Thursday, 7 August 2025 — Institute of Race Relations
We tend to think of all the great social movements in history as driven by progressive values – anti-racist and for civil rights, for instance. But what do we do when a vociferous, regressive, racist social movement emerges, one that threatens to destroy every gain that we have fought for over decades? On 2 August, an estimated 1,500 people attended a Britain First ‘march for remigration’ in Manchester. In addition, over the last fortnight, as recorded in our regular Calendar of Racism & Resistance, anti-refugee protests have taken place in Essex, Surrey, Staffordshire, Nottinghamshire, Portsmouth, Leeds, Edinburgh, Glasgow and Newcastle. A racist social movement calling for the deportation of every single asylum seeker in the country is emerging as one of the dominant collective political action movements of our times.
In the face of such a storm, we need to be strategic, deploying tactics that start with counter-protests opposing physical manifestations of
anti-refugee sentiment, but also go further, chipping away at the far-right online ecosystem that acts as a mobilising platform. A decentralised, racist social movement is spreading disinformation and racist messages online, chasing audiences and engagement.
Our efforts to counter a racist social movement will be most effective if we identify the complete ecosystem of the far Right. From IRR’s monitoring, a picture is emerging of a range of actors, each playing a different role in stoking up tension. There are extreme-right MPs and local councillors who see nothing wrong in broadcasting Home Office dispersal plans even before they are publicly known or made subject to
consultation, in parliament or on their social media accounts. Fittingly, the logistics of getting troops in place is provided by an
ex-soldier who runs the Great British National Protest, an online presence that encourages demonstrations outside every migrant hotel until all asylum seekers are deported. And then there are the neo-nazi, neo-fascist parties like Britain First, Patriotic Alternative, the Homeland Party and White Vanguard, who get their recruiters to the scene of anti-refugee protests hoping to mop up new members.
On 11 September, the IRR is supporting an event hosted by Leeds Beckett University. Reflecting the Riots: Racism, Islamophobia and Community Resistance is an important space for people from across the north of England to come together to develop anti-racist practice to better defend communities from the multiple harms caused by the far Right. You can sign up here.
IRR News team
A fortnightly resource for anti-racist and social justice campaigns, highlighting key events in the UK and Europe.
Calendar of Racism & Resistance
In this week’s Calendar, we highlight stories unfolding over the past two weeks on far-right fascism, policing and criminalisation, migrant and asylum rights, and also resistance to state violence in the UK and Europe.
Find these stories and thousands more on our Register of Racism and Resistance database.
There has been a concerted attempt by politicians to erase the fact that last Summer’s far-right orchestrated riots were marked by extreme racist violence. But are the courts guilty of similar erasures as they treat those who perpetrated the violence and those who responded as two sides of the same coin?
Read an edited and updated version of a speech, given by IRR research associate Dr Jon Burnett on 11 June 2025, at a Symposium on state racism and the CJS organised by Race & Class/Institute of Race Relations.
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