What I saw at Saturday’s rally was racism, pure and simple. Labour won’t tackle it until we can call it what it is | Diane Abbott

Silence about the bigotry inherent in events like Tommy Robinson’s march will be seen by the thugs as tacit approval of their message

I have been on a great many political marches in my time. But Saturday’s rally, facing up to Tommy Robinson’s 110,000-strong “unite the kingdom” march in London, was the only one where I actually felt threatened.

I was on the anti-racist counter march and we were outnumbered 20 to one. This was startling: on anti-racist marches, we usually easily outnumber the racists. The march organised by Robinson, whose real name is Stephen Yaxley-Lennon, was billed as “a free speech rally”, but free speech in this case seemed to mean people saying anything they wanted about only one subject: immigration.

Diane Abbott has been the Labour MP for Hackney North and Stoke Newington since 1987

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