People have been waking up in recent weeks to see their streets lined with flags, and their roundabouts painted with red crosses. This is “Operation Raise the Colours” – a supposed ‘grassroots movement’ led by right-wing activists, aimed at plastering towns, cities and villages across Britain with patriotic colours.
By Tom Costello
What is happening here? Why has the red, white and blue suddenly gone up everywhere? The narrative being peddled by the ‘movement’ claims this is a reaction of ordinary frustrated locals who have been told they are ‘not allowed to fly our flag anymore’. If this were true, it begs the question: why has the Labour government responded to it by trying to outdo everyone else at flag-waving? Starmer himself in recent days has taken to the cameras to remind us all that he “always sits in front of a flag”. Foreign Secretary Yvette Cooper let us know recently that she apparently has “hundreds” of flags covering her shed at all times.
So what is actually happening?
Of course, not everyone flying a flag has racist intentions. But the reality is that today’s climate of nationalism and “patriotism” cannot be separated from the wave of protests targeting refugees and hotels housing asylum seekers spreading across Britain. It’s no coincidence that many of the key organisers of “Raise the Colours” have clear links to far-right organisations, with one case in point being Andrew Currien, a leading figure in the campaign with longstanding associations with the EDL and the fascist Britain First. Britain First has itself organised flag raising and leafleting sessions, handing out flyers with the slogan “send them all back”.
It’s also no coincidence that this is happening in the midst of Reform’s rise to the top of the polls. This is helping to give confidence and confer legitimacy to the wave of racist protests and riots targeting asylum seekers across the country. Nothing shows how emboldened the right wing feels better than the heinous tweet from Reform UK’s Douglas Carswell: ‘From Epping to the sea, let’s make England Abdul free’. ‘Flagmania’ is part of this same ugly climate. It is a new attempt to send out a clear ‘dogwhistle’ message to the right’s racist core, to create a perverse ‘loyalty test’ for black and Asian people, and to generally intimidate, all while being able to plausibly deny it.
A tool of the bosses
On a fundamental level, nationalism reflects the idea that people of the same nationality all have shared interests. The divisions that exist within nations – particularly between the working-class people and the billionaires – are downplayed. This ideology casts the nation as something akin to an extended family with a shared ‘national interest’, regardless of whether somebody is working class or a billionaire.
However, anyone who looks at our deeply unequal society even for a moment knows that this simply isn’t true. A bin worker on strike in Birmingham has no real interests in common with the British capitalists who derive their profits from underpaying workers and driving down our conditions. A low-paid cleaner on the London Underground has no interests in common with the multi-millionaire CEOs who run the transport companies. But ideas of a shared ‘national interest’ are routinely used as a way to try and mask the huge class divisions which exist within Britain (and elsewhere) today.
This is why it’s also fundamentally false to say that the right is ‘standing up to the elite’ with its anti-migrant nationalism. In fact, these poisonous ideas are tools of this capitalist elite. On the one hand, the capitalist establishment is often highly international in its ways of living. This is a class of people who can easily travel by private jet or yacht, many of whom will send their children to international schools for the kind of ‘elite’ education that working-class children are deprived of.
However, the bosses are fundamentally national in their interests and outlook. This is a feature of capitalism which stands in direct contrast with the needs of people and the planet, which require international solutions. The ruling elite also uses nationalism as a tool to divide the working class and to cut across the kind of cross-border solidarity which workers often show when they move into struggle. This is especially the case in the era of Trump 2.0, where the capitalists are turning towards increasing nationalism, protectionism and war in the context of a crisis of their profit system.
A perfect illustration of this is Richard Tice, Farage’s second-in-command, who boasts a £40m net worth. He sees no contradiction between living in his luxury property in Dubai and spewing racist propaganda about ‘Britishness’ to his base.
Working-class internationalism
Socialists and Marxists approach things from a fundamentally opposite point of view. Our starting point is to understand that, despite often being divided on the surface by borders, language, ethnicity or religion, all workers share fundamental interests in common as those who produce the wealth in society. Put simply, a British worker has infinitely more in common in terms of their interests with a German, Egyptian or Indian worker than they do with a capitalist who is English.
To win the inflation-busting pay rises that workers deserve, to end war and reverse the decades-long decline of our towns and end austerity, maximum working-class unity has to be built. This cannot be done while migrants and refugees, themselves a part of the working class, are made a scapegoat for the real problems in society.
This is often instinctively understood when workers move into action. Standing on a picket line with workers of different backgrounds for shared working-class demands tends to show this. But it also isn’t automatic. Building genuine workers’ solidarity also requires racism and other prejudices to be actively challenged within the workers’ movement, as well as within society more broadly. This means being willing to directly combat the far-right, which trade unions should take the lead in and which Corbyn and Sultana’s ‘Your Party’ must also be at the centre of.
Unions must urgently mobilise alongside communities to defend migrants and push back against racism and fascism. They must use their strength to organise against deportations, and involve themselves in the fight for safe routes for those fleeing war and persecution. To help cut across the divisive lies of the right, this should be connected in a clear way to the overall struggle to fight for decent jobs, pay rises, council house building, investment in public services and socialist change in the interests of the majority.
As the great socialists Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels said: “Workers of the world unite”. If you agree, now is the time to join Socialist Alternative!
