WOMEN Against The Far Right was set up in opposition to the far right’s use of  women’s safety as a weapon to spread racism and division.

A spokesperson said: “The far right are not the defenders of women as evidenced by their aggressive and sexist language used against anti-racist women protesters and the vile abuse shouted outside hotels housing refugee families.

In Harlow, we have been very concerned, in recent weeks, by the presence of ‘Essex Spartans’ patrolling our streets in uniform and offering to escort women and girls home. The Essex Spartans are rooted in the far right and have links to open fascists.

Our group currently particularly wants to express concern about new measures announced by Home Secretary, Shabanna Mahmood last week, and endorsed by our own MP, Chris Vince, which will restrict the rights of migrants who are already living in the country by extending their wait for indefinite leave to remain from five to ten years with some having to wait for as long as twenty years. We feel that these proposals reinforce far right claims that refugees are to blame for society’s problems rather than, as the Anglican bishop of Edmonton argued last week, “People coming to the UK are being scapegoated for years of policy failures”.

The rights of family members are also threatened under the government’s proposed measures and migrants without citizenship will be unable to claim benefits meaning children will suffer.

The fact that these plans have led Nigel Farage to suggest that Shabana Mahmood’s speech sounded like an audition to join Reform and have been met with approval by far right activist, Steven Yaxley Lennon (who calls himself Tommy Robinson among other aliases) should be cause for alarm.

The proposals have been met with condemnation by refugee charities and human rights charities such as Amnesty International who warn that “the government’s plans mark a dangerous drift towards treating fundamental human rights as optional depending on who you are”.

There has also been sharp criticism from within the Labour Party itself. Stella Creasy (Labour MP for Walthamstow), writing in The Guardian, called the plans “performative cruelty” and wrote that “they are counterproductive to integration and the economy”. Nadia Whittome (Labour MP for Nottingham East) said the plans were “dystopian, ripping up the rights and protections of people who have endured unimaginable trauma”. Alf Dubs (Labour Peer), himself a child refugee, fleeing persecution of Jews in Nazi occupied Czechoslovakia at the age of six in 1939, claimed that the Labour Government’s proposals are “using children as a weapon”.

Members of Harlow Women Against the Far Right were shocked, saddened and angry when they read the report in Your Harlow of our Labour MP Chris Vince speaking in support of the government’s proposed measures.

“A Labour Government taking on an anti migrant stance is playing a dangerous game and, rather than fending off the threat of the far right is more likely to give it strength. We are of the same view as Lord Alf Dubs when he says that he is “depressed by the government’s hard line” and that “What we need is a bit more compassion in politics”.