According to the National – a worrying phrase, I admit, given the Scottish newspaper’s obsessive adulation of anyone pro-Scottish independence and its obsessive hostility to anyone who opposes it – this weekend saw a Scottish Reform councillor share a platform with a member of a far-right group at a protest outside a Falkirk hotel housing asylum seekers.
While Cllr Mackie-Brown may have been out of her depth and blindsided by what she heard, one might expect that Reform itself would have a ready-made response to such issues
What is most interesting about this story is not the protest itself, or even the Reform councillor’s presence. It is the response of Reform to one of its councillors sharing a platform with this person and saying or doing nothing about it.
Despite the widespread labelling of anyone who believes that our borders should be controlled as far right, and despite the usual bias of the National, the facts it has reported seem clear. At the protest, Claire Mackie-Brown shared a platform with one Richard McFarlane, a member of Patriotic Alternative, which describes itself as a ‘ethno-nationalist organisation that campaigns for the rights and wellbeing of White Britons.’ Last year, the government’s anti-extremism advisor described Patriotic Alternative as ‘a racist and anti-Semitic far-right group founded in 2019 by former BNP youth leader Mark Collett.’
Cllr Mackie-Brown can be forgiven if she had no idea who McFarlane was when he began to speak. But once he did, no one could have been in any doubt about his views. In his seven-minute speech he asserted that, ‘we need to give them the fingers, and say we are white, we are British, we are proud’. He concluded: ‘Keep Britain white, keep Britain British.’
According to the protest organiser, neither the Reform councillor nor the Patriotic Alternative member were invited to speak: ‘The microphone was open to anyone who wished to share their personal concerns or experiences. No speakers were formally invited or endorsed by the organisers it was a platform for local people. If individuals with affiliations to political groups or outside organisations chose to speak, that was entirely their choice and not something we had pre-arranged or promoted.’ That’s fair enough, and in those circumstances it’s easy to see how a local residents’ protest was overrun by the far-right.
But that is far from being a one-off. One of the recurring themes of these protests up and down the country is how they attract the far-right. Which makes it all the more obvious, and all the more important, that mainstream politicians from mainstream parties should have a serious and convincing response when the far-right are present. At the very least, that needs to involve denouncing the racism and the white nationalism of extremists. Otherwise, it becomes easy to label all the protests as being far-right, and to label representatives of parties such as Reform which stand alongside them as being part of the far-right.
As far as one can tell from reports, which have not been contradicted, that did not happen this weekend in Falkirk. Cllr Mackie-Brown appears to have said nothing in response.
But while Cllr Mackie-Brown may have been out of her depth and blindsided by what she heard, one might expect that Reform itself would have a ready-made response to such issues. And it has: but the response is useless. Reform told the National:
‘Councillor Claire Brown was there to represent Reform and her concerned constituents, she is not responsible for the other people attending and will continue to stand up for residents on this extremely important issue.’
Of course she isn’t responsible for the other speakers. No one has suggested she is. But as a representative of Reform, she – and anyone else in a similar situation – has to react. You can’t simply pretend you are in a bubble, removed from scene, when someone you are standing with is ranting ‘Keep Britain white.’
It’s a similar point to what has been happening on the ‘Free Palestine’ hate marches. The argument is made that the majority present are ordinary, decent people simply concerned about the deaths in Gaza. They may indeed be. But if you turn up at a march to discover that a proportion of your fellow marchers are Jew haters, chanting anti-Semitic slogans and waving anti-Semitic banners, then you have a choice. You can leave, distancing yourself. Or – as has been happening – you can continue on the march and, even worse, come back the following week, again saying and doing nothing to condemn the hate around you. And in doing so you not only remove any claim to decency, you become part of the problem.
Reform has the same choice to make. Does it pretend that it is not part of the same protest when the far-right arrives? Or does it denounce and condemn racists for leaching onto a legitimate protest by ordinary and decent local residents?
This will be a recurring theme for Reform as its elected officials and members – entirely legitimately – attend protests outside asylum hotels and are joined by far-right agitators. Unless Reform finds a way to properly distance itself from them, it will be tarred with their brush.
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