THE workplace is a key battleground on which we must defeat the far right, unions heard at the TUC racial justice and equality conference today.

Speaking at the event in London, teachers’ union NASUWT general secretary Dr Patrick Roach threw a challenge at those in the labour movement to “step up” and “take a lead in the fight against racism and the far right.”

The opening session was chaired by TUC Cymru general secretary Shavanah Taj, who warned Reform UK was now neck and neck with Labour and Plaid Cyrmu in Wales.

Highlighting the struggles black workers faced during the Covid-19 pandemic and trade unions’ responses to protect them, he said: “Our anti-racism work has hardly begun.

“It certainly is not over. We [need] to build our movement to ensure it’s bigger and stronger at the end of this five years of a Labour government than when we kicked the Tories out.

“It is absolutely time for our unions to get our house in order in terms of tackling the issues of black under-representation within our structures.

“Now more than ever, we need to make our anti-racism commitments a reality for our black members.

“Otherwise, we risk losing the support of black workers for our trade union movement.”

Mr Roach said that there is a “hunger for action” against racism in the trade union movement.

“At the last general election, one in 10 trade union members voted Reform.

“That indicates that [when] the support for unions wanes, [workers] go to the populists and the extremists, and we can’t let that happen.

“The fight against racism and the far right has to happen in our workplaces and our branches. That is our battleground.

“That’s the battleground that we will fight in exposing the lies and the hypocrisy of Nigel Farage, where we will win support from our members and our communities, black and white, in standing up to racism in our classrooms, in our workplaces, in our branches.

“That’s where we’ll equip our members and our activists to challenge racism at work and build a united intersectional response, where we can demonstrate whose side we really are on, delivering a new deal for working people and showing all workers that the best place to be is in the union.”

National Education Union (NEU) general secretary Daniel Kebede said the past year has seen a resurgence of the far-right movement on Britain’s streets centred around far-right figurehead Tommy Robinson, and which led to the summer riots.

“I don’t think those riots would have happened had we secured a big counter mobilisation to Tommy Robinson at the end of July,” he told the conference, stressing the importance of public protest.

“The problem was they had space, unabated, to parrot and build confidence among each other.

“[Nigel Farage] is an enemy of the working class. He wants to privatise our NHS, and he wants to diminish the lives of black workers and white workers.

“That is the overriding message that we have to win across our movement, that we have to stand together for a society in which refugees are welcome, in which every child in our country, regardless of their background, deserves to flourish.”

Mr Kebede said that racism “comes from the top down, not the bottom up” and that trade unionists should reach out to colleagues to help them recognise that “it is in their interest that they turn out against the rise of the far right.”

“That their lives will get worse if they don’t,” he said. “That’s the message we need to get out amongst the working class.”

The two black general secretaries differed in emphasis on how to confront racism.

While Mr Roach said we should not fear making people feel uncomfortable in raising the issue of racism, Mr Kebede cautioned against anything resembling “guilt-tripping.”

Racism would be overcome by uniting black and white people along class lines, not emphasising division, Mr Kebede argued, saying he had first come to trade unionism through seeing National Union of Teachers (NUT) banners on anti-racist marches.

“We were only able to defeat the BNP and NF before them, because people felt confident,” he elaborated afterwards.

“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.”

TUC general secretary Paul Nowak also spoke at the panel, urging unions to push for three key priorities in the new year; to make anti-racism the heart of their work, to join the struggle for racial justice by opposing the far right; and to build solidarity with all working people.

And Napo general secretary Ian Lawrence spoke about the initiatives taken by his own union to combat racism, saying: “If small unions can take [actions], then certainly the bigger unions can [too].”