В Шотландии зафиксировано более 150 расистских протестов против мигрантов, организованных сторонниками правых партий

ACROSS the length and breadth of the so-called United Kingdom in the last two years there have been more than 450 anti-immigrant and anti-asylum protests. The big kicking off point was the killing of three children in Southport. Often under the spurious banner of “protecting our women and girls”, many of these protests have been outside hotels and hostels where asylum seekers have been living. Some have turned into pogroms, seeking to either burn migrants out of their dwellings or force them to flee under a threat of violence. Shamefully, about 150 of these protests have been in Scotland, with Erskine, Falkirk, Inverness, Paisley and Perth among the hotspots. This is a bit of a leveller after Reform did less well in Scotland than in England and Wales in the elections in May. As many have rightly said before, we are deluding ourselves if we think racism isn’t an important issue in the Scotland. READ MORE: Police threat as 'rare plant vanishes' from Scottish beach earmarked for golf course For the far right and fascists in the UK, these protests have been manna from heaven, providing not only a long-desired hunting ground but also a recruiting sergeant. Nigel Farage, Tommy Robinson and Rupert Lowe have been among the main rabble rousers, spreading not just the ideology of racial hatred but also that of ethno-nationalism and white nationalism. A key question in thinking about these reactionary politicians is what is their social base? In other words, who and where are they drawing support from? And does this give us some clues as to how the support for Farage, Robinson and Lowe can be undercut? There are undoubtedly middle class and ruling class supporters of the likes of Farage, Robinson and Lowe. Elon Musk is the obvious one but crypto-currency capitalist, Christopher Harborne (of the infamous £5 million gift to Farage) and billionaire property tycoon Nick Candy – the treasurer of Reform UK – are among the others. They have their own ideological and instrumental reasons for supporting the reactionary politics Farage, Robinson and Lowe. Yet the numerical bulk of the support comes from the lower classes and especially those in precarious and low-paid employment and those that are unemployed and living on benefits. It is worth recalling that a poll by JL Partners of 1002 trade unionists allowed Reform UK to trumpet themselves as being “the voice of the patriotic working class”. The June poll showed 28% of those surveyed supported Reform (up 12%) and 28% supported Labour (down 20%). So, not all supporters of the far right are necessarily from lower levels of the working class which have become known as the precariat, with the word combining precarity and proletariat. Nonetheless, many more supporters are from the lower levels of the proletariat or working class. Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels many moons ago used the term, lumpenproletariat – lumpen meaning rags or tatters when translated from German to English – to refer to the outcasts at the bottom of society. They were describing the alienated, dispossessed and excluded underclass of capitalist society, suggesting they lacked any working-class class consciousness and, therefore, could easily be exploited by reactionary forces and easily turned into baying mobs. People of the precariat blame other marginalised groups for their plight and cannot see the wood for the trees, so that the rich and powerful are let off the hook for their economic and social misdemeanours. That is precisely why some of the rich and powerful support Farage, Robinson and Lowe – to mobilise these people as on-the-ground shock troops for their racist and reactionary ideology. The precariat say, “We want our country back!’, not realising they never had it in the first place. In other words, they never owned it, controlled it or benefited from it. They have been sold an entirely false narrative. Compared to the dyed-in-the-wool ideology of the far right and fascist activists, if there is a silver lining to this dark cloud, it is that the racist and reactionary politics of the followers of the far right and fascists are largely those of instrumental intolerance and not of ideological intolerance. Their hatred towards migrants is due to them allegedly “stealing” their jobs, health service, and houses and not because migrants are foreigners or non-white or an inferior species. Last December, BBC Scotland quoted Kevin, a regular protester against asylum seekers outside the Cladhan hotel in Falkirk as saying: “They’re getting telly, they’re getting warmth, they’re getting clothing, they’re getting phones, they’re getting free healthcare and if you think that’s right in our country right now, I don’t.” This highlighted that the racism of the likes of Kevin is about competition over scarce resources. This means people like Kevin can be won away from racist and reactionary politics by providing decent jobs, health services and homes for all and to do so does genuinely means having to attack the vested interests of the rich and powerful. One of those who have advocated this kind of approach to Reform UK, Restore Britain and Tommy Robinson is Eddie Dempsey, the general secretary of the RMT union. Last December in an interview with the Politics Home website, Dempsey argued: “The problem with people on the left of politics, and has been for a long time, is that they spend so much time worrying about what goes on in people’s heads, they forget what’s going into their bellies.” In other words, Dempsey believes that if the left spoke to the working class or any parts of it about their economic and social grievances it would be able to undermine the political support it gives to the likes of Reform, Robinson and Restore. A YouGov survey in September 2024 showed that levels of support for communism far exceeded those for fascism among the population as a whole and especially among the working class. The Dempsey argument is a clear challenge to the consensus on fighting racism and reaction as embodied by likes of the Stand Up To Racism, which relies on messages such as “Refugees are welcome here” without attempting to deal with genuine grievances that those that support Reform may have. We know that the likes of Reform, Restore Britain and Robinson tap into the genuine grievances that many have with the existing set up. We also know that they aim to set the clock back by many decades on any social progress – the very meaning of being reactionary. All this provides an opening for the case for independence but only if the particular case put forward understands that working-class people in Scotland – including those at what might be described the lowest levels – will only be won to the cause of independence if the case can convincingly show that it will deliver improved living standards and life chances for them, their families and communities. Professor Gregor Gall is a research associate at the University of Glasgow.