The big Together march in London this weekend is a welcome boost to the movement against the far-right, but there are serious challenges ahead, argues John Rees

One of the largest ever anti-far-right demonstrations is due to hit the streets of London on Saturday 28 March. 

The protest is called by the Together Against the Far-Right Coalition, which brings together MPs, trade union leaders, celebrities and anti-fascists. The march will be bolstered by a Palestine feeder march, which will merge with the main demonstration as it makes its way from Park Lane to Whitehall. There will also be a music event at the same time in Trafalgar Square.

The mobilisation was called to counter Tommy Robinson’s Unite the Kingdom event, which took place last September. That brought over 100,000 far-right activists onto the streets of central London, who were addressed by extreme right podcaster Katie Hopkins and by Elon Musk, who also paid for the staging. Musk had previously lifted the ban on Tommy Robinson on X after he took control of the social media platform.

There were 24 arrests and injuries to police as the far-right protestors surrounded an anti-fascist counter protest in Whitehall, breaching police conditions on the demonstration to do so. The police described the violence at the event as ‘wholly unacceptable’.

Saturday’s Together march aims to redraw the political map by showing that anti-racists and anti-fascists outnumber Robinson’s Islamophobic, conspiracy theorist, anti-Palestine, and anti-refugee supporters.

Such a turning point, however, may not be the end of the matter. 

In an alarming development, the Metropolitan Police have permitted Tommy Robinson to take over the whole of central London on 16 May, granting him unprecedented use of Trafalgar Square, Whitehall, and Parliament Square. That would be extraordinary on any day of the year, but this is the day of the annual Nakba Day protest, which marks the original dispossession of the Palestinians by the foundation of the state of Israel in 1948.

Robinson clearly chose this day as the occasion of a second ‘Unite the Kingdom’ in order to attempt to drive the Palestine movement off the streets of central London. The Palestine coalition gave the Metropolitan police notice of the annual Nakba march months ago, but, in line with a pattern of hostility to the Palestine movement, the Metropolitan Police failed to respond and then gifted the entire government district of the capital to the far right.

The fear among anti-fascists that this pattern of governmental and police favourable treatment of the far-right recalls the darkest moments of the rise of the Nazis in 1930s Germany, when establishment fear of the left resulted in the promotion of the fascists. Then, as now, money from the corporate elite poured into the pockets of the far-right, amplifying their message. 

With the prospect of a renewed cost-of-living crisis driven by the war with Iran, and an already unpopular Labour government, the social flammable material from which the far-right benefits is ready to ignite. 

The Together march needs to become a springboard for a revived, mass anti-fascist movement. Part of that movement is broad mobilisation, and part of it is that ability to confront the direct threat that Tommy Robinson supporters pose to the left and to the Muslim community, the specific and predominant target of the far-right.

Anti-war meetings, trade unionists, and left-wing MPs have all been repeatedly targeted by fascists in recent months. Nevertheless, the confrontation with the Palestine movement is at a wholly new level. It requires an approach which does not leave the confrontation of the fascists to small numbers, and which does not rely simply on broad mobilisation, vital though it is. 

The success of the Together march will revitalise and reenergise the anti-fascist movement. But a second test is going to arrive within weeks.