Demonisation by the right, independence supporters could be next
Speymouth
As is typical of these far right protests, it was held with the supposed aim of ‘protecting women and children’, the go-to cause of a form of politics which by demanding the destruction and privatisation of public services and social security, the removal of so-called red tape, the end of efforts to combat climate change, and supporting restrictions on women’s reproductive rights, causes immensely more damage to the safety of women and children than asylum seekers ever could.
But this is how the far right operates. It whips up hysteria against members of a small and marginalised minority group, presenting them as an existential threat to the very future of civilisation itself. The right has done this highly successfully in the USA with the transgender community, using it as a wedge issue to provide cover for its attacks on women’s reproductive rights, equal marriage and the right of the LGBT community to self-organise. The US Supreme Court with its arch conservative majority is shortly to consider whether to hear a case which would challenge the lawfulness of same-sex marriage.
There is the very real possibility that federal recognition of same sex marriage could be overturned, which at a stroke would annul the marriages of many thousands of couples who live in states which have not adopted equal marriage provisions of their own. In the US this would have disastrous consequences as it could deprive people of their right to healthcare if they had been dependent on their same sex spouse’s health insurance. It would also cause them to lose legal recognition as next of kin, which could mean a return to the horror stories of the 1980s when the surviving partner in a couple was evicted from their home by their deceased family’s homophobic relatives.
I remember this happening in the 1980s to a lesbian couple in Airdrie. When one of the women died – the woman in whose name the couple’s home was registered – her estranged homophobic relatives descended on the house, stripping it of anything saleable, and giving her widow a couple of weeks to vacate the property. In the US, this kind of situation could all too easily arise again, brought about by a homophobic Republican party which has cynically claimed to be protecting women from trans people while using its assaults on the trans community as cover for its wider attacks on the rights of women and the LGBT community.
In the UK, in the supposed name of protecting women and women’s spaces from trans people, gender critical lesbians, who despite their claims are not at all representative of the majority of lesbians, who have been shown in a number of surveys to be the demographic group which is most supportive of trans people, have deprived other members of the LGBT community of their hard won right to self-organise. Guidance from the Equality and Human Rights Commission prohibits trans-inclusive lesbians – who represent the majority of lesbians – from creating women only events, organisations and spaces which admit trans women. Equally, the same guidance prohibits gay men from creating gay male only events, organisations and spaces which admit trans men. Aided by a small minority of unrepresentative lesbians and gay men, socially conservative heterosexual women like For Women Scotland are now setting themselves up as the arbiters of who gay men and trans-inclusive lesbians can admit to their own spaces.
These are clear instances of how the right has successfully used hysteria over trans people as a cover for a broader assault on human rights, all while it is silent on those who pose the real threat of violence and abuse to women and children, heterosexual cisgender men who are the partners, husbands, and parental figures of the women and children they assault and abuse.
According to a report in The Guardian, over 40% of those arrested following the anti-migrant riots perpetrated by the far right in the wake of the Southport murders in 2024 had previously been reported to the police for domestic violence. Their previous offences actual bodily harm, grievous bodily harm, stalking, breach of restraint and non-molestation orders, controlling coercive behaviour and criminal damage. Yet these are men who insisted that they were taking to the streets to protect women and children. All the while the dangerous men that women and children really need to be protected from are the white heterosexual cisgender men who were rioting.
Police data released under freedom of information (FoI) laws showed that 41% of 899 people arrested for taking part in the violent disorder in July and August last year had been reported for crimes associated with intimate partner violence.
The right is currently engaged in the same fear mongering over migrants and asylum seekers whipping up hysteria against a community of marginalised and powerless individuals who are overwhelmingly law abiding. Just as we saw with the Isla Bryson case, the appalling behaviour of one member of a marginalised community is taken as supposed proof that all members of that community pose a threat. The recent outbreak of violence outside a hotel housing asylum seekers in Epping in Essex was sparked off after an Ethiopian asylum seeker who had recently arrived on a small boat was charged with sexual assault against a local girl. In the year ending March 2025, 36,123 small boat arrivals claimed asylum in the UK. One individual out of over 36,000 being charged with sexual assault actually represents a very low incidence of violent crime against women.
However as is usual in the far right playbook, members of marginalised communities are dehumanised and are not judged as individuals according to their own individual characters and behaviour, they are instead perceived as a threat based upon the worst behaviour of the most reprehensible members of the marginalised group to which they belong. If one transwoman assaults a woman then all trans people are a threat. If one asylum seeker assaults a woman then all asylum seekers are a threat. It is telling that the same logic is not applied to cisgender heterosexual white men. Their bad behaviour is regarded as individual and particular and not perceived as telling us anything about cisgender heterosexual white men as a whole. Individuals should always be judged on their own character and their own behaviour. Members of marginalised communities deserve the same consideration.
On Thursday it was reported that a record number of people have applied for asylum in the UK and the number of migrants in hotels has risen by 8%. Nigel Farage immediately took to the media which is so eager to give him an uncritical hearing to accuse the Government of making Britain’s streets unsafe. In fact violent crime in the UK has been declining in recent years. Farage has published a piece in the Telegraph encouraging people to protest outside hotels housing asylum seekers.
The warning from Falkirk and other recent far right gatherings in Scotland and in England is clear. Far right British nationalism is present in Scotland and it’s getting bolder, enabled by a media which amplifies and normalises its messaging. It’s not just asylum seekers, migrants, and the LGBT community they have in their sights, as their Union flags and associations with extremist Loyalist groups prove, they’re coming for supporters of Scottish independence too.
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