Alan Johnson reviews Hate, Matthew Collins’s account of his life in the British far Right.
He concludes:
Collins rightly worries that few politicians are speaking to the angry and vulnerable working class. “Because they’re working class, because they are overwhelmingly white and from the football terraces,” he writes, “it’s almost as if no one wants to tackle their message head-on.”
Matthew Collins is now employed by Searchlight and is one of the most effective speakers and outreach workers for its campaign “Hope not Hate.” I put his book down thinking I’d like to buy him a drink. If I can borrow the phrase, he has not come back from hell empty-handed. And that is no small feat.