The resurgence of the far right

A blog by Jayne Egerton

Background

Growing numbers of women are concerned about the conflict between transgender and women’s rights. Mainstream politicians and the media have been compelled to address these issues as a result of grassroots feminist activism over the past 5 years. 

Much of this activism has come from feminists on the left, but as awareness of the issues has grown, so too has the appearance of anti-feminist and right wing voices who claim to have women’s interests at heart. WPUK have sought to take a consistent left and anti-racist stance. We refuse the overtures of ‘false friends’ and aware of the risks posed to women’s rights by those on the far and religious right:

There are also right-wing reactionary currents at work. Movements towards fascism and the far right are real and present dangers.

Ruth Serwotka WPUK 2019

The religious right plays a less powerful role in UK politics than in the US, but we cannot afford to ignore the same processes here. The US right-wing offensive against women’s rights has international aspirations, via organisations like Alliance for Defending Freedom its reach is global, including the UK, and has played a role in the recent anti-abortion law in Poland.

Judith Green WPUK 2020

In the current context, we see the resurgence of the far right as an electoral force. In recent European Parliament elections  Alternative fur Deutschland (AfD) came second place in Germany’s poll and in France the anti immigration National Rally (RN) were predicted having been in reach of power after the first round of snap elections, but were marginally thwarted by a strategic left-green alliance, The New Popular Front.

Nor can we ignore the US, where former U.S. President Donald Trump and MAGA Republicans have a better-than-even chance of winning the U.S. presidency in November.

In the UK, Nigel Farage’s anti-immigration party, Reform UK, won 4.I million votes, (14.3% of the popular vote) and 5 seats in Parliament in the General Election on July 4th. Having benefited from the  collapse of the Tory vote, Farage is now preparing for the election in 2029, and announced that “we’re coming for Labour”. 

Tommy Robinson (Stephen Christopher Yaxley-Lennon), a convicted criminal and one of the most well known figures of the UK far-right, held a rally in central London on 1st June. It was attended by over 5,000 people and followed on a livestream by hundreds of thousands. By common consensus, this was one of the biggest far right marches in recent years.   

Why should feminists be concerned?

The far and populist-right have historically drawn much of their support from men but the picture is changing. The European far right now actively courts women and weaponises male violence against women and girls (MVAWG) by promoting false narratives about Muslims, asylum seekers and migrants as disproportionally guilty of such crimes.

Sections of the far-right present themselves as champions of liberal values in contrast to Muslims. 

The Independent 

Unlike their former far-right incarnations, they may present a female and LGB friendly face to frame Islam and non European migrants as posing a threat to ‘our’ women and children & ‘our’ way of life.  This is not an entirely new phenomenon- the English Defence League, founded by Tommy Robinson, was utilising anti Islam arguments to appeal to women over a decade ago, and the EDL even had an LGBT division.

The leadership profiles are changing – Germany’s Alice Weidel, AfD parliamentary co‐leader and  Ann Marie Waters, the leader of For Britain (a far-right UK based group, now dissolved) are both lesbians. Marine Le Pen, was President of the NR for a decade and Giorgia Meloni, the current prime minister of Italy, leads Brothers of Italy (FdI), a party with neo fascist roots, since 2014.  

This rebranded right-wing extremism has the potential to attract more female supporters than its older versions. In France, women are increasingly voting for the National Rally. On EU election day in June, 33% of those who voted were women voting for Le Pen’s party, outstripping 30% of men. This was a significant 12% increase from women voters over 5 years. 

The far right has been particularly adept at securing female support in recent decades and maintaining their interest in diverse ways.

Katherine Williams 2024 

Such parties are also increasingly claiming to represent women’s interests in the context of conflicts between women’s and transgender rights. In the UK, this includes the SDP*, The Heritage Party and Reform UK.  At the moment, women are less likely than men to support Reform, across age groups, with young women around three times less likely to say they’ll vote Reform than men. In practice, Reform did slightly better among men (16%) than women (12%) in last weeks election.

*The SDP, whilst having policies on immigration and the traditional family most associated with the populist right, also has some left leaning economic policies.

Whilst this is reassuring, there are signs on social media that a small number of women voted Reform, partly on a basis of the Party’s transgender related policies. Tommy Robinson is also staking his claim, expressing the desire to create a new “leaderless movement” which could unite around a shared agenda which includes a focus on transgender issues. This, despite the fact that the party is beset with scandals about racism & misogyny: 

• Femi Oluwole, a Black journalist was removed from a Reform UK rally

• Reform canvasser who was caught making a racial slur about the prime minister in an undercover investigation

• Reform candidate Robert Smith called JK Rowling a ‘wild bitch’ and used slurs against gay people

• The normalisation of racism and dog-whistles will only get worse if the press continues to treat Farage as an entertaining figure representing the ‘real views’ of the British people

Tommy Robinson and claims of ‘two tier policing’

It’s disturbing to see women’s legitimate concerns about the poor policing of some of WPUK’s public meetings being framed, in some quarters, as having anything in common with Tommy Robinson’s claim about ‘two-tier policing’. Given as his stated reason for organising his June march, a much wider racist agenda was apparent.

The march on 1st June was characterised by protesters chanting ‘anti-Muslim’ slogans, ‘we want our country back’, and the leading banner at the front of the marched read ‘This is London, not Londonistan’. 

The mainstream conservative press gave no credence to Robinson’s description of his march as a protest against “two-tier policing” and were unified in their description of its far right nature.

As women’s rights campaigners, our right to free speech and assembly has been undermined in recent times, but we must resist any attempt by those who’d seek to make common cause on the basis of Tommy Robinson’s long standing, but misleading representation of himself as a free speech martyr.

Rather than the police being soft on left-wing protests, as Robinson claims, police are increasingly using counter-terrorism powers to target legitimate political activism. The police themselves have said such claims, especially from political leaders, have stoked far right violence, and a former police chief felt compelled to warn in 2021 that  new protest laws moved Britain towards “paramilitary policing.”

Grooming gangs

Another area of misinformation relates to Robinson and his supporters claim that he was responsible for uncovering the grooming gangs scandal in the North of England. Julie Bindel and others have long debunked this re-writing of history.

Much of the media coverage and discussion of the trial of nine men convicted of sexually abusing five teenage girls is focused on ethnicity. That eight of the perpetrators are Asian appears to be more relevant than the reasons why the rape of young, vulnerable girls is so widespread and the crime so difficult to prosecute.

Julie Bindel Grooming Gangs:the myth that fascists cracked the case

Far from supporting survivors, Robinson was found guilty of interfering with the trial of a grooming gang at Leeds Crown Court in May 2018, which could have caused the trial to collapse, potentially with rapists walking free.

Most contemptible of all, Robinson, amongst other far right activists, is exploiting the survivors of child sexual exploitation for his own political goals. Many members and supporters of Tommy’s English Defence League have being convicted of child sexual exploitation offences: 

Robinson defended close friend and ally Richard Price when Price was convicted of making four indecent images of children in 2010, claiming that he had been “stitched up” and calling for his release. A previous investigation by Hope Not Hate uncovered at least 20 cases of members and supporters of the English Defence League (EDL) being convicted of child sexual exploitation offences.

Andrew Kersley

• Tommy Robinson is a hypocrite when it comes to opposing child sexual exploitation

• A “senior member” of the far-right English Defence League has been jailed for sexually abusing a schoolgirl dozens of times.

End Violence Against Women (EVAW) have a long standing understanding of Tommy Robinson’s cynical attempts to attract female supporters, as evidenced by their 2019 statement:

Tommy Robinson’s factually incorrect messages about ‘grooming’, and his attempt to portray himself as a champion of the cause, are an insult to survivors of abuse.

EVAW: 43 women’s groups reject euro election bid

And a further statement in 2023: 

In recent years, we’ve seen the far-right’s co-option of our movement to promote racist and white supremacist agendas. These include the likes of Stephen Yaxley-Lennon (aka Tommy Robinson) who use cases of child sexual exploitation by so-called “grooming gangs” (which they now often use as shorthand for Pakistani or brown Muslim men) as a rallying anti-immigration call.

EVAW: New guide to challenging the far-right’s weaponisation of gender-based violence

Robinson’s opportunism also extends to his avowed apparent opposition to antisemitism, despite his political history enmeshed with far right antisemites. Those who’ve taken his support for Jewish people at face value might note that the organisers of the March against Antisemitism made it clear that he was not welcome and the police arrested and removed him from the event.

Whilst Robinson’s march was mainly white and male, there was a significant minority of female attendees, as well as a smaller number of Black and minoritised people. Several prominent campaigners who advocate for sex-based rights, posted on social media that they’d attended the march. 

Anti-racist feminists must oppose identitarian politics which suggest that women, gay and Black and brown people can’t be criticised for making reactionary political choices. It’s well documented that even the most extreme right-wing groups now seek to include minorities, in their rank and file, even their leadership.

We should also take account of the fact that some mainstream right-wing politicians have adopted rhetoric and policies which echo those of the far-right, rendering the latter more palatable, as well as more difficult to differentiate.

The Tories and Labour competing over hardline immigration policies only helps to mainstream far-right ideas

Shabna Begum

Rebuilding a feminist and anti-racist secular left

Newer far-right narratives engage in anti-Muslim, anti-migrant scaremongering, but do so in the name of women and gay people, whilst also claiming to oppose ‘gender ideology’.  We must resist their dishonest framings and look to other political traditions which support women’s rights, secularism and anti-racism. 

The thinking in this blog has been shaped over many years by Women Against Fundamentalism, Southall Black Sisters and the Feminist Dissent collective, all of whom are part of a long tradition in the UK of mainly women of colour, campaigning against religious fundamentalisms, in all their forms, as well as racism and the far-right. 

Never afraid to call out the failures of the left, they’ve reminded us to reject the false allyship of the racist-right and the co-option of our politics.  Feminist campaigners for sex-based rights must stand in this tradition, or risk losing all credibility at this crystallising political moment.

Allowing our voices to be hijacked carries real and present dangers: In the US a small number of feminists have worked, on a single-issue basis, with Christian right organisations, giving the latter a bipartisan gloss. Those same organisations are now involved in Project 2025, a detailed, well-funded programme for the dismantling of US democracy.

Let’s follow the examples of our thousands strong French sisters who recently marched against the far right and contribute to the rebuilding of a feminist and anti-racist secular left, as imagined by  Feminist Dissent. You can follow their suggestions here.

Credit: REUTERS

Jayne Egerton

Radio Producer & Socialist Feminist

Read: Women & The Religious Right in the USA