Martin Kettle writes: “Britain’s 2024 riots are a surprise national crisis. There was no particular buildup, no clearly discernible pressure-cooker process” (Starmer is being tough on the rioters, but history shows that preventing further unrest is the real challenge, 7 August). I find this unbelievable. People have been warning for years that the relentless triangulation of Nigel Farage and Reform by both the Tory party and the Labour party would eventually open the door for the far right.
The drift to the right has been across the board in UK politics since Margaret Thatcher. If not, then could someone please explain why Labour were so uncritical of the immorality of the entire “stop the boats” gimmick? And why go so far themselves in the same direction, promising they could indeed stop the boats, but with border control?
There has been no pushback whatsoever against the frankly racist campaign to demonise refugees and Muslims. Instead, we have seen centrist strategists enthusiastically endorsing the triangulation of both the right of the Conservative party and, shamefully, the more unhinged rantings of Reform.
These riots come as no surprise to me. We have a mainstream political culture that those people who fought against the rise of the National Front and the BNP in the 1970s and 80s would be utterly ashamed of. They would have seen and called out the debased adoption by all parties of “legitimate concerns” for the racist nonsense it so clearly always was and still is.
Jonathan Callan
London
• Despite the Kaiser Chiefs song, Martin Kettle is right that you can’t predict a riot. The appalling attack on young girls in Southport and misinformation about it appears to have been a spark. However, the previous Saturday, Stephen Yaxley-Lennon and others had held a rally of 15,000 in London. It was opposed by a large Stand Up to Racism presence, but it was obvious trouble would be brewing at some point.
Kettle is right too that Britain has a long history of riots. The Church and King mobs of the late 18th and early 19th centuries violently attacked the houses and meetings of radicals and religious dissenters. They were inspired, just as the current riots seem to be, by ideas formulated not at the grassroots but at the top of society. In the early 1800s these focused on opposition to the French Revolution and to any democratic instincts such as the demand for the vote. The mother of William Hulton, the magistrate who sent the yeomanry in at Peterloo in August 1819, owned a prize horse. Its name? Church and King.
Dr Keith Flett
Editor, A History of Riots
• Martin Kettle is right to draw attention to the longer term. So far Sir Keir Starmer has held a strong line in making clear that these rioters are engaging in criminal acts and will be punished. However, locking people up for a relatively short time does not deal with the root causes, and may lead to even more embittered individuals on release. If only the punishment for each could be to be “locked into” a programme that helps them to explore their anger and maybe even become advocates for peace.
Elspeth Cardy
London
• Violent rioters are being jailed. The prisons are full. Here is an alternative. The government could start up a scheme similar to the Voluntary Service Overseas. Those who choose this as an alternative to prison are sent on a programme of providing aid where it is needed, in countries which are open to it.
Given that hatred largely stems from ignorance, boredom, frustration, poverty and fear, this could have the added value of showing the participants other cultures, and that difference does not necessarily have to be something to be afraid of.
Would James Timpson, our new prisons minister, be interested in backing such a project?
Caroline Stewart
Glasgow
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