Anti-racists outnumbered fascists in Southampton on Saturday. Around 400 people turned out to show up to 100 fascists that they’re not welcome in the city.

The fascists, led by Ukip leader Nick Tenconi, marched to the Southampton cenotaph. Tenconi asked who there was from Southampton—and was met with silence.

They sang the praises of United States president Donald Trump, carrying a banner that read, “Mass deportations now.” They tried to weaponise child sexual exploitation and the Southport murders to push a racist agenda. And chants of “Free Tommy Robinson” rang out.

But anywhere they marched, anti-racists followed them—marching behind them with a police line separating the two groups.

A word from your fellow radical Squid:

I was able to attend in person with an Anarchist group. the police blocked our movements, tried to follow us after the dispersal most likely to collect intel, whilst at the demo they used a large camera and a drone to try and capture surveillance. with the right wing movement growing and becoming openly fascist we need to be as careful as ever. attend demos with masks on, follow bloc dress codes, use signal and leave ID and phones at home, one day the police may well be working for these fascists, and before someone says this isn't fascism. let me remind you the nazi's started with mass deportation, they named communists as public enemies and we are seeing theses very same trends unfold.

be safe out the comrades.

An ounce of action is worth a ton of theory.

Come join a leftist org, join our struggle and let's fight the bosses.

Across Exeter city centre Exeter's early risers were met graphic poster in bus stop billboards depicting the Palestine conflict with headers saying Israeli genocide as well as well known brands with financial investment in Israel being added to the lower section of the poster.

Its obvious the statement being made is and the activists involved have my full support.

Hello comrade.

@cowbee@lemmy.ml has compiled a comprehensive list for fledgling socialists.

Battle of Cable Street

There's a wonderful story that took place in Cable Street London on the 4th October 1936, at the time a predominantly Jewish and minority area. A far right extremist by the name Sir Oswald Mosley who styled his views on Hitler and the fascist movement that was developing through Europe, he had rallied his troops, A bunch of Nazi thugs to walk through Cable Street to intimidate the local migrant population but through the organisation of unions, workers, anarchist, socialist and communists, as well as minority groups we pushed back Oswald Mosley and his Nazi thugs and we pushed them so hard that we never saw Oswald Mosley again. Well apart from an appearance in Peeky Blinders last season.

In our current world we are seeing glimpses of fascism, we see wealthy millionaires similar to 'Sir' Oswald Mosley telling us our NHS, social housing, education and even city council budgets are failing due to Immigration, identity politics, gender roles, and whatever else is the hot button topic of the day.

We say no, our NHS is failing due to privatisation. Our social housing has been switched for "affordable housing". Education has been stripped and throttled for years. Councils are to run as business's thanks to Maggie Thatcher and now we watch our councils die like business too.

If anyone reading this feels as annoyed as myself and want to be on the right side of history, the side that will be celebrated like the men and women on Cable Street then get in touch or attend this up coming counter demo.

Come fight against Tommy 10 Names racial rhetoric. Tommy Robinson from the comfort of his social media accounts has rallied up the troops with promises of a better Britain if we only kick the migrants out. We know that this is simply a sly subversion that masks the real issue and pits us against each other. Working class people have far more in common to these marginalised people they are attacking than they do the right wing talking heads.

like before we will stand against such subversion of divide and conquer but we must stand together, and today in Torquay we will do exactly that.

12pm to 4pm Castle Circus.

The Reform UK conference in Birmingham was a carnival of reaction—and showed that its leaders have a plan to turn it into a mass far right party.

Reform UK is riding high after it won five MPs at the general election in July, the first time a far right party has won parliamentary seats in Britain.

“I promise you, the sky is the limit,” leader Nigel Farage declared to the conference on Saturday. “If we succeed in 2025, we will build even bigger in 2026 and we will keep going.”

The second day of the conference, Saturday, was specifically aimed at helping to organise new branches. Zia Yusuf, Reform UK chair, told The Telegraph newspaper, “We already have almost 200 new branches across the country. We’re going to have local branches and local campaign managers”.

Earlier this year, the Socialist ended an article with the words “Hopefully 2024 will be the year that Oliver gets justice”. Oliver Campbell, who has learning difficulties, was forced into a false confession by the police without a solicitor or appropriate adult present, spent decades in prison and since then campaigning to clear his name. The news that Oliver, convicted of a murder he did not commit in 1991, has had his conviction quashed is an important step towards him realising justice.

Fascism seeks to annihilate working class organisation and obliterate any sort of genuine democracy. But in order to attract supporters it always puts forward a fake revolutionary veneer.

It denounces the present set-up as corrupt, elitist and dominated by “unpatriotic” elements.

Its solution is usually to use racism as a pathway to a “purified” state purged of foreigners and scapegoats such as Jews or Muslims or Roma or disabled people.

The German revolutionary Clara Zetkin summarises fascism as “an amalgam of brutal, terrorist violence together with deceptive revolutionary phraseology, linking up demagogically with the needs and moods of broad masses of producers”.

At a time of deep social and economic crisis, fascists advance by offering a critique of what exists at the top.

The clearest example is how the Nazis built their organisation in the 1920s and 1930s.

They denounced the parliamentary set-up as rotten and deceitful and promised a better future for the German worker.

One wing of the Nazis, grouped around Gregor Strasser, took this further.

In a speech to the German parliament in 1925 he said, “We National Socialists want the economic revolution involving the nationalisation of the economy.

“In place of an exploitative capitalist economic system a real socialism, maintained not by a soulless Jewish-materialist outlook but by the believing, sacrificial, and unselfish old German community sentiment.”

This “anti-capitalism” was always false. Historian Robert Paxton highlights that “even at their most radical, early fascist programmes and rhetoric had never attacked wealth and capitalism”.

What future does capitalism offer young people? The chasm of wealth inequality grows by the day, as the wealth of the billionaires soars, while wars and climate change inflict misery and threaten the futures of billions of working-class and young people across the globe.

We’re worried about how to make ends meet, and the state of our public services. Travel fares are sky high, while public transport routes have been cut, meaning many of us have to walk for hours to get home from work and college.

Our NHS has been cut to the bone, making it harder than ever to simply get an appointment. The housing crisis makes it impossible for us to live fully independent lives. No wonder 1 in 4 students now face mental health issues.

Our schools, colleges and universities have gone massively underfunded for years. Students used to get grants, not high-interest loans. Now we have our services and courses cut, while greedy bosses make hundreds of thousands of pounds off our education.

Why is this happening? It’s because the system we live under – capitalism – is organised around creating profit for a tiny handful at the top of society over improving the lives of ordinary people.

It’s time to get organised and fight back.

Attached PDF

A word from me- comrade Squid:

hi community, Last week, I had the opportunity to lead off a discussion at a socialist party meeting on the crucial role of student movements and their political awakening. To summarize:

Socialism is born from the seeds of political imagination, and students are full of imagination. We witness their energy in the anti-war movements and in student unions, the EMA protests, where they fought tirelessly against the injustices of our society and government.

These students are on the brink of entering a world burdened by debt, working 8-hour days, 5 days a week, just to maintain a shred of dignity. Many will see their passions fade, the fire within them dimming, as narcissistic elites hoard the collective wealth of the world.

As socialists, it is our duty to reach out to this new generation, to struggle alongside them before they too lose that spark—the spark that can ignite a brighter future for our society.

In May, members of the Public and Commercial Services union (PCS) elected a campaigning National Executive Committee (NEC) – a coalition for change. But this new NEC majority has so far been blocked by the general secretary and president, both of whom are in the misnamed Left Unity group.

At an emergency NEC on 27 August, the NEC majority submitted the motion below, rejecting the government’s 5% pay remit and preparing a strategy to campaign.

At the meeting, yet again, the national president, Martin Cavanagh, ruled out the motions and amendments from the NEC majority coalition. This is an outrageous abuse of presidential powers, which has again prevented full open and democratic discussion at the leading elected lay body of the union.

This is why there are growing calls for a Special Delegate Conference to allow reps and members to debate the way forward on vital issues such as pay, jobs, pensions and cuts, and to reassert democratic lay control over the union leadership.

The Teledyne Four, who targeted an arms company near Bradford, spoke to Socialist Worker

Four Palestine campaigners walked free from Bradford Crown Court on Friday after a jury failed to reach a verdict.

The group—known as the Teledyne Four—were released on bail and face a retrial on 9 February 2026.

The prosecution charged Laila Gao, Ruby Hamill, Daniel Jones and Najam Shah with causing £571,383 of damage to the Teledyne factory.

The plant in nearby Shipley supplies surveillance and targeting technology to the Israeli military.

Build the socialist opposition

As the Socialist goes to press, Keir Starmer faced a ‘showdown’ in parliament as the hated cut to the winter fuel payment for pensioners went to a vote.

It is being dubbed as his ‘first political crisis’. 53 Labour MPs didn’t vote with the government.

The government has little regard for the crisis facing the 10 million people who will no longer get the £300 fuel payment from this winter.

The real ‘difficult decision’ being made, is by the millions of older people who were already struggling to pay their bills, now having to calculate which, if any, rooms they can afford to heat.

Starmer is now governing a country with the sixth biggest economy in the world, and 165 billionaires. What does it say about in whose interests Labour is governing, when they decide we can’t afford to heat older people’s homes?

No one is fooled by the crocodile tears of cabinet members lining up to back Starmer’s claim that they ‘have no choice’. Deaths among the elderly fell by 10,000 following the introduction of the Winter Fuel Payment.

The BBC has revealed that the biggest landlord in parliament, Labour MP Jas Athwal, has tenants in some of his 15 properties that are battling mould and ant infestation. He has since thrown his property manager under the bus, who tenants reported threatened them with eviction when they complained. And to top it off, the properties aren’t even on the landlord register – something he introduced as leader of Redbridge council!

People up and down the country will have similar stories to the tenants in Athwal’s properties – but without the extra public scrutiny to shame their landlords into acting.

Keir Starmer’s Labour cannot be relied on to fight for people struggling with sky-high rents, dodgy landlords and unsafe properties – over 40 of his MPs make over £10,000 renting properties they own.

We need a new mass workers’ party – one that will fight for a mass council house building programme and end the housing nightmare.

Complicit in war crimes

Liberal commentators have been quick to conclude that Britain is experiencing some kind of ‘Damascene conversion’. Starmer’s Labour, they believe, has finally realised that the UK might be complicit in Israeli war crimes!

Seemingly, unlike the previous Tory administration, who made it their business to show total disregard for international law (over the Rwanda deportation scheme, for example), ‘Sir’ Keir’s Labour is willing to take a brave stand against Netanyahu’s slaughter.

Not quite so. As Labour Party hacks have hastily made clear, this move does not amount to anything that could be considered an ‘arms embargo’.

To eliminate any doubt, Lammy went further: the decision by the British government was “a forward-looking evaluation, not a determination of innocence or guilt”.

Like the true snakeoil statesman that he is, Lammy is trying to have it both ways: admitting the likelihood of serious offences by Israel, but administering nothing more than a slap on the wrist.