My speech at the unity protest against the Nazis and Tommy Robinson – 14 July 2018

Sisters and brothers, yesterday, we marched, in our hundreds of thousands, against the World’s number one racist, Donald Trump.  

Today, In this Carnival of Resistance, we are standing up to Britain’s number one racist, Tommy Robinson and his neo Nazi supporters.  

I am a Labour Councillor in Haringey and we have a proud tradition of standing up to fascists in Haringey.  41 years ago at the Battle of Wood Green, Haringey Councillors including a certain Jeremy Corbyn and the wider community came together and resisted the National Front who had threatened to march in our area. 

The people of Haringey said to the fascists, “these are our streets and you do not belong here”. Up and down the country, that is how communities organised and defeated the National Front. 

Not just just the National Front, we defeated their successors, the BNP. It’s extraordinary to think that only in 2006, Barking and Dagenham had elected 12 BNP Councillors.  

12 years later, not only did the community in Barking and Dagenham get rid of the BNP, they elected 12 Muslim Councillors in this year’s local elections.  That is what the racists do not like! They also hate that Londoners elected a Muslim Mayor of London. 

And, I say to the racists who give Sadiq Khan vile islamophobic abuse on a daily basis: not only did Londoners elect Sadiq Khan as their mayor, they gave him the biggest personal mandate in British Political history. 

1,310,143 Londoners voted for Sadiq Khan.  

And this is my challenge to the fascists: instead of dishing out islamophobic abuse to Sadiq Khan on Twitter like cowards, put your own candidate against him in the next mayoral election. 

Come on if you think you are hard enough, stand against Sadiq in 2020! 

And Londoners will send you packing with your tail between your legs.  Sadly, it’s not just the fascists that give out vile, islamophobic abuse to Sadiq Khan. We saw the disgraceful Tory MP Michael Fabricant send out the most vile islamophobic tweet targeting Sadiq Khan. 

At the last mayoral election, Zac Goldsmith and the Conservative Party ran the most hateful, racist election campaign in living memory against Sadiq Khan. Islamophobia is rampant in the Conservative Party. 

I back Muslim Council of Britain’s call for an enquiry into islamophobia in the Conservative Party. 

I say this to the Conservative Party, when you turn a blind eye to islamophobia and make it mainstream, the fascists take it as carte blanche to murder Muslims on our streets. 

Last year, a fascist killed Makram Ali outside Finsbury Park Mosque.  

And a few years ago, fascists killed Mohammed Saleem in Birmingham.  

Never again do we want to see the killing of Muslims on our streets. 

Never again do we want to see the fascists marching on our streets and giving Nazi salutes. 

Of course, “never again” is what Europe said after the second world war following the genocide of six million European Jews.  

But, we had the genocide of European Muslims in Bosnia in our lifetime. Only this week, we marked 23 years since the massacre in Srebrenica when more than 8 thousand Muslim men and boys were massacred.

I am afraid with the rise of far right groups and racists across Europe, we might see another genocide. We see the demonisation of migrants and refugees every day in Europe. 

Theresa May masterminded the hostile environment policy against immigrants. And Donald Trump putting children in cages or concentration camps is just a trial run.

He has emboldened and inspired racists all across Europe and the Western world. If we want to avert another genocide on European soil, we must stay united and organise because there are more of us than them.