From Tommy Robinson to Reform UK, nationalist figures are weaponising women’s safety to push anti-migrant fears
“O
ur women, our daughters are scared to walk the streets,” Tommy Robinson told tens of thousands of cheering supporters at last Saturday’s “unite the kingdom” rally. “Their safety has been taken from them,” he said, his voice croaking from the strain of shouting into his microphone. Communities were crumbling, he added, “at the hands of open border, mass uncontrolled immigration”.
The need to protect women and children from the threat posed by illegal immigration has this summer become an increasingly frequent rallying cry used by politicians on the right to justify a hardening anti-immigrant rhetoric.
The resurgent use of the phrase has provoked many questions for analysts of the evolving debate on immigration. When did something that has been in the far right’s playbook for decades re-emerge as the right’s most favoured anti-immigration slogan? Since when did women become so vulnerable that they need the protection of vigilante protest groups? How accurate are the claims made by right-wing politicians about the link between sexual assault and illegal immigration?
