08/08/2024
Sky News reports that several thousand people took part in an anti-racist gathering in Bristol's multicultural and LGBTQIA+ districts of Stapleton Road and Old Market on Wednesday evening, after a threatened riot by the far right wing, stirred up by internet enablers such as Billionaire Elon Musk, failed to materialise. B247 newspaper reports that fascists, bolstered by tanked up, testosterone filled young men, had wanted to make Bristol's Old Market a site of their anti-social rioting, since there are immigration and asylum support services run from the area along with the city's many LGBTQIA businesses, all of whom closed for the evening and boarded up their shopfronts. In the event, though, says BBC Radio Bristol, only a few fascists were sighted and corralled quickly by police. The multi-cultural and diverse anti-racism protest was much larger, and as you would expect, peaceful and creative. The Daily Mail says that many of the hangers on to the recent spike in summer protests have been teenage boys looking for a fight and trouble. This should not however lead to complacency, said the Socialist Worker newspaper and the communist Morning Star paper. Both urged the wider trade union, progressive and organised labour movements to take seriously the dangers of the far right. Pink News reports that Rainbow Migration, a charity dedicated to LGBTQ+ equality for queer migrants, along with campaign and advocacy groups the Equality Act Review, Hope not Hate and the Migrants’ Rights Network, all signed an open letter from Amnesty International and dozens of other NGOs and charities urging the Prime Minister to take seriously the rhetoric of anti-Islam, racism and extremism that is taking place online. The BBC News Channel says that the government, in its first major test since coming to power, is keen to make an example of far right wing rioters, to ensure that social cohesion is maintained.
