the next twelve months doing whatever they thought was best for them. That was all kind of laughable and expected.
The big shock after a sumptuous dinner in Rome or Milan or wherever and we were in the hotel bar sinking grappa – within ten minutes the misogynistic, sexist jokes began to roll in, stuff that Bernard Manning would reject as too much. Sooner or later properly racist remarks flowed, no one was immune – blacks, Arabs, Eskimos, all fair game.
I found such gatherings with Eastern European colleagues almost as disturbing but The Italians were in a class of their own.
Love Italy by the way, food, weather, scenery but my experience was there was (is?) some pretty dark stuff bubbling just below the surface.
Perhaps people feel like they still belong individually to one of the city-states, and this common language of racist, misogynistic intolerance is a way of generating a thin veneer of togetherness?
Think it’s more simple – ingrained behaviour. Comedy should, IMHO, be able to say almost anything but, and I’m no prude, the belittling of women or people of colour became very wearing….
This is on BBC iplayer for another 19 days Martin Parr film from 1999. Well worth a watch.
Modern Times, Martin Parr: Think of England: http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/m002j0v3 via @bbciplayer
Cheers Hubes, grabbing it now.
Got that recorded on my Sky Box
While not sure whether – or how deeply – it goes into things like the crossover between football hooliganism and the NF/BNP, the BBC is showing a rerun of The Firm on Weds night
Just to say it’s not a documentary in that vein it’s moving images not unlike Martin Parr’s photography.
It allows people to speak about their idea of being English or British.
It’s quite fascinating.
Looking forward to it
If you’ve not already seen it, Adam Curtis’ Shifty (also on BBC Iplayer is well worth watching, too
I’ve looked it up and I shall give them a view.
Another interesting contribution, this time from Labour MP, Clive Lewis.
“Believe it or not, I had an old school friend on today’s marches in London. He sent me some photos from the crowd.
We went to middle school together and grew up on the same Eastern District council estate in Northampton.
I asked him why he was there. He gave me two answers:
1. “The government doesn’t listen to us.”
2. “I want to feel proud of my country again.”
He wore a Union Jack, not a St George’s Cross as he said that one had been hijacked by racists.
He wasn’t there for Hopkins, Musk, or any of the professional grifters’ as he put it. He was there to feel part of something bigger, though he admitted there were a lot of, in his words, “assholes” there.
He’s an electrician. He’s smart. He’s not racist, but he’s not “PC” either. He’s not a fan of Keir Starmer but he also believes Farage would be a disaster.
Oh yes, he’s a bundle of contradictions! But aren’t we all?
I don’t know what ‘box’ we put him or the millions like him in. And I think pretending they’re all racists or fascists would be a massive mistake.
Some were. But not all.
This is about something bigger than immigration slogans or GDP numbers. For decades we’ve hollowed out our national life, underfunding and undermining the very institutions that once brought us together.
Karl Polanyi, writing in The Great Transformation, argued that when markets are “disembodied” from society, when land, labour, and life itself are treated as commodities
society pushes back. He called this the “double movement”: people seeking to protect themselves, to reclaim dignity and meaning when everything solid seems to melt into air.
That’s what I saw in my friend’s photos. Not just anger, but a demand for belonging.
We’ve replaced collective experience with atomisation. Without getting too nostalgic, programmes like the BBC’s Generation Game once pulled in millions every Saturday night, giving us something we could all talk about on Monday morning. Now we watch Netflix, Disney+, Prime, or Paramount, alone, in algorithmic silos.
Football used to be affordable and rooted in community; now it’s millionaires playing for the profitability of billionaires. The NHS, the post office, the railways – all chipped away, run down, sold off or centralised, leaving people feeling powerless and disconnected.
And don’t get me wrong: some kind of “Hovis Labour” nostalgia for the 1950s isn’t the answer. The country back then was often intolerant, grey, and deeply unequal. But what we’ve built since is a society that gives people little to hold in common, no collective story about who we are or what we’re for.
I reckon that’s partly why my mate marched. Not because he wants to turn back the clock. But because he wants to feel pride again. Pride in a country that is inclusive, fair, and offers a role for everyone. Pride in a nation that has a respected place in the world, tackles grotesque inequality, and gives people something real to believe in.
Polanyi warned that when democracies fail to provide a humane alternative, the backlash can turn authoritarian. This is how fascism grew in the 1930s, not because everyone became a true believer, but because millions felt abandoned and looked for strength, identity, and meaning wherever they could find it.
If Labour and progressives don’t offer that story of renewal, if we don’t rebuild our national institutions, restore collective pride, and re-embed markets within society, the far right will do it for us, in their own image.
And by then, it will be too late”
While I take the point that in any crowd of 100,000 people, not all of them will be bad, I think this is very much an example of a Labour politician seeing what they want to see, as they’re often prone to doing. He makes it sound like a crowd out looking for some misplaced class solidarity and on the verge of erupting into a spontaneous chorus of the Internationale.
It’s certainly beyond me how anyone could possibly decide that the best way to a country that is “inclusive, fair and offers a role to everyone”, or to secure a “human alternative” is to go out on a march organised by Tommy Robinson, at which a large crowd is informed that “violence is coming” and they should be ready to fight.
He is right about the need for national renewal though. It would be nice if his boss had a plan to actually deliver it.
He ( Lewis) is, like Trevor Phillips, at least making some effort, which is rather more than the performative posturing evident in many of the earlier posts on this thread from people who seem to have learnt nothing from the Brexit debacle.
Why is it performative posturing, rather than simply a differing opinion?
I agree about the Brexit vote, for what it’s worth. I just think there’s a material difference between ignoring the view of 17,000,000 people who voted on a single issue and the views of 100,000 marchers. We ignore the views of 100,000 people all the time – London sees marches of that size semi-regularly – and nothing terrible happens, because it’s a relatively tiny proportion of the population.
Focus should be on the polls, not on this march. There’s some overlap between the two, obviously, but it’s the polls that matter, because regardless of what those who took to our streets on Saturday might want, this remains a democracy.
I say all of this with all due love and respect btw, not trying to be snarky ❤️
Lewis doesn’t seem to have seen it fit to ask his old school pal if it hadn’t occurred to him that by turning out to attend a gathering mobilised by that fool Yaxley-Lennon, he was contributing to the amplification of the man’s poisonous platform of hate.
All well and good wanting ‘to feel part of something bigger’, but not so if that something is violent, thuggish and dangerous.
I posted a feature on LKJ’s Forces Of Victory, an album that is a response to the far right in the seventies, April 2024. The rise of Reform since then is frightening. Back then, the arrival of Thatcher hoovered up the right leaning vote, and no-one saw her coming.
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2025/sep/17/tommy-robinson-rally-whitehall-racist-far-right#comments