Coming Face-to-Face with the British Far Right

Whatever happened to the UK far right? With the formal dissolution of the BNP and decline of the EDL, it seems the demons have been exorcised. Or have they? Hsiao-Hung Pai shows that far-right ideas are increasingly incorporated into mainstream politics and media discourse. Following a group of individuals who got caught up in the wave of far-right street movements that began in 2009, she investigated the rise of the EDL and other far-right organisations, falling in with several of their members and observing their day-to-day lives. She explains that their ideologies are not an aberration in modern British society, but rather they are an ever-present facet, constantly reproduced, rejuvenated and made mainstream by the media and political powers.

Speaker Biography

Hsiao-Hung Pai is a journalist and author. For her book Chinese Whispers, shortlisted for the 2009 Orwell Prize, she worked undercover in brothels, factories, fields and restaurants to expose the working conditions of undocumented Chinese labourers in the UK. For Scattered Sand, winner of the Bread and Roses Award in 2013, she spent two years travelling across China to interview rural migrants. Her third book, Invisible, was an undercover exposé of the migrant sex industry in the UK, and was serialised in the G2 section of the Guardian.

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