Reclaiming the fight against racism in the UK

In the light of highly politicised accusations of antisemitism against the Labour Party and its leader during the general election, the author argues for the necessity for activists to reclaim anti-racism. She shows how over a number of years the space for anti-racism has been shrinking. The professionalisation of anti-racism, especially around hate crime, has tended to shift focus from the social to the individual, from the institutional and systemic to personal hatred and bigotry, especially online. With the introduction of the government’s Prevent strategy, a multitude of movements from Right and Left are now considered extremists. Anti-racism has lost its international thrust and its cross-community depths. We should not, she argues, see the new anti-racism as just a change in narrative, but a systematic structural denial which is part and parcel of neoliberalism, witnessed in the chequered histories of those now empowered to promote equality.