On Saturday there’ll be a big march from the BBC to Trafalgar Square organised by Unite Against Fascism and a myriad of other organisations including Stop the War, Artists Against Apartheid, Pax Christi and the Muslim Council of Britain.

This demonstration is part of UN anti-racism day and there’ll be parallell demonstrations in every European capital and many other cities all around the world.

Attendance is expected to be huge and it will constitute a declaration that we will not allow our politics to degenerate into xenophobia and blaming migrants for the economic problems caused by a banking system that preaches poverty for the many to pay for the sins of the few.

Let’s not forget that the price of xenophobia and government inaction is paid by those fleeing from wars and oppression, many of who die in the Mediterranean and the hundreds of migrants held in detention in Britain who are now on hunger strike in order to get their voices heard.

Bob Dylan wrote a wonderful song: “I pity the poor immigrant, who tramples through the mud,/ Who fills his mouth with laughing,/And who builds his town with blood.”

On Sunday I’m delighted to be taking part in the launch of David Rosenberg’s superb book Rebel Footprints at the Marx Memorial Library.

David is a doughty historian of radical causes and leads iconic walks around the radical history sites of London. He’s now converted all of this into a splendid book which gives the reader a graphic introduction of the history of each area.

I particularly love the description of Clerkenwell as once an area of grovelling, starving poverty with the highest murder rate in London. Into that he weaves the history of brilliant people who stood up for a better world and his description of the wonderful anti-fascist campaigns, particularly in the East End when Irish and Jewish people came together to stop the march of the nazis is evocative of the time.

In another chapter, he refers to those brave women who are in Holloway prison and includes a wonderful description of the sometimes dilettante but always serious social and artistic writers living in radical Bloomsbury.

The book, published by Pluto Press, is a treat — an antidote to the endless histories of the rich, powerful, the good, the great and the royal family. He brings real history alive.