We are horrified at the murder of three young girls that took place in Southport on Monday 29 July. Our whole-hearted thoughts go to their families and those that knew them. This incident is a horrific tragedy that must be seen in the context of violence against women and girls (VAWG). As with other incidents in recent years, the murders of Nicole Smallman, Zara Aleena, Bibaa Henry, Sarah Everard, Ellie Gould and Alice Ruggles, we have seen media outrage but a lack of willingness to identify this as primarily an issue of male violence. The National Police Chiefs Council’s (NPCC’s) report declared VAWG a national emergency less than a week before the Southport murders. Organisations dealing with violence against women have long been raising the alarm bells that this national threat has not been sufficiently prioritised, neither addressed through meaningful action or accountability, nor received the investment needed to address and end it.
We also see extensive mobilisation of the extreme right on this issue, demonstrating the extent of their organisational capacity through the promotion of racist and xenophobic conspiracy theories online. These events have been referred to as ‘protests’ and as ‘mindless violence’, such as the attacks on a local mosque in Southport, an Asian man assaulted in Hartlepool on 31 July, or a Black bus driver stabbed in London on 30 July, and the widespread riots on 3 and 4 August at Bolton, Manchester City, Rotherham, These events are not ‘mindless’ and neither are they ‘protests’. They are public demonstrations of xenophobic and racist hatred, targeting Muslims, Asians and recent migrants. We know that family, friends, and communities across the country are sharing messages telling their sons and fathers to be careful when in public spaces, while women and girls are told to stay indoors or travel together for safety.
There has been a general failure to realise the extent to which questions of gender, and in particular the “protection” of the ‘white family”, is a central part of the way the racist far right seeks to exploit social anxieties and generate support for its xenophobic agenda. This has important historic dimensions but was also, as we noted earlier, a key aspect of far right conspiracies during the Covid pandemic. The calls for ‘protecting our women and girls’, alongside calling out ‘degenerate Muslim men who abuse their women’, only reinforces the patriarchal view of women as property – this is honour abuse by any other name. While making these calls for protecting women and girls against outsiders, the far right is not concerned, even slightly, about increasing levels of domestic violence against women and girls. One of the men seen rioting in Southport and attacking police on 30 July was arrested in Southport for domestic abuse on the 31st. Men fuelled by alcohol and drugs, who have committed acts of violence on the streets, will be returning to their homes – and we all know what’s likely to happen. Services must monitor this diligently through the calls received on their helplines.
As feminists we call out abuse in all communities. The posturing of men claiming to protect “us” from men from “other” communities needs to be understood as part of the strategy to racialise male violence. The religious leaderships that have established themselves as the spokespersons of minoritised groups are unable to name this strategy and oppose the racist and patriarchal ideas that it is based on. What we need is solidarity against all male violence. We need to oppose the tacit compliance of those who stand by silently as well as condemn the hypocritical trope-ridden cheerleading of entitled press pundits who claim to speak for working people against ‘elites’.
It is important that these events not be labelled as ‘working class’ riots and violence. Local northern working class communities have come out in protest against this fascism, and some had already reported the attempted radicalisation of people via Facebook to the police (with little effect) in the days before the riots and public unrest in areas such as Sunderland. In the middle of this horror, we also see people pulling together. We see brickies giving their time to rebuild the wall of the mosque in Southport, neighbours clearing up the rubble in Southport and Sunderland, a lone woman standing against a crowd with a sign proclaiming ‘Hope not hate’ and ‘Racism not welcome here’. Residents of Liverpool have turned out en-masse to block attacks on a mosque in a show of strength that included the inspiring Nans Against Nazis. A number of anti-racist counter demonstrations are also planned across the North East in the coming weeks.
While many people have been shocked by the suddenness and extent of the far right’s violent mobilisation, it is important to understand that this has not come out of nowhere. As Sara Khan, former Commissioner for Countering Extremism recently noted, for the last five years in particular, Conservative government ministers have been ‘giving the green light’ to the racist and xenophobic conspiracy theories of the extreme right. The former Conservative Home Secretary Suella Braverman repeated the language of the extreme right in describing asylum seekers who arrived on Britain’s shores after the most desperate and dangerous journeys as ‘invaders”. Nigel Farage, now an elected MP for the ‘Reform’ Party, has been promoting misinformation about the extent of migration to the UK, and has been given extensive support to present these ideas in the pages of The Sun, The Daily Mail and The Telegraph. This latest mobilisation of the far right, which is once again based on lies and disinformation, represents their attempt to use the violence faced by women and girls to promote their agendas; we see this when we watch women and children among the far right rioters on TV and social media.
The extent of this mobilisation affects us all – Muslim, non-Muslim, white and non-white, religious and non-religious and it is not going to go away on its own. Ultimately, it will take all our solidarity and creativity to defeat these 21st century pogromists and to formulate more hopeful futures for people instead of pandering to a politics of hatred and blame. Many of the founders of Feminist Dissent were active participants in the anti-racist movements of the 1970s and 1980s which saw black communities and their allies on the left organising to defeat an earlier incarnation of fascist hatred and violence. We see it as more important than ever that we bring the history of building a secular, feminist, anti-racist and left perspective into the current struggles against fascism.
.jpg "Fear is their weapon, Courage is yours")
