Yesterday violent scenes broke out in Blackpool town centre as an angry mob gathered to spread racial hatred under the guise of peaceful protest. Rob Gomm writes about what he witnessed.
โYouโre going nowhere.โ
The boy, around 15, stood in front of a bus in St Johnโs Square insisting that the bus would have to run him over to move him. Why? He didnโt know, neither did his mates. โStop the boatsโ became stop the buses.
Later he would talk about having โMuslim friendsโ but believing all immigration needed stopping now. When challenged, he said if we stop all migrants we stop all the bad ones too. In the same way, I suppose, that if you stop all football, you stop the hooligans.
Shortly after this, dozens of rioters appeared in the middle of St Johnโs Square. One destroyed a sign that read โRebellion against bigotsโ. One peaceful protest, one rioter. Shortly after that a fight broke out, with rioters attacking punks. Having already run through Houndshill attacking security guards, rioters, like the guy with โDad 1โ on the back of his football shirt, now faced up against a famously anti-fascist crowd with police nowhere to be seen. The result was chaos, and Englandโs number one dad eventually in handcuffs.
The police had been given the runaround, there was no control over the rioters and their operation became reactive, a whac-a-mole for a rent-a-mob.
And this was a mob โ not a protest. We witnessed racism and violence fuelled by alcohol and cocaine. The reaction now must not be to attempt to appease the rioters by listening to their misinformed views. They donโt have anything worth listening to.
If we want a conversation about immigration, it cannot be with people who behave like this. It cannot be with people who bring their own young children to planned fight and use them as fodder. Two young children forced to be involved by their parents were sobbing as the situation in St Johnโs Square became out of control. Crying too was a worker at Street Life, someone who actually helps young British kids, instead of vandalising town and city centres in the name of defending them.
Usually we talk about the causes of these things to find out how to stop them. Well, itโs easy. The cause is marginalisation, the cause is a forgotten about section of the community. And the catalyst is the far right, lying and manipulating stories to further stoke that sense of otherness.
As rioters repeatedly tried to get to the Metropole, full of marginalised, othered people, what hit home was the irony. What we do need to do next is confront the arguments. Itโs time to start telling stories about immigration, about the people who keep our hospitals working, who run countless small businesses, who care for our elderly, who fight for our communities, and who make exponentially more positive impacts on our community than negative ones. Itโs time to reshape the narrative and rebuild the community.
When Reform candidate and misinformation spreader Mark Butcher gained 28% of the vote in Blackpool South in the general election, we knew that the sort of thinking that underpinned that vote had a foothold in our town. We knew it too from the Brexit vote. Yesterday was not just about Blackpool but it would be untrue to say itโs not about Blackpool at all. It is.
When Tommy Robinson came to town five years ago, he tried to use the same tactics of division. Speaking to him then in the middle of a throng of his supporters, we asked why would anyone vote for him, a convicted fraudster? His answer, โIf theyโre thinking about voting for me, doesnโt that tell you how bad things are?โ. They didnโt vote for him then but they have voted for the respectable face of racism in Nigel Farage now. We have to face this together to defeat it.
To build links with a community who repeatedly ask politicians, โwhat do you ever do for us?โ we need to reframe the question: what do you do and what do you want to do for your community? Then we need to find a way to help them achieve those goals. It would help if, first, people had safe, secure and good quality housing, felt safe in their community, and had access to secure work. None of the solutions to these problems are simple but the simple is rarely a solution. But we can build new links and renew hope in this town. Let yesterday be the last time this happens here.
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