Shabana Mahmood says anti-migration protestors are 'heirs to the P--- bashers of old'

Shabana Mahmood has likened some of the 150,000 marchers protesting against immigration to "P----bashers" of the 1960s and 1970s.

The Home Secretary delivered the explosive comparison during her address to the Labour Party conference, drawing parallels between modern protesters and violent racist gangs from decades past.

Speaking at the Labour Party conference, the Home Secretary said some of those who took to the streets in the rally organised by Tommy Robinson, the far-Right activist, on Sept 13 were "heirs to the skinheads and P--- bashers of old". The news comes as Mahmood considers emergency plans to avoid migration chaos.

"While not everyone chanted racist slogans, some did. Clear that in their view of this country, I have no place," said Mahmood.

Fears of division spreading across Britain

However, she added that the protests and people's fears that "things were spinning out of control" could not be dismissed. And unless the Labour Government addressed people's concerns, "division within the country" would grow.

Mahmood said: "Just days into this job, on September 13, 150,000 people marched through London. They did so under the banner of a convicted criminal and a former BNP [British National Party] member."

Police officers injured in violent clashes

"While not everyone was violent, some were. Twenty-six police officers were injured as they tried to keep the peace.

"It would be easy to dismiss this as nothing but an angry minority, heirs to the skinheads and the P----bashers of old, and make no mistake, some were. But to dismiss what happened that day would be to ignore something bigger, something broader, that is happening across this country. The story of who we are is contested."

Family members targeted with racist abuse

The Home Secretary also revealed members of her own family had been called "f---ing P----" in the last couple of weeks in Birmingham as she claimed Nigel Farage was "worse than racist".

Speaking at a fringe interview with Spectator editor Michael Gove, Mahmood said there were parts of Birmingham where she was still "second-guessing" whether she could go back because of the racist abuse she had suffered there as a child with her parents.

Muslim hatred reaches unprecedented levels

She warned that Muslim hatred was currently "off the charts" and at a scale that she "had never known in my lifetime".

"It's not like I haven't faced hatred," she said, recalling hearing the word "P---" in the playground as an eight-year-old.

"But what is happening now is something much deeper and much more pervasive, and it does feel like it's everywhere.

"At the moment, members of my own family, just in the last couple of weeks, have been called f---ing P---- in Birmingham, in places that I go to regularly with my family," she said.

Mahmood vows to chart different course

However, she said she was not willing to write off "potentially millions of my fellow citizens" as Muslim haters, but instead she wanted to "work out why that's happening and where it can be answered."

"That is the point I was making in my speech. This is my home. This land is my land. It's the only land I have," she said.

"I haven't got anywhere else in the world to go back to. This is it for me. I therefore have a responsibility from the position I sit in politics to chart a different course for the country and to make a bigger argument that can stem that kind of hatred."

Farage branded worse than racist

Responding to Reform's plan to deport migrants already granted indefinite leave to remain, she said that Farage was not racist but blew a "very loud dog whistle to every racist in the country", which gave him the protection of "plausible deniability."

"He knows exactly what he's doing, and it's a much more cynical, dangerous form of politics. I think it's much, much worse than racism," said Mahmood.

Tougher immigration rules unveiled

Mahmood's comments were included in her first speech to the Labour conference as Home Secretary, in which she confirmed plans that migrants would be forced to leave the UK unless they could show they were good citizens under Labour's plans to toughen immigration rules to combat the threat of Reform.

Asylum law review launched

She also indicated that she was conducting a review of asylum and international law as she explored ways to tackle the immigration crisis, warning Labour members that she was prepared to take unpopular decisions that could upset some party activists.

Millions exempted from citizenship tests

However, it emerged on Monday that some 1.3 million foreign nationals already living and working in the UK will not be subject to the new citizenship tests, although they could be forced to wait up to 10 rather than five years before becoming eligible for permanent settlement.