"Theirs was a small-P political household. His dad was a social worker, his mum worked for various charities. She was from Mauritius, and now on the telly, the National Front were saying they were going to send people who weren't born in Britain home in six months. I was petrified that my mum was going to get sent home. The ambient racism of 70s and 80s Britain permeated everything. I just remember being scared, Lowles says."
"How to Defeat the Far Right is Lowles's memoir-cum-manual, telling the story of how Hope Not Hate, the anti-fascist campaign group, came into existence in 2004. There is no other organisation like it, in its range of actions and independence of spirit. It does a lot of data (polling and analysis) but also a lot of community organising; it infiltrates fascist spaces, online and off, to subvert their plans, and it organises counterprotests."
Nick Lowles experienced racial hostility in 1970s and 1980s Britain after moving to Shrewsbury and feared his Mauritian mother would be deported. He remembers being frightened of returning to school 'too brown'. Lowles founded Hope Not Hate in 2004 to counter the far right. Hope Not Hate combines polling and analysis with community organising, infiltration of fascist spaces both online and offline, and the organisation of counterprotests. The group won campaigns against the BNP in Barking and Dagenham and helped foil a 2017 plot to murder MP Rosie Cooper. Lowles maintains connections to institutional politics, including a friendship with Gordon Brown, but experiences fluctuating influence with the current government.
Read at www.theguardian.com
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