OK, before reading or watching this from me, I’d recommend reading Dr Stacey Patton’s thoughts on this both on her Facebook and on Substack. She’s has a PhD in African American History, and has studied protests as part of her work. So yeah, way more qualified than me to speak on this…
This is part 1 of two versions of basically the same idea – the other one is a video that’ll be in the post after this (once I’ve got it off my phone and uploaded it to Flickr) with a transcript…
But here’s the blog post I wrote initially as a script for a video, but realised I was no good at reading scripts so just freestyled the video and ended up with two versions 🤷🏽
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I’ve been thinking about protest marches, and in particular yesterday’s march against The Far Right.
I think it’s important to define what it is, ultimately, that we are marching against. I think it comes down to three things:
- Patriarchy
- White Supremacy
- Capitalism
The “far right” and even fascism are labels for the impolite manifestations of the above. As a number of scholars have suggested on social media, fascism can perhaps be best understood as a method, rather than an ideology. A brand of violent authoritarian control that can be attached to any or all of the above. So while there is absolutely a resurgent far right in British electoral politics, the “far right” behaviour that well-meaning liberals are now marching against has been there all along, it’s just that now it’s impacting white people.
So the question of where the outrage is at stop and search, at racism in employment, entertainment, the music industry, advertising, in microaggressions, the housing market, social services, medical care, education… Those things have been there all along and “marching against the far right” does nothing material to fix them. It can, in fact, trick white liberals into thinking we’re doing way more than we are, to see peaceful marching in the safe cocoon of our whiteness as enough…
So when you hear black and brown commentators say that these performative, gestural marches don’t achieve anything, and you push back, it is understandably heard as “why aren’t you GRATEFUL?” which in turn is another manifestation of the micro-aggressions of racism embedded in liberal discourse.
It’s important to say that the march wasn’t monocultural – not only were there black and brown people marching, there were Caribbean, Arab, Jewish, Muslim and South Asian organisations with delegations involved. It’s important not to undermine what their commitment to an event like this represents, and to see that responses to this aren’t monolithic. Just as there are whites on the march who’ve been involved in solidarity struggles for decades, there are those who did it for shitty reasons of absolving their conscience, who still won’t deal with their racist relatives and coworkers. Performativity that is worse than useless.
So was the London march a good thing? Yes. As a piece of improvised street theatre, designed to counter the same from the flag-painting “patriotic” racists who filled London a few months back, it was very good. It shows (to who? good question, reader 😉) that racism cosplaying as patriotism isn’t perhaps a pervasive as the BBC coverage would have us believe. Indeed, alongside the recent dip in the polls for Reform and the political insurgency of the Greens, it helps put a celebratory, colourful face to that shift. The nature of the march was also important. Instead of drunk, angry white people daubed in red and white, we had a rainbow coalition, both in terms of race and in the colour of the flags and banners being waved. It also provided a way for the handful of Labour MPs who aren’t falling in line behind Starmer’s Labour party’s pivot towards authoritarian racist, transphobic policy making to be involved in something that marks them as separate from that. The ‘against the far right’ framing removing the awkward questions for them about their own party’s complicity in White Supremacy, Patriarchy and the Capitalist movitivations for so many of their current policy shifts.
But it’s important to acknowledge that the UK doesn’t have a good history of political change happening in response to peaceful, polite protest from white people. If it had been a majority black or Asian protest, the police response would’ve been different, the news coverage would have been different. Marching like this is easy. It was to all intents and purposes a lovely day out. Claiming allyship because you and your mates made banners and walked though London’s streets in the sunshine is pretty thin gruel.
So what do we do with it? Where does real change happen? I think that is perhaps best seen in who was represented on the march – trade unions representing millions of workers, faith groups, political parties and organisations – in short, the social structures that we interact with on a daily basis. Marching is fine, but deal with your bigoted colleagues, your family, friends, neighbours. We need to be allies when it’s difficult, when we’re the ones who feel isolated, when it’s awkward, when you need to call out people who’ll accuse you of disloyalty for it. And – crucially – to sit with the discomfort, dissatisfaction, suspicion and cynicism of those who’ve been watching this shit unfold for generations, who are tired of trying to work out who the “good whites” are only to find themselves turned on when they aren’t sufficiently grateful, aren’t the right kind of black, or are just sick and tired of inaction and ineffectiveness from those who are looking for a pat on the back and an invitation to the cookout.
To go with a gaming analogy, marching with people you agree with is political action in Minecraft Creative Mode – there are no real points to be scored, no real change to be had, and zero risk to yourself, but if it goes well you’ll start to formulate strategies, arguments and methods to counter not just right wing street theatre but the manifestations of patriarchy and white supremacy in the behaviours and utterances of those closest to you. Change is really hard. Marching galvanises movements but it doesn’t, on past evidence, convince anyone of anything.
So, I advise you listen to the critique of those who see marching as achieving nothing. They have reasons for saying what they say that we as safe white liberals and progressives need to listen to and not push back on. Sit with the discomfort of not doing enough and start to think about what “enough” might look like. Cos it sure as shit doesn’t look like complaining about black people not being grateful enough…