ANTI-RACISM should make us feel confident, not uncomfortable.

Last month this question came up at the TUC’s racial justice and equality conference in London. A crucially important meeting to discuss how trade unions as a movement confront the threat of a growing far right, that we saw through the fascist violence of the summer through to today’s surging support for Reform UK in the polls.

The stakes have never been higher. The far right have always gone on the offensive under Labour governments — we saw the rise of the National Front in the 1970s, the BNP in the early 2000s.

But the National Front and the BNP never had a voice in Parliament. Now we have Nigel Farage acting as a megaphone for far-right ideas at Westminster, bolstered by the election of his ally Donald Trump across the Atlantic. If the rumours prove true that Elon Musk is going to hand Reform $100 million, that could change the dynamics of British politics.

In the face of this threat we need to remember that we can push back. When we saw off the National Front and the BNP, it was our movement, in our workplaces and our communities, on the streets, that did it.

We’ve seen the importance of taking a stand over the last 12 months. There was an insurgent far-right street movement centred on Tommy Robinson. I was at a counter-demonstration in July when Robinson had filled Trafalgar Square, and we had just a couple of thousand.

It was frightening. But we have seen the bud get nipped there, with the huge counter-demonstrations to the riots, and the big counter-demonstration on October 26. Now Robinson is in jail, and we don’t see the sort of “Justice for Tommy” type street movement he was no doubt hoping for.

The big anti-racist mobilisations in August stopped the riots. And actually, I don’t think, if we’d had far bigger numbers in July, we would have seen those riots.

The problem was they had space to parrot racist propaganda and build confidence among each other that they outnumbered us. Over the summer we showed them that they don’t.

Most of us will welcome the jail sentences handed out to racist rioters but it’s a mistake to assume those riots were abated by quick jail sentences. They were cowed by what happened in Walthamstow, in Brighton, in Newcastle: black and white coming together in communities to say “No, we’re not having this nonsense around here.”

It’s vitally important that we continue to build that movement on the streets, in our workplaces. In the National Education Union we polled our members and less than 1 per cent voted Reform, but that won’t be the case in many, many workplaces and we do need to have those difficult conversations with colleagues, encouraging them to join what must be a movement against racism.

But not from a moralist standpoint. Of course, racism’s impact is fiercest on black, Muslim, migrant, refugee communities: but we have to win an understanding that racism and Islamophobia are used by the powerful to divide black and white workers, to keep us all down.

An understanding that Nigel Farage is an enemy not just of certain communities, but of the working class. He wants to privatise the NHS, cut taxes and deregulate.

And in taking that anti-racist message of class unity out there we have an opportunity to build. I got into trade unionism myself through anti-fascism and anti-racism. I got involved in what was the National Union of Teachers at the time because when I was fighting the far right in the north-east of England, I saw my trade union banner on the counter-demonstrations.

We can bring people into our movement by defending their communities, by saying loud and clear that refugees are welcome here.

You could have seen photos from our National Education Union conference this year with delegates wearing Refugees Welcome T-shirts. We want to build a mass movement in support of migrants and refugees. We send delegations to Calais to offer concrete solidarity to refugees, we say out loud that migrants make our NHS — and we can only do that through face-to-face conversations with people.

So when I hear that we need to make people uncomfortable, I want to be clear who we’re talking about.

It’s right to make people at the top feel uncomfortable. It is certainly often right to make the government uncomfortable, Labour or not, and I’m proud to lead a union where thousands of workers have already gone on strike against this government. There are communities attacked by this government who we will not speak to or for as unions if we are not prepared to fight it when necessary.

But anti-racism should not be an uncomfortable conversation to have. We need to build mass movements.

That requires unity between workers of all backgrounds. We don’t want to cripple our trade union colleagues with guilt. We want them to feel they are part of changing society. We need to remember where racism comes from: from the top down, not the bottom up.

There has been a long-established narrative that anti-racism is about “starting with ourselves,” “challenging each other.”

The fundamental problem in this strategy is this misidentifies the enemy. It lays the blame at the feet of working people, and it also demobilises.

On the counter-demo against Tommy Robinson on October 26 there were 64 trade union banners. We had thousands of members there as a union, most of them white.

They were on that demonstration because they felt they were part of our anti-racist movement. We got them there because we encouraged them. We made them feel confident, not uncomfortable.

We were only able to turn the tide against Pegida and others in Newcastle, because people felt confident.

We were only able to defeat the BNP and National Front before them, because people felt confident.

We need black and white unity in fighting racism, rooted in shared interest, against an organised insurgent right. A movement that builds confidence, rather than cripples with guilt.

Daniel Kebede is general secretary of the National Education Union.