Palestine, anti-racist activists and others outnumbered and demoralised a far-right protest in Bournemouth on Sunday, despite a heavy-handed police presence, reports ‘Tom, The Mole’

Arriving in Bournemouth, the mood was uncertain. The streets were lined with police vans and groups of police huddled in riot gear, stretching a couple of miles away from the meeting point that the far right had begun discretely arranging for their demonstration a week or two prior: The Town Hall.

Across the road, where our resistance began gathering around the Bournemouth War Memorial, the group that had arrived early to discuss the day ahead felt as if events could go in any of a dozen directions, and that the largest group was without a doubt the police. We hoped this wouldn’t dissuade those interested in standing up against the far right, and, as the group spread out, the first chants of ‘Say it loud, say it clear: Refugees are welcome here’ began sounding off into the air.

The work done by an alliance of local community groups including the Palestine Solidarity Movement, representatives from local mosques, Unite, Humanti, Pink Washing, Health Workers for Palestine, BCPTUC, NEU, CW, Unison, UCU, BLM Bournemouth, Weymouth Animal Rights, Dorset Radical Bookfair, the Communist Party, Extinction Rebellion, Trans Liberation, Increase the Peace, Antifa, the SWP and Stand up to Racism meant that the numbers soon began to swell around the cenotaph. With their Palestinian flags, banners and placards, holding messages of love and anti-racism, the 11.00am meet time arrived, and our numbers were soon met with the rolling boom of the local XR group’s drums as they made their entrance from the lower gardens.

Amongst chants of ‘No borders, no nations, stop deportation’, ‘One race, human race’, and ‘We are many, you are few. We are Bournemouth, who are you?’, various speakers took to the sound system to talk about solidarity and, at points, to reach out and educate the rank and file in the crowd opposite of our shared difficulties, saying ‘We have to say start taxing the billionaires and corporations, and stop scapegoating migrants’ and ‘If we want this country to do better, we need to stop looking at the race war, and start looking at the class war’.

All the while, a police drone hovering over our heads was broadcasting messages warning of arrest. An organiser from the Palestine Solidarity Movement spoke to the police asking that it be flown over the far right, if it had to be flown over us, noting in clear frustration that ‘[this is] what the Israelis do to us in Palestine’.

Solidarity organising

For our group, a key instruction was that ‘We need to organise in every workplace and university’ struck a chord with a crowd that was energetically chanting, singing, and even dancing to the beat of our drums. This tone was in direct opposition to the shameful rhetoric and gestures coming from the other side of the road, before a speaker from Portland spoke of their success in getting the Bibby Stockholm decommissioned through similar acts of unity.

Corrie Drew, from Bournemouth East, said, ‘I hope that our neighbours who may have been afraid to come out today having seen what’s happening nationally, perhaps feeling unwanted and ostracised and demonised – have seen us make a local stand and know that we welcome them, so that their day tomorrow is a bit brighter.

‘I have people in my heart when I say that, who I know, have sent me messages to say how much it means to them to see that we are out there telling the world that they are welcome and a part of our community.’

By 12.30pm, the numbers of those wrapped in Union Jacks and St George’s Flags were beginning to dwindle. Down to their last few, the organisers on our side were now speaking directly to the bearer of the lone Israeli flag about their support for the genocide of tens of thousands of Palestinians, and posing the question generally, ‘Do you know what flag that is you’re wearing?’, before reminding them that St George was half Palestinian.

At around 1.00pm we knew our job was done. The far right was left with less than twenty, whilst we were still in good spirits and showing healthy numbers. Before we departed, a final message was given to the crowd: ‘We hope we won’t have to do it again, but my feeling is that we will, and when we do, we’ll outnumber them 10-1. If there was 600-1000 of us, they would have buggered off in thirty minutes’. Perhaps, they wouldn’t even have shown up, at all.