TWO WEEKS AGO, NEWS BROKE THAT THE UK HOME OFFICE WAS PLANNING TO HOUSE ASYLUM SEEKERS IN A DISUSED ARMY BASE IN PENALLY, TENBY.
THIS SET IN MOTION A CHAIN OF FAST MOVING EVENTS WHICH CONTAIN IMPORTANT LESSONS, NOT JUST ABOUT HOW FAR RIGHT AND FASCIST MOVEMENTS CAN SUDDENLY GROW, BUT ALSO HOW THEY CAN BE RESISTED.
By SC Cook & Mark S Redfern
For many in a Penally, the situation they have found themselves in over the last two weeks is not necessarily something they asked for or could have predicted, but their community has nevertheless attracted interest from a global network of far right and even fascist activists. Now, many are fighting back, determined to stop their area becoming a hotbed of racist hatred.
For this piece, we spoke with four anti-racist activists who have been directly involved in the situation over the past two weeks. Even though they openly organise, they spoke to us on the condition of anonymity due to the high profile nature of the issue. We have changed their names.
Simon is a trade unionist working in education and is a member of West Wales Stand up to Racism, a group which aims to bring together all sorts of people to make a united stand against racism. It’s at the end of a hectic couple of days where things have really kicked off, and not always in a good way.
As soon as the announcement came out, some people – mostly locals from Penally, although not all – set up a Facebook group opposing the proposals for a camp. Some objections were simply that the local community hadn’t been consulted over the plans and it had come out of the blue, but these points were soon drowned out by something of a completely different order.
“Immediately you could see there were a number of racists in there,” says Simon, who lives nearby, “[but] they weren’t all racists.”
Very quickly, a far right outfit that just weeks ago was called ‘Leavers of Swansea’ – but which now calls itself ‘Voice of Wales’ – took over.
“They kind of infiltrated it,” explains Simon. “And eventually, a leading member of Voice of Wales became an admin on it. They basically took it over.”
On top of this, the fascist activist Tommy Robinson also got involved, and some of the content quickly became viciously anti-refugee, aggressive and racist. I spoke to one local woman who was witness to this. We are calling her Mel.
“I did see lots of comments on how all refugees and migrants and asylum seekers are rapists,” she says. “And another that suggested that the camp would be burned down if they did end up there. There were many comments on that one [post] that said the refugees should be used for kindling, or killed….Which I find extremely upsetting.”
On Tuesday of last week, the ‘Voice of Wales’ group went to Tenby town centre to try and stir up more reaction against the proposed camp. There they were met by Simon and other activists who successfully shouted them down, but that evening a protest was planned outside the army base to oppose the plans.
There were about five anti-racists and around 80 or 90 protesters, Simon says. “The fascists essentially controlled the whole situation, much to my horror.”.
In the event, Simon says he decided to try and ‘drive a wedge’ between locals who were simply opposed to the camp and the more hardcore racist and fascist forces who had come from further afield to exploit the situation.
“I essentially went around pointing out that they were fascists, what their real agenda was and people began to listen, but it got so under the skin of the fascists, they turned on us,” he tells me, explaining how he eventually felt he had to quickly get out of there for his own safety. .
“ [It] was a pretty depressing situation to know that on our doorstep, a small group of Nazis had essentially taken this over.”
Mel’s experience of the protest was alarmingly similar.
“On the night of the protest someone shouted to me “Do you want your kids to be raped? That’s what they do in their country:”” she says.
“The event was clearly hijacked by the far right group Voice of Wales and they quickly started rallying people up with hate speech. A lot of the local people actually left the protest at this point, which acted as some light relief for me.”
This small detail signalled the way in which people could perhaps be won away from remit of hardcore racist politics, which was an urgent requirement given how suddenly they had taken over things.
The following day, Wednesday, things started to shift. Simon points out that about 400 people joined the Stand up to Racism West Wales (SUtR) Facebook group in one day,. “Nearly all young, many of them from the Tenby area,” he says. In the last week alone, almost 1,000 extra people have joined.
“The kind of message – that Nazi infiltrators have come in to try and divide us – that had got across to some people. So that’s heartening.”
At the same time, an activist who lives in Penally knew one of the local people involved in setting up the original Facebook group, which was now some 2,000 members big. She reached out to them and explained what the likes of Tommy Robinson and Voice for Wales were really about. Having also seen how ugly things had become, the person decided that whatever their opposition to the camp, fascism had no place in the area, and so closed down the whole group that day.
In response, the hardcore grouping set up a smaller but more openly anti-refugee Facebook group. I spoke to one woman who has been monitoring this online activity and she said that this group quickly attracted far right activists not just from England, but also Germany, Sweden and the US, who were very vocal in trying to push an agenda clearly driven by a racist hatred of refugees, who they often refer to as ‘illegals.’
She said that some local people did join this group, but a few had actually been booted off by admins after they objected to the way in which their objections had been ‘hijacked’ by networked activists from across the world.
On Sunday 19th September, the anti-racists held an event on Tenby North Beach, arguing that refugees are welcome here and they shouldn’t be placed in an army base, that effectively acts like a prison with day release. “Forcing people into military bases and camps to live a ‘living hell’ is degrading, dangerous and potentially disastrous, as the appalling fire in the Moria camp, Lesbos has shown,” the event page said.
The action went down well, receiving good coverage in the press and positive responses on the day. Carol spent the day taking pictures of the sand art that was later spread across social media. ‘Refugees Welcome’ Event’Refugees Welcome’ EventWelcome Messages on the Gates – AnonymousWelcome Messages on the Gates – Anonymous
“Someone put a picture of [the sand art] on a non-political Facebook group and it had 730 positive reactions to 37 negative ones,” she says. “When we went up the cliff to photograph we heard hundreds of positive comments and only one negative one – and his family told him not to be racist! The support is overwhelming.”
The previous day, a march in Tenby had also taken place against the camp and passed without incident.
But then on Monday of this week, some fascist activists from across the UK and a handful of locals clashed with police at the entrance to the base. One of the men present was an activist from Milton Keynes who regularly posts viciously anti-refugee and racist videos on YouTube, as well as organising with fascists from across Britain to ‘patrol’ the East coast of England in events that often descend into violence. This week he was caught on camera telling a Pembrokeshire police officer: ‘I hope your daughter gets raped.’ He was later arrested and barred from entering Pembrokeshire, having already been banned from Kent for similar actions.
“The racists have seen a chance to stir things up and have come in from outside,” explains Carol. “Local people are understandably shocked because there was no consultation and no notice, and they have tried to tap into that. But there are a lot more people wanting to do positive things.”
This idea came to fruition on Wednesday of this week, when a group of 60 locals gathered outside the camp gates at 8am to hold a welcome to refugees event, pictured above.
Throughout the last 10 days, the task of anti-racist campaigners in Pembrokeshire has not been to enter into a confrontation with locals who have objections to the camp, but try win them away from organised racist forces in order to build a stronger movement.
“A lot of local people have concerns, and whether I agree with those concerns or not is irrelevant,” says Mel. “Concerns are okay, concerns just need questions answered and clarity. What was really disturbing to me was the extremism and now the involvement of Tommy Robinson.”
“I’m really scared this will become out of control and be inundated by violent, hateful people, who really don’t represent the feelings and opinions of local people.”
Mel has been sent threatening images just for speaking up for refugees. The last week has taken its toll on her.
In such a situation it’s easy to forget that there has actually been a huge mobilisation of anti-racism in Pembrokeshire recently in the form of Black Lives Matter protests, something which has enraged racists.
“We did 18 take the knees across west Wales,” says Simon. “We’ve had a successful demonstration in Carmarthen and against the Picton Memorial. So we’ve built a base.”
“Probably because of BLM, more than anything else, [young people] are very anti racist and as soon as they get whiff of racism they’re looking for an anti racist group to join. It’s as simple as that.”
Across America and even in the movement in Wales, Black Lives Matter protests have taken place in some of the poorest areas. Parts of Pembrokeshire are no different. Despite being a popular holiday destination with pockets of huge wealth, it is not only one of the poorest regions of Wales but of the whole of Western Europe.
These issues have come into play in the past week, with people bringing up issues like shortages of housing in relation to ideas about asylum seekers being ‘front of the queue for services.’ Simon explains how the area has been hit by austerity and cuts to services.
“There’s been the whole issue of hospital closures as well.,” he says. “You’ve essentially got working class people in Pembrokeshire that have had a pretty bad time of it, and are quite angry. And it’s really easy to understand how this can spill over into scapegoating.
“It’s a difficult thing to do, but we have to argue that you need to point the finger in the right direction.”
The reality is that services have been cut back by central and local government. When it comes to housing, the shortage is not only because council houses aren’t being built, but also that such a high proportion of existing homes are holiday lets or second properties, crushing availability and raising prices. Not only has this meant that houses have become less available, but small communities have been hollowed out.
On top of this, the Tories have created an environment of permanent hostility to refugees, laying the groundwork for the kind of situation witnessed in Penally this week by constant attacks on asylum seekers.
The local MP and secretary of state for Wales, Simon Hart, who’s said very little about the camp, disgracefully voted against Britain accepting more unaccompanied child refugees.
These actions that are the biggest driving force for racism in our society, and people like Tommy Robinson or groups like ‘Voice for Wales’ see hatred of asylum seekers as a key wedge issue from which they get a foothold and start to push their whole agenda. The UKIP MS Neil Hamilton – who partly represents Pembrokeshire in the Senedd – often shares videos from far right groups on Twitter, and is hoping to use the issue to win re-election in 2021.
At the heart of all this are the refugees themselves, who represent one of the most oppressed groups of people on the planet and who are all too often robbed of any power or agency of their own. Since 2013, 19,000 have died or been declared missing trying to cross the Mediterranean, according to the website InfoMigrants.
Mel says that building solidarity with refugees is essential. “If I ever found myself in their position, I would hope that someone would help me,” she explains. “This is what being human is all about. It’s about love and support and kindness. Not about fear mongering and hate.”
“Many of our doctors and nurses come from refugee families; a lot of these people will have skills that are beneficial to the area. And even if they don’t, they are just human beings like us, and they deserve compassion. God only knows what trauma they have been through to get here. I really hope we can offer them some light at the end of what has no doubt been a very dark and terrifying tunnel.”
But people are already talking about different means of support and solidarity, including fundraising for those who have recently arrived in Penally.
“There’s a lot of people that want to practically do things to help refugees,” says Simon. “So there’s a lot of positive stuff about this…with everything in the world at the moment, it’s very polarised. One minute you can have some outrageous bit of racism. The next minute, you’re filled with hope when you hear how people want to warmly accept and welcome refugees here.”
The issue is not going away. The asylum seekers are now in the camp and the network of racist and fascist activists from across the UK are determined to incite hatred and even violence towards them. Their numbers in Penally have fallen though, and what they fear most is the kind of thing I heard from an activist this week: a group of locals wanting to organise football and rugby matches with refugees. It is that idea of unity that terrifies them.
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