Jeremy Corbyn, the recently reaffirmed Labour Party leader, has used a commemoration rally of the Battle of Cable Street to attack the Conservative government.
Speaking onstage in St Georges Gardens, off Cable Street, 80 years after antifascist demonstrators clashed with Oswald Mosleys British Union of Fascists, Corbyn used the opportunity to attack the politics of division and the far right.
He said: There are still those around that try to divide our communities and drive a wedge between us. There are those that see economic problems as an excuse to blame minorities in our societies.
And I simply say this – if theres a shortage of housing, of school places, if theres a queue at the doctors surgery or there are difficulties in a local hospital, or there are problems in employment – you can turn one community against another, you can always find a minority to blame for everything and then youve created the hatred and the vileness in society that creates the distrust.
But at the end of it, you havent built a house, you havent built a school, you havent trained a teacher, you havent trained a doctor.
Its communities that come together that achieve so much. They achieve so much and we have to learn a lesson from them. You have to keep learning that lesson.
Corbyn also used the opportunity to discuss the rise in hate crimes after the EU Referendum.
There were nearly 5,000 racially motivated offences in London between June 24 and September 30 in 20216, compared with 3,620 in the 99 days before the Brexit vote, according to figures from the Mayor of Londons office.
Corbyn said: Post the referendum in June, theres been a disgusting and disgraceful rise in xenophobia and hate crime across this country.
The only answer to it is communities coming together, to support each other and not allowing it to go on.
The only way is to bring people together so that we deal with our economic issues across international boundaries as well as within them, together.
There is no future in racism, there is no future in xenophobia, there is no future in division within our society. We are not going to be divided. We are united in wanting to create a world of peace, a world that supports not condemns those that seek asylum from wars, or human rights abuses or environmental disaster.
A world where we manage our economy in such a way that we provide jobs for all and not just the few. A world where we share the wealth among all, not give it to the minority and the few, Corbyn said.
