Counter-protesting does not go far enough to fight the growing threat of the far right, and anti-racists must organise concerts and meet the public at football matches, a veteran activist has said.
Ameen Hadi, an organiser for Stand Up to Racism in Manchester who has been involved in the cause for more than four decades, called for a return of gigs such as Rock Against Racism and its successors.
He also said football clubs should return to working with anti-racism campaigners, including allowing them to leaflet inside the stadium when the new season starts.
“Counter-protesting alone is not going to solve the problem,” he said, when it came to encouraging people to support refugees and asylum seekers. “We actually have to reach out to schools, to [music-lovers], to other ways that people want to get together to try and then say: ‘Actually, these people aren’t your enemy.’”
Concerts organised in the late 70s and early 80s, and then again in the noughties, were widely considered to shift the dial in terms of public opinion and counteract the growing far-right movement.
Hadi, whose Stand Up to Racism group had been carrying placards and banners bearing anti-racist messages at protests organised by the far right in key locations such as Altrincham and in Manchester, said he had seen firsthand how much difference concerts with top artists could make.
In 2009, at an all-day event at Britannia Stadium in Stoke-on-Trent, artists and speakers urged the public to vote against the far-right British National party (BNP) at the upcoming European elections. He said the party had gained strong ground in the city but the concert ultimately “stopped” the BNP.
“At that point, they had councillors [on Stoke council] and within a year of that gig, they were all gone,” he said.
It came after a Love Music Hate Racism concert that was widely considered to shift the mood in 2008, where 4,000 people in Rotherham watched headliners Kaiser Chiefs with The Courteeners and Reverend and the Makers, whose band member Jon McClure organised the gig.
In Nuneaton on Saturday, where the far right held an anti-asylum seeker protest, a couple of far-right protesters could be seen wearing 2-tone ska T-shirts, including one featuring The Specials, a group from nearby Coventry famous for their anti-racist songs.
The band played at a Rock Against Racism gig in Potternewton Park in Leeds in 1981, while The Beat, another ska band, helped organise a similar Birmingham gig.
Other concerts across the UK featured The Clash, Buzzcocks, Pete Townshend of the Who, Gang of Four and John Cooper Clarke.
Maintaining this legacy, the naughties spawned Love Music Hate Racism, which began in 2002 with a Burnley gig by the anti-racist Leeds band Chumbawamba, soon followed by a festival in Manchester’s Platt Fields Park, headlined by Doves and Ms Dynamite. Later, acts such as Ed Sheeran, Pete Doherty and Stormzy all backed the movement.
Hadi said: “I got involved in the 70s, I was only 15, 16. I never got involved in the organisation, I literally went to the free music gigs that were put on. I saw some reggae bands and saw some of my favourite music. And then, it was in an atmosphere where I was welcomed for being there. And you felt part of it and, for me, that was even more powerful, because that’s thousands [of people].”
He said when tensions flare, especially at places were there are skirmishes between rival protesters, it can be easy to think that physically fighting is the natural escalation for the counter protesters.
“If we get fixated on our side that the only thing we need to do to stop growth of the far right is to take them out, then you end up with people who actually literally do believe that.”
He said a small number of anti-racist protesters had been recently kettled by police in Manchester during a far-right demonstration because they had planned to fight with the fascists who attended.
“It’s not just about outnumbering them so you can have a fight with them. It’s outnumbering them because you want your side to feel big and powerful, not let them feel powerful.
He said it was about giving people “confidence so they can go out and challenge people who come out with racist views, and do something in their own community and in their own workplace to make a difference”.
