Two men, one question: “If these people are legitimate refugees, why are they not claiming asylum in France?” wondered one. “If these people were refugees, what are they fleeing from? They’re illegal immigrants,” postulated the other. One was Jonathan Gullis, a government MP. The other was Wesley Russell, a member of the far-right group Patriotic Alternative. Can you guess which is which?
Last month, as hundreds of fascist thugs threw missiles and set fire to police vehicles, William Shawcross, the government’s independent reviewer of the Prevent counter-extremism strategy, declared the far-right threat “overstated”. It’s a conclusion disconnected from reality. The far right now accounts for a third of terror threats in the UK. Recent attacks include the riot in Knowsley, a fire bombing in Dover, stabbings in Newcastle, use of a van to ram worshippers at a mosque, and the murder of Jo Cox. The threat in the UK is the most significant in Europe, with children as young as thirteen being radicalised online.
Shawcross also claimed that the definition of extremism has been artificially expanded to include mainstream Conservative views. This is more insidious. It’s an argument peddled by the far right itself for years. In reality, mainstream conservatism (at least as represented by recent governments) increasingly embraces the positions of the far right.
Right-wing extremism is characterised by authoritarianism and the persecution of minorities. In the 1990s (according to Paul Stocker’s excellent book, English Uprising (2017)) the far-right abandoned the skinheads-and-riots approach of previous decades to make itself more acceptable. Activists cloaked their obsession with (non-white) migrants in the language of “British values”, claimed to speak for the “silent majority” and accused anyone who called out their racism of “attacking freedom of speech”.
Recent governments, looking to distract from repeated economic failures, infighting and scandal, have increasingly adopted the language and ideas of the far right towards migrants. Ministers routinely employ dehumanising rhetoric towards refugees, who are almost always equated with criminals. Immigration is rarely mentioned without the epithet “illegal”, despite the Court of Appeal’s decision that migrants crossing the Channel have not committed a crime. The Home Secretary, Suella Braverman, describes migrants as “an invasion”, refusing to apologise even after a Holocaust survivor’s warning that, to a Jew born in the 1930s, her rhetoric sounded all too familiar. Both Braverman and her predecessor, Priti Patel, have ignored warnings that their language may encourage far-right terror.
Ministers promote far-right conspiracy theories, such as Theresa May’s lie that an immigrant was allowed to remain in the UK on human rights grounds because he had a pet cat. Ministers and the press obsess over “Pakistani grooming gangs” but their treatment of Shamima Begum suggests they only think grooming is a problem if the victim is white. Around a third of Brexit voters believe the far-right “great replacement” conspiracy theory – that a “global elite” of liberals and Jews is conspiring to replace white people by flooding the country with Muslim immigrants. Whitehall spokespeople mimic the far-right’s positioning against the “politically correct establishment”. Government sources also admit that their election strategy relies on stoking racial tensions through a “culture war”.
Recent governments have adopted the language and ideas of the far right
It’s not limited to language. The persecution of minorities – particularly refugees – is increasingly central to government policy. Most are prohibited from working. Thousands are rounded up and caged without trial in conditions described as “worse than prison”. Some have been left to drown after their boat capsized in UK waters. The government’s flagship policy of deporting refugees to camps in Rwanda rehashes proposals by Enoch Powell and his supporters. Plans to leave the ECHR will remove one of the last legal barriers to the full-on persecution of minorities. A recent exposé by the anti-extremist group Hope Not Hate revealed a secret group in the House of Lords (including government MPs) working with the British and European far right.
The government’s defenders claim none of this is racist. Ministers are simply responding to the “legitimate concerns of ordinary people” they say, pointing to a study ranking the UK as the “least racist country in Europe”. But that study relied on data collected in 2016, before the government’s full-on embrace of the far-right playbook. A newer study ranks the UK towards the top of the “most racist” table. Fifty-seven per cent of people of colour now believe the UK to be racist.
As polls show, the current government doesn’t represent the vast majority of Britons. Many “legitimate concerns” arise from situations created by the government. Migrants are often deliberately sent to the poorest parts of Britain, creating tensions around competition for scarce public resources. The so-called “small boats crisis” only exists because ministers refuse to provide “safe and legal routes” for refugees to reach Britain. Statistically, areas of highest anti-migrant sentiment tend to be places with the least exposure to migrants.
Macmillan, Heath, Thatcher and Major would be, (and are), aghast at the antics of their successors. The definition of extremism hasn’t changed. Today’s leaders have become extremists.
Sam Fowles is a barrister, Director of the ICDR, and a lecturer at St Edmund Hall, Oxford. He tweets at @SamFowles
