A closer look at the event flyer revealed something strange but significant: there was no indication whatsoever of who had organised this demonstration.
The following is a reflection on what this author personally witnessed while protesting a far-right march.
On 13 June, I attended my first ever anti-far-right demonstration. I did so with little enthusiasm. If the demonstration had been held where it should have been, in Liverpool city centre, I would probably not have attended. But I considered the choice of County Road in Walton as the location to be a deliberately provocative act.
In my view, its purpose was to sow divisions in the local community, with a malevolent intention to in some way ‘build on’ the events of 3 August 2024 when, in the hours following protests related to the shocking murders of children in Southport, disorder took place on County Road, inflicting damage on an already economically struggling area and culminating with the totally mindless burning down of the Spellow Hub community library.
Walking along County Road before the march, I saw first-hand the damage the anti-immigration mob’s protest was doing to the local economy. Most shops and businesses were closed, all the pubs had shut, and even McDonald’s wasn’t open. The busiest trading day of the week was lost because of a march driven by far-right provocateurs. On top of that, many workers also lost a day’s wages.
Who pays the price? Not the haters, but the local community.
So what did I expect? I expected the event to be a damp squib, and what I experienced left me feeling that my expectations had been fully met. However, on reflection I think that attending was both worthwhile and illuminating. I had expected what I envisioned as the stereotypical far-right march, filled with racist chants, such as, “Stop the boats” and “Deport the immigrants” – the latter reinforced by the promotional flyer that had been circulated to promote the march.
Who are the ‘New Right’ and what are their goals?
Re-examining the flyer later, what jumped out at me was something I have never seen absent from a flyer for a political event: there was no indication whatsoever of who was behind the march; no organisation was named. I have since been informed that a well-known local Ukip organiser was present, but this does not prove that the demonstration was a Ukip event.
Another thing that puzzled me was that when the march began, it headed away from the city centre and seemed to have no designated destination. I am told that it eventually petered out and dispersed.
The first thing I noticed was how few people had turned up on either side. I doubt there were 200 on either side. On the leftist side were the usual collection of Trotskyists, left liberals and Greens. I stood with a small group of CPGB-ML comrades and a few fellow-travellers. We were in one corner, almost opposite the Red Lion pub. Physically, we were stood next to the leftists, but we were united with them only by a shared opposition to the mob of far-right lumpen elements assembling across the road.
It was interesting to note which flags the far-right marchers were carrying. I had expected to see placards with ‘Stop the boats’ and ‘Deportations now’, but I saw none of those. Instead, amongst a plethora of St George’s flags, I saw a couple of banners with “Jesus” printed on them, and one with a stylised Knights Templar symbol – a clear reference to the Crusades of the middle ages, suggesting that the focus of the organisers was not general opposition to immigration but opposition to muslims in particular. The flags indicated an overtly islamophobic politics fused with christian religious fundamentalism.
There is evidence that this is a growing trend in far-right politics – that a virulent form of anti-muslim populism based on cultural hatred is being cultivated in place of the former racially-based forms of bigotry. A notorious example of this is the march organised by Ukip in Whitechapel, Tower Hamlets, London, which is the borough with the highest percentage of muslims in the country.
That march was due to take place on 25 October 2025, and was described by the organisers as a “crusade”, through which attendees were called upon to “reclaim Whitechapel from the islamists”. In the end, the Metropolitan police banned the march from entering Tower Hamlets because of the inevitable violent disorder it would impose, but the propaganda work had to a large extent been done. The religious and Crusades-related symbols displayed on County Road clearly aligned with the stated aims of the Ukip-organised Whitechapel march.
The far-right activist Stephen Yaxley-Lennon (aka Tommy Robinson) is a well-known self-proclaimed zionist, and I suspect that this pro-zionist position is held by most, if not all, of the ‘New Right’ groups. My suspicion that the Walton marchers might share these pro-zionist sympathies was to a large extent validated by their reaction to the Palestine flags being waved by some of the anti-far-right protesters. This was the only time I saw any agitation or anger displayed by any of the marchers.
Islamophobia serves the warmongers, harms the workers
It is surely no coincidence that as British public opinion on Israel has become increasingly hostile as a result of its barbarities and genocide in Gaza, we have seen a rebranded Ukip party launch in 2025 under the ‘New Right’ moniker. The zionist entity is a regional pillar of imperialism, and the British state is ratcheting up repressive lawfare measures in an attempt to crush the public expression of opposition to zionism.
This is an indication of fear and weakness; the ruling class knows that the economic and political crises are deepening. As imperialism struggles to manage its own moribund condition, it becomes increasingly necessary to redirect popular anger away from the ruling class and towards carefully selected scapegoats. By presenting muslims, rather than imperialism, as the principal enemy, organisations such as Ukip help to divide the working class and channel legitimate anger into reactionary politics.
In that sense, whatever the subjective intentions of their supporters, they perform an objective political function of serving British imperialism.
I had spent part of the day before the march, Friday 12 June, with comrades leafleting County Road businesses and a small number of side streets. The vast majority of the businesses were immigrant-owned. So we have to ask: what would be achieved if the far-right got their way in Walton, and all muslims were forced out of the area? Would County Road be miraculously restored to the long-gone days of a thriving community shopping and commercial area?
The answer is an emphatic no. Instead, what would happen is that a large number of shop units and miscellaneous premises, including the present site of the mosque, would be left empty and shuttered, footfall in the area would fall even further, and non-immigrant-run businesses would also close. Workers currently employed in the affected shops and businesses would be out of work. In sum, it would be an act of community self-harm, resulting in long-lasting economic damage in an already struggling community.
The working-class people of Walton would quickly realise that nothing material had improved. Indeed, their conditions would be even worse, the anger would remain and become unfocused, leaving it in need of a new direction. The ruling class will no doubt ‘suggest’ a new scapegoat to them. Anything to distract them from the real cause of their frustration: the absence of useful employment that pays sufficiently to live a secure and healthy life.
Addressing the economic deprivation suffered by workers requires class unity, followed by class-consciousness: the realisation that despite many differences we are fundamentally a class, with shared interests in confronting the systemic contradictions of capitalism.
The anger felt over the cost of energy, food, water, rents and council tax, together with frustration at the sham of bourgeois democracy, where the choice is merely between different shades of imperialist-aligned politics and no real change is ever on offer, must be redirected upwards towards its real cause. The enemy is not the asylum seeker, driven to flee the land of his or her birth, but the ruling class whose system creates the conditions that force millions to migrate.
Our class enemy is not within, it is above.
Communists understand the class nature of our predicament and aim to communicate it to these rightly angry and frustrated workers so that they understand and can effectively organise to overcome the root causes of their hardship. We explain that long-term deindustrialisation of areas like Walton, and the greater north Liverpool area, is a consequence of the continuing and irreversible decline of British imperialism, and we demonstrate that bigotry is a political cul-de-sac.
Global mass migration and the high volume of asylum seekers have a single cause: imperialism. That is the economic system that holds back the economic development of poorer nations and is viciously hostile to their struggle for sovereignty. That is the economic system which needs to export monopoly capital and to extract superprofits, and whose brigandage is backed by the US military and the joint criminal enterprise known as Nato.
When imperialism is no more, the working class will be able to build a new economic system that serves its interests. In doing so, it will discover that the ‘problems’ of global mass migration and asylum seekers were always illusions created by the imperialists to thwart their demise.
Afterword
A follow-up, far-right march took place on 6 July, starting from the same location on County Road, and was billed on the flyer as the ‘Stop the Boats’ protest. I did not attend but I watched the Liverpool Echo’s video of the event. This was the anti-immigrant march I had expected to be protesting the previous month.
The march headed towards the city centre, with chants of “Stop the boats” and “Send them back”. There was not a religious flag in sight. Businesses on County Road were again closed out of fear of possible violence, causing yet more economic damage to the area.
There was, however, a silver lining: the turnout was pathetically small, with fewer than 50 people marching, and only a handful of counter-protesters turning out. This suggests that the appeal of the far-right is not as strong as the organisers of these marches hope, or as the hysterical media promotion would have us believe. The vast majority of the people of Walton are clearly not impressed by provocateurs attempting to spread hate and division in their community.
We must fight and educate all workers to identify their true enemy: the capitalist-imperialist ruling class.
And we must raise class-consciousness so that workers recognise their true, collective power, and learn that their unity is their strength.
Class Consciousness Project 
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