2025 has hit us like a juggernaut. From Donald Trump’s inauguration, Elon Musk’s Nazi salute livestreamed to the world just days before Holocaust Memorial Day when we pledge “never again” and remember the millions murdered by the Nazis, to the AfD, a fascist-led party, winning 21 per cent of vote in Germany just weeks later, we find ourselves in a new phase of the growing threat of the far right internationally. 

This year’s annual Stand Up to Racism and TUC-backed trade union conference on Saturday March 1, “Countering the Rise of the Far Right”, is far from a run-of-the-mill event. Instead, 2025’s event is an emergency conference to come together across unions, sectors and workplaces and urgently discuss building strong and active anti-racism and anti-fascism rooted in the organised working class.  

The conference will hear from general secretaries and national speakers from nine trade unions and the TUC, alongside trade union and anti-fascist speakers from Germany, journalist and historian Taj Ali, film-maker Felipe Bustos Sierra, who directed Nae Pasaran and will be showing a preview of his current project, Everybody to Kenmure Street, which explores the mass action in May 2021 that stopped a deportation in Glasgow.

Sessions will discuss the changing face of fascism; how we can develop online and in the workplace organising and a strong trade union network to stop the far right; a history of Asian fightback in Britain; refugee and migrants’ rights organisations including Care4Calais, Safe Passage and Migrant Voices taking part in a session to stop the scapegoating and demand safe routes; and TUC equality officer Riz Hussein leading a workshop on developing action from the TUC Anti-Racism Taskforce. 

2025 presents an existential challenge for the trade union movement. The racism of Nigel Farage’s Reform UK goes hand in hand with their charade as representing an anti-Establishment alternative.

They are a party of the rich and for the rich, and are out to decimate the NHS as we know it, and attack workers’ rights while slashing taxes for the wealthy. The rise of far-right and racist narratives threaten to divide working-class people and distract from the real attacks on our living standards. 

Our unions — the largest collective working-class organisations with a membership of six million in Britain — must work to turn the tide. Unions are at the heart of a mass, united anti-racist and anti-fascist movement in Britain. We need to take anti-racism into the heart of our workplaces and communities in order to counter racist myths.

Reform UK poses a horrifying threat, overtaking the Tories, and setting the agenda in British politics around anti-refugee and anti-migrant racism and Islamophobia and is giving confidence to the far right and fascists. Despite this, the far right is divided, and the splits in Reform UK around support for fascist Tommy Robinson reinforce that we have the potential to stop them if we organise.

Elon Musk is now one of the most influential figures of the far right. His support for fascist Robinson, and Reform UK’s reinforcement of this racism provides a toxic cocktail that can, if left unchallenged, see the forces of the far-right and fascist forces grow.

Our unions have played a leading role in the mobilising against attempts to grow a fascist-led street movement in Britain. We marched in July, August and October in 2024 and on February 1 this year, opposing the far right. We need to build on and deepen this from the base of every workplace and every community.

Internationally, the far right is growing, although it also faces opposition from anti-racists. Trump has given another boost to the global far right. Stand Up to Racism is calling on unions to mobilise regionally and locally for Stand Up to Racism events on March 22 as part of a global day of action by World Against Racism & Fascism.

Meanwhile, institutional racism at the level of the workplace and across wider society must continue to be challenged. 

All these issues — and what collective action we can take — will be explored in a series of plenaries and workshops at the March 1 conference. Register now — sign up work and union colleagues. 

For tickets, full timetable, speakers list and to register go to: https://bit.ly/40Noq5m.

SESSIONS INCLUDE: 

• What our unions can do to take on the threat of Reform UK 

• Trade Union Network to Stop the Far Right: developing organising online and in the workplace

• Return to 1930s: changing face of fascism and our unions’ role in fighting it

• Developing action to implement the TUC Anti-Racism Taskforce 

• Refugees welcome: busting scapegoating myths and demanding safe routes

• Asian fightback in Britain

• The international fight against the far right and fascism challenging racism, Islamophobia, anti-semitism

Julie Sherry is Stand Up to Racism co-trade union liaison officer.