‘The British far right is a constellation of tiny groups, with no real organization or hierarchy’ – Technologist

Since a deadly knife attack in Southport on July 29, in which three little girls were killed and a dozen people injured, the UK has been plagued by racist riots targeting Muslim communities, mosques and hotels for asylum seekers, as well as the police. Fake news rapidly spread on far-right networks designating the alleged perpetrator first as a Muslim and then as a Rwandan asylum seeker, when in fact he was a 17-year-old minor of Rwandan origin, born in Cardiff and raised in the UK. The first week of August was punctuated by scenes of violence on an unprecedented scale in more than 20 English towns and cities and in Belfast, where racist, xenophobic and Islamophobic slogans were chanted: “Stop the dinghies,” and “Our women are not halal meat”. “I won’t hesitate to call things by their name: this is far-right thuggery” reacted the new Labour Prime Minister, Keir Starmer.

These violent riots, instrumentalized by the far right on social media, raise questions about the state of this political movement, which was thought to have been pushed to the fringes of marginality since the 2016 Brexit referendum: during the campaign, Labour MP Jo Cox was murdered by a neo-Nazi white supremacist. Eight years on, it is still very much there and making its presence known violently on the streets. Is this a renaissance, a mutation or a new face?

What do we really mean when referring to the far right in the UK? Since the racist “rivers of blood” speech by conservative nationalist Enoch Powell in April 1968, the far right has been represented by small, openly racist and violent political parties with a Nazi heritage, as they merged and split over time. The National Front, founded in 1967 and made up of white nationalists, went into decline in 1977 after a violent demonstration in Lewisham, a multicultural London suburb. When Margaret Thatcher came to power, she adopted a very right-wing immigration policy, which hampered the development of the far right. As for the British National Party, it underwent an ideological transformation under its leader Nick Griffin, abandoning the idea of ethnic nationalism. The result: two seats won in the European Parliament in 2009, and a few in some local councils, before also suffering a decline.

Unsinkable Nigel Farage

Researchers differentiate between these political parties and the radical right, made up of the UK Independence Party (UKIP), then the Brexit Party (a sort of UKIP 2.0), and finally Reform UK, which they describe as populist and nationalist electoral movements, whose common denominator is Nigel Farage. In July’s general election, Reform UK won around 14% of the vote and five MPs, including Nigel Farage, in a first-past-the-post system that is unfavorable to smaller parties. Although Farage’s influence in the House of Commons will be limited, these offshoots of the radical right have always exerted pressure on the Conservatives to turn right-wing on immigration policy.
The racist riots brought the English Defence League (EDL) and its former leader Stephen Yaxley-Lennon, known as Tommy Robinson, back into the spotlight. This violent anti-Islamic hooligan movement, created in 2009 and thought to have dwindled to nothing since the late 2010s, defends a white English nationalism. It represented a new form of far right, as this street movement which thrives on brawls, does not look to participate in elections.

You have 33.53% of this article left to read. The rest is for subscribers only.