“Far-right thuggery” – that’s how newly appointed UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer described rioting and street violence witnessed in several parts of Britain over the weekend. These were the most widespread and serious street violence the country has witnessed in years.
Starmer was visibly angry as he took the unusual step of delivering a robust message from his Downing Street office on Sunday. “This is not protest”, he declared. “It is organised, violent thuggery and it has no place on our streets or online. People in this country have seen Muslim communities targeted, attacks on mosques, other minority communities singled out, Nazi salutes on the street, attacks on the police, wanton violence alongside racist rhetoric.”
Illustration: Pariplab Chakraborty
Over the weekend, violence erupted in about 12 British towns, most in poorer areas of the Midlands and the North. Crowds, which rarely exceeded a few hundred people, fought with police and in some places with rival anti-fascist protestors. Mosques were attacked, and in two places, there were determined attempts to break into budget hotels being used by the authorities to house migrants whose claims for asylum are being processed.
Cars were overturned and set alight, a library and a police office were set on fire, and scores of windows were broken. The police described the intensity of some of the clashes as “staggering”. The government has been taken aback by the viciousness of some of the incidents, and the manner in which the internet and messaging services summoned angry mobs to the streets in towns which rarely see demonstrations of any sort.
The disturbances were sparked by a profound tragedy – a knife-wielding teenager burst into a Taylor Swift-themed dance class and stabbed to death three young girls and injured several others. The man arrested for those horrific murders is British-born of Rwandan heritage. Almost immediately, misinformation started spreading online that the attacker was an illegal immigrant, a Muslim motivated by a desire to foment terror, and someone who was already on the security service’s watch list. That seems to be untrue in every particular, but those who wanted to find a reason to be outraged were given a cause around which to mobilise.
The angry crowds which assembled in various parts of the country over the weekend said they wanted to make a stand against the level of immigration, crime and other problems which they blame on migrants. Some were genuinely aggrieved local people; others had a history of extreme right-wing activity, though no particular movement or organisation appears to have masterminded the unrest. There was an unmistakably racist and Islamophobic aspect to the disturbances, which were also fuelled by warm weather, excess testosterone and alcohol.
The extreme right is a marginal force in British public life with no Members of Parliament and next-to-no electoral support. But the success in last month’s election of the populist anti-immigration party Reform UK – which took 14% of the vote and now has five MPs – may arguably provide some political cover for more extreme groups.
In global terms, the violence was low-key – this was not the sort of street disturbances which we have seen unfold, with such terrible consequences, in the streets of Dhaka. The police were clearly taken by surprise in some places and forced to retreat in the face of a hail of bottles and stones, fencing and fire extinguishers. But in Britain’s weekend of rioting, no one was killed, only a few serious injuries have been reported, and about 150 people have been arrested (though the police have said they will use video and other evidence to make further detentions).
The violence is the first major challenge for the Labour government. Alongside the angry denunciations of racist thuggery, ministers will also have to consider how to defuse the deep unease about the scale of immigration in many parts of the country. The governing Labour Party is committed to reducing both legal and illegal immigration. But that’s easier said than done. Britain needs legal migrants to sustain its economy and the health and social care services. And repeated attempts to cut down on illegal migrants, who pay huge sums to people smugglers to travel across the Channel in perilously unseaworthy small boats, have so far failed to stem the tide.
The bigger issue for the government is how to restrict the circulation of disinformation and racist and hateful rhetoric on social media. The digital titans seem to be unable or unwilling to invigilate the content and posts from which they make their billions. The call to prevent posts which cause social harm can easily become a path to crude digital censorship. But with the power and the wealth that digital corporations accumulate comes responsibility too – the British government has made clear that it will be looking to big tech to take that responsibility more seriously.
Andrew Whitehead is a former BBC India correspondent.
London Calling: How does India look from afar? Looming world power or dysfunctional democracy? And what’s happening in Britain, and the West, that India needs to know about and perhaps learn from? This fortnightly column helps forge the connections so essential in our globalising world.
