‘They told me to go back to my country’: Inside the UK’s wave of racism

Manchester, United Kingdom – Agnes Peters, a care worker from Manchester, vividly remembers the moment she was targeted for her race.

“I was coming back from work,” she said, her voice low from a table in a Manchester library’s cafe. “I was in my uniform … and they told me to go back to my country, used racial slurs against me and threw things from the car as they drove slowly past,” she said. “People were watching and recording.”

Only one bystander reproached the abusers for “throwing stones” at Peters, she said, remembering the incident last year.

Racists have become emboldened, she said, describing the rise of xenophobia in the United Kingdom.

“They feel like if they come out in public and embarrass me, a Black person, it gives them supporters,” she said. “They’re no longer sitting on the fence. They’re out there actively trying to pull people down.”

While the nature of racism that emerged after Brexit has persisted, focused on those trying to enter the UK irregularly, other minorities have also been at the sharp end of discrimination.

Earlier this month, Oxfam, Amnesty International and 152 other groups issued a joint statement calling for the government “to act immediately” over what they described as the normalisation of racist violence in the UK.

“Levels of racist violence and intimidation that were once considered extreme are now becoming weekly occurrences across the UK”, they said, reflecting on “the consequences of years of growing inequality, underinvestment in communities and public services, and political and media narratives that have normalised racism, anti-migrant sentiment and Islamophobia.”

Migration and racism

The issue is never far away from the headlines.

In recent days, far-right activist Daniel Thomas, described as an “outright racist” by UK Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood, filmed himself slashing an inflatable rescue boat in the Channel – while a rescue worker was still on board.

His group, Patriot Platform, has caused chaos during anti-migrant actions at the ports of Dover and Portsmouth, and he has suggested bringing “thousands” of his black-clad members to the Oxfordshire village of Piddington, where some are resisting government attempts to house asylum seekers.

Other English towns have also seen anti-migration protests, often featuring crowds of masked men engaging in anti-social behaviour.

“They’ll say they’re anti-immigration.” Nahella Ashraf, a Manchester organiser with Stand Up to Racism, said, describing how right-wing protests outside of mosques or hotels housing asylum seekers inevitably result in arbitrary attacks on individuals based on their skin colour.

“And actually the truth is, whether it’s the guys in balaclavas and black outfits in Portsmouth or Dover, or whether it’s the English Defence League marching on our streets many years ago, we know that wherever they go, there are attacks on Black people … That hasn’t changed.”

Political mainstreaming

Increasingly, hateful rhetoric is being politicised.

Commenting on Piddington, Sarah Pochin, an MP with the far-right Reform UK, claimed in an interview that migrants and refugees posed a threat to “indigenous white women”.

“Mainstream discourse has a role in normalising right-wing discourse,” said Paul Jackson, a professor and researcher on the hard right at the University of Northampton.

“Politicians are quick to absorb the sentiments of the extreme right and, by using it in their discourse, normalise it. However, this doesn’t seem to build their base, so much as draw people to the further right-wing extremes. I mean, why would you go for a party aping the extreme, when the real deal is available?”

Earlier this month, Reform UK’s self-styled “shadow Home Secretary” Zia Yusuf was accused of racism after writing on X that Labour figure Sagal Abdi-Wali, tipped to run in the Holborn and St Pancras by-election, was born in Somalia.

Business Secretary Jonathan Reynolds called the post “pretty straightforward racism”.

In 2025, then-Conservative shadow Justice Secretary Robert Jenrick was criticised for saying he had not seen “another white face” during a visit to Birmingham, while earlier this year his successor, Nick Timothy, described a mass Muslim prayer event in Trafalgar Square as “an act of domination”.

 

Aurelien Mondon, of the Reactionary Politics Research Network at the University of Bath, noted “a clear link between the emboldening of the most extreme actors on the far right and over two decades of mainstreaming of far-right discourse by mainstream actors”.

“We cannot on the one hand have mainstream media and politicians prioritising far-right issues and discourse and then claim to be surprised when the far right rises or gets emboldened,” he said. “The responsibility in this situation is squarely with those who had the most power to stop it and consciously decided to fuel it instead.”

Rising tides

According to a recent YouGov poll, Reform would secure 21 percent of the vote if a general election were held tomorrow, while Labour would reach 23 percent. Support for Restore, which is further to the right than Reform, was predicted at 4 percent.

The hard right is also making gains in Germany and France.

“Populist anti-immigrant rhetoric in Parliament [in the UK] has consequences for public safety,” said a spokesperson for the independent educational charity, the Institute of Race Relations (IRR).

Mainstream political parties “have capitulated to the hard-right agenda when it comes to the onslaught against migrants and refugee rights”, they added.

In Manchester, Ashraf said while the far right may be better funded and, through various social media networks, have a stronger platform, there is still cause for optimism.

“We are still the majority,” she said.

“And although they use their platforms to really push out hate and division, I think we’re still winning,” she added. “We know every time we do an event in support of refugees, people come up and we meet new people constantly.”

At a recent school event, she said children approached her to offer their books to refugees.

“That is a message of hope. And those are stories you never hear.”