Stand Up To Racism supporters at the vote count on Thursday night
Anti-racists are celebrating the defeat of far right Reform UK and the victory of the Greens in the Gorton and Denton by-election.
“It was a combination of relief and elation,” Eve told Socialist Worker. Eve lives in the constituency, in Greater Manchester and is part of the Stand Up To Racism (SUTR) campaign against Reform UK.
SUTR activists went door to door delivering around 20,000 leaflets across the area.
There were around 150 volunteers involved. Every Sunday there was a mass leafleting session and then throughout the week activists continued to cover areas.
“I’ve been voting Green for decades and feeling like I’m the only person is a nightmare. Now the nightmare of Reform UK is gone and something positive has come out of it too.”
She thought that anti-racists now “need to organise local communities and hold the Greens to account in the same way we would with Reform UK”. We need to “make sure that they are good enough, that they can improve our lives, so that other people want them again,” Eve argued.
When handing out SUTR anti-Reform UK leaflets, “we had people who read it and then came out of their houses and down the street to thank us”. “There are pockets of people who are worrying about Reform UK and wondering about what to do about this.
“I was the same. I was thinking how do I stop this happening? My dad told me about this in the 1930s. He saw the hate that went on then and that was what was making me worried.”
Eve said that “we need to still keep on”. And she argued that Labour “need to look at themselves”. “I hope that Labour really takes this as a signal. We want them to be less like Reform UK, not more.”
Mike, also part of the SUTR campaign, told Socialist Worker, “It tells us that Labour can be beaten from the left. It isn’t purely the far right. The main thing is the trampling of Reform UK and its candidate, Matt Goodwin, looking gutted.
“Although the Greens were the most prominent part of the campaign, the fact that we delivered huge amounts of leaflets and held highly visible stalls, it made a difference,” he said.
“The victory by a left-leaning party can act to encourage the anti-racist movement as well.” He explained that the Greens ran an “effective” campaign “mobilising their support for Palestine and anti-racism on the doorsteps and talking about the cost of living crisis”.
“People liked the message that we are anti-racist, we are on the side of the people of Gaza and we are also on the side of people worried about the price of food and gas.”
Mike thought that in the short run it will pull a lot of people towards the Greens. “We have to argue that a left alternative to Labour has been proven to be possible and we should build that. We have to build a genuine, fighting, militant left party.”
In Greater Manchester there have been a whole series of attacks from the far right. “The far right have been aggressive and intimidated people, including a number of people who have been assaulted,” Mark explained to Socialist Worker.
“Last Saturday we had a major mobilisation to stop Britain First, who are the boot boys of the far right. But in Gorton and Denton it was the suits of the far right, and leading them was Matt Goodwin.
“People are buzzing and more confident. People had been rattled. It has helped in that way,” he said.
Hannah Spencer is the newly elected Green Party MP. “When she was a councillor she had been on almost every single one of the SUTR rallies” outside a hotel housing asylum seekers, Mark added.
And Mark argued that “in the next set of elections, the May local elections that are happening all over, a bigger campaign will be needed”.
“But those who went out leafleting in Gorton and Denton feel that they made a difference, to make sure that the racism of the Reform UK candidate was exposed.
“We now have a network of SUTR people in Gorton and Denton that will be the basis for forming a new group in the area.”
When activists were going door-to-door leafleting, they also handed out leaflets advertising the Together alliance demonstration against the far right on 28 March.
All anti-racists should put the date in their calendar.
Plus: 500 on Leeds unity march
Far right is still a threat
Fanning the flames of Islamophobia and racism is hardly restricted to the far right
