LAST SUMMER saw vicious racist riots outside asylum hotels following the horrible murders of those three girls in Southport and a set of lies that the far right immediately spread on social media.

But we also saw a fantastic community response by people who did not want to see racist violence return. Those people swept the streets after the riots, but more importantly, turned out in their tens of thousands when Stand Up to Racism called for countermobilisations on August 7 2024.

The size and demographic breadth of those mobilisations put that phase of racist riots back in their box — at least in the immediacy.

However, the year since then has been very good for the far-right. Nigel Farage has continued to be given a huge presence in the media, where he is hardly challenged. That same media has kept a focus on small boat crossings throughout the year. Leading Conservatives like Kemi Badenoch, Robert Jenrick and Suella Braverman echo Farage. Keir Starmer made his “nation of strangers” speech, echoing Enoch Powell.

And Labour in government has so far failed to produce significant change on the issues of poverty, health, housing and cost of living that are crying out for radicalism.

Now, the far-right isn’t homogeneous, and the world’s richest man has turned against Farage, calling him “weak sauce.” Instead, Elon Musk is supporting Tommy Robinson — encouraging his demonstration, offering to fund the Advance party he has joined and boosting the “Operation Raise the Colours” flags protest.

This is a very dangerous conjuncture: Farage and Reform riding high, and a more radical alternative to them being prepared in the event that they fail.

The truth is, we are currently in a race with the far right. Racist attitudes are spreading, as the false explanation that what is going wrong in our country is due to immigration is spreading.

People like Musk are funding and spreading that misinformation, consciously, to divert people from looking at the real cause of the problems we face: the growing inequality, the growing lack of resources in our public services, and the need to tax people like Musk to put those problems right.

So what is Stand Up to Racism doing?

Stand Up to Racism held an online meeting with more than 300 activists last week, in which we outlined the work that we are doing around the protests targeting vulnerable people in hotels. Here is my summary of it:

Stage one. Wherever we can, we are organising counterprotests. We organise them on the broadest possible basis; looking to involve local union branches, tenants associations, churches, synagogues, and mosques.

We do this carefully, keeping people as safe as possible. We do it to show the people in the hotels and the locality that there is opposition to the hatred coming from the other side. We do it to keep the other side as small as possible. We do it to bring together the conscious anti-racists.

We do it to monitor the other side and document that these protests are often being organised by people who were previously members of the BNP, EDL, Combat 18 and are currently members of Homeland, Britain First and Patriotic Alternative. These people are setting out to create racial hatred.

We do it to expose that Reform and Tory politicians are standing alongside, supporting these fascists. And we will do it on a national scale against Robinson this Saturday, September 13. But that is only stage one.

Stage two. Wherever we can, we build in local communities, we build community events bringing together people from different communities in an anti-racist, celebratory spirit. We see this as the already committed anti-racists reaching out to wider layers, to the people who might not all agree on immigration, for example, but who do not want to see a return to racist violence on our streets.

In those events, we also talk about what’s really going wrong in our communities and how we can work together to challenge those problems. We try to rebuild a class consciousness, which can start to win some of those influenced by the lies of the far right away from them.

How do we do it? In every area, we want to build local committees that can build these events. There are very good examples of local Stand Up to Racism committees that meet on a regular basis with delegates from local trades unions and from faith communities. We want to build these local committees in every area of the country.

Activists of these committees are also organising street stalls giving out leaflets exploding the lies of the far right; they are also reaching out to people living in the hotels to reassure them that they aren’t faced by hatred from everyone around them.

Stand Up to Racism will work with anyone trying to advance these sorts of perspectives. We need more people involved to help build these sorts of activities. If you’ve got any time or resources to help, please join us.

All that is required for the triumph of evil is for good people to do nothing. Stand Up to Racism.

Kevin Courtney is the former joint general secretary of the National Education Union, and currently the chair of the Cuba Solidarity Campaign and trade union liaison officer for Stand Up to Racism.