The far right are on the march so I decided to take a look. I travelled to a market town in deepest England and joined a rally organised by Britain First. The police had been alerted and there were white vans parked outside the train station with clusters of burly officers ready to waddle into action.
The town square was occupied by two demonstrations separated by flimsy steel barriers and a fluttering line of blue and white police ribbon. The Britain First supporters, with their Union Flags hoisted high, had assembled in a churchyard beneath an Anglo-Saxon tower. Beyond the barrier, a crowd of 100 left-wingers taunted them through a loud hailer: ‘Nazi scum, off our streets.’ The atmosphere was hostile but not violent. Bored cops leaned against the barriers, half-listening to the insults.
‘Can you hear those Nazis sing?’ yelled an angry woman clutching the mic. ‘I can’t hear a fucking thing.’ The locals ignored her tirade as they went about their errands. She had little effect on her followers who listened apathetically. Whiskery old liberals with beer guts straining at their belts. Bohemian women holding spaniel puppies or chihuahuas. A lot of students dressed in the current uniform: turquoise hair, black eyeliner, silvery rivets in their faces and Sanskrit wisdom tattooed on their forearms. I saw a timid-looking woman of about 40 with a pet-sling containing a small black cat. She wore a badge on her jacket that proclaimed: ‘You are enough.’ A strapping young woman had brought a luxury bullhorn with an air-raid setting that could fill the square with ghastly wailing. She smirked each time she pressed the switch. Not a happy soul.
Outside the church, the Britain First supporters looked oddly similar. Low earners whose lives have taken a wrong turn. De-energised types with a spare afternoon to kill. The vibe was more family friendly. Small children, babies in buggies, pets on leads. The two groups are distinguished by their dogs. The far right have large dogs. The far left have toy dogs or no dogs.
The leader, Paul Golding, arrived in a sombre black suit, a gleaming shirt and a pink silk tie. Spruce but menacing. He had a squaddie’s crew cut, bristly on top and shaved around the sides, which gave him the air of a junta commander at a civil ceremony. Sunshades and a holster would not have looked out of place. He’s an experienced speaker, not a great one, and he gave the crowd what they craved: emotional solace.
He began with a swipe at the far left: ‘I hoped it might rain today because they haven’t had a shower in months.’ He dwelt on his personal struggles with authority: ‘I’ve been imprisoned. I’ve been attacked by jihadi gangs in jail. I’ve been targeted by Isis but I’m still standing.’ Born in London, he was driven out by successive waves of migrants who, he said, ‘have turned England into a nightmare from the Congo’. He had a message for newcomers: ‘Don’t unpack, you’re going back.’ This couplet was taken up by his followers, rather listlessly, as a chant.
His vision for Britain involves an ethnic purge. ‘Fifteen million deportations,’ he promised. The d-word goes down well at a rally but alienates people at the polling station. Voters want a better future, not a rehash of the past. Golding’s proposal for a Brady Bunch Britain feels like a fantasy conceived by a novice. He hasn’t prepared a credible path to power and he can’t offer a set of practical, forward-looking policies that might attract floating voters. His mass exodus of immigrants will need to be enforced. But how and by whom? No explanations were given. The lack of detail is revealing. If you don’t have a plan to carry out your programme, you’re not a party. You’re a tantrum.
If you don’t have a plan to carry out your programme, you’re not a party. You’re a tantrum
Golding looks like a grumbler rather than a governor but he certainly enjoys the limelight. After the speech, his staff collected the Union Flags for the next rally, while he mingled with the crowd, taking selfies, greeting old friends, saying hello to dogs. Across the police lines, the far left spotted him enjoying his walkabout and took umbrage. ‘Paul Golding’s a wanker,’ they cried, like soccer hooligans. He ambled towards them, beaming. ‘I like that,’ he smiled. He sang their words back to them, to neutralise the insult. And he asked his supporters to join in. ‘Paul Golding’s a wanker.’ For a moment, the entire town was singing the same song.
Rally over, the Britain First crowd headed home. The far left assembled in a park and held a mini-demo of their own. They took it in turns to bawl into a loudspeaker and scare the birds. A few cops hovered nearby. ‘No borders, no nations,’ yelled one of them. ‘No fucking deportations.’ A woman of Chinese heritage heaped abuse on this country. ‘UK state, racist state,’ she chanted repetitively. She seemed unaware that her freedom to abuse Britain under the gaze of bored policemen rather undermined her case.
The habits of the extremists will look familiar to anyone with a religious background. They describe their proposal in a chant, or a hymn, and repeat it endlessly, even if it doesn’t materialise. Demos by the far left and the far right appear to be political events. In reality they’re prayer meetings.
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