The police have already made several arrests following despicable violence that broke out in Southport earlier this week in the wake of the mass stabbing of children at a Taylor Swift holiday party. They continue hunting down the other perpetrators — but the harder question is how to deal with the rise of the far-Right. Its thuggish supporters were behind the disorder, and the spread of disinformation and fake news that is fuelling such extremism.
The Home Secretary Yvette Cooper has said that she will examine calls for the English Defence League to be placed alongside other far-Right groups such as National Action on the list of proscribed terrorist organisations.
Few, other than their bigoted followers, would miss them and after their recent displays of violence in London, carried out largely in reaction to the pro-Gaza protests. It would undoubtedly be a relief to police not to face further violence and to have a new weapon to go after the group’s ringleaders.
The sight of another thuggish protest on Whitehall last night that led to more than 100 arrests will certainly have reinforced the feeling that, in the protesters’ own words, enough is enough.
The legal definition of terrorism is tightly drawn, however, so it’s uncertain whether the EDL, distasteful though it is, will be judged to meet the required threshold for proscription.
The Home Secretary says she will examine calls for the EDL to be proscribed
Previous home secretaries, advised by their lawyers, have decided not. And it’s not obvious that the incitement of thugs to go on a misdirected rampage in Southport will change that. Nor would taking down the EDL tackle the root cause of the problem on its own. The bigger challenge is the increasing way in which conspiracy theories and downright falsehoods spread online are polluting public debate and fostering the growth of extremism and violence.
In the case of Southport, the violence appears to have been fuelled by a false but widely circulated claim online that the 17-year-old suspect, who was born in Cardiff to parents of Rwandan origin, was a Muslim asylum seeker who came to Britain on a small boat last year.
The organisation Tech against Terrorism has identified a Russian news outlet as among those promoting the claim, raising the suspicion that this week’s violence was at least partly fomented by the Kremlin as an act of hostile state aggression.
In theory, that would bring either or both of the new National Security Act and Online Safety Act into play, given that both contain provisions designed to tackle the spread of disinformation.
But Jonathan Hall KC, the Government’s terror watchdog who was also recently appointed to the job of reviewing state threat legislation, recently warned in a speech a fortnight ago that he was “sceptical” that the new powers to combat foreign interference could be a “safety standard”. He suggested instead that “legislation requiring much greater transparency from platforms” was needed to help ensure they were doing enough to prevent such activity on their sites.
That indicates there’s work to do for the Government on disinformation that results from foreign interference. It’s the same with other aspects of the threat, too. One example is the provision in last year’s Online Safety Act making it a criminal offence to spread false information that could cause “non-trivial psychological or physical harm” — as Tuesday’s violence indisputably did. That applies to the duties the Act imposes on the social media giants. The Home Secretary talked yesterday about companies needing “to take some responsibility” for the content on their sites, rather than resorting to legal threats. If that responsibility isn’t shown and the tide of incendiary disinformation continues pressure for a more robust response will grow.
The law can’t stop people recklessly indulging in conspiracy theories, as Nigel Farage did when he disingenuously questioned whether the police, who have ruled out a terror link to both crimes, were deliberately withholding information about the Southport attack and the stabbing of a soldier in Kent. More responsibility is needed, particularly in elected politicians, to avoid descending into a Trumpian world of alternative “facts”. Schools will also need to double down on efforts to teach the young to rely on trusted sources.
Renewed debate looms too about how to tackle propagandists such as Tommy Robinson, the EDL’s founder, and a key contributor to the disturbing growth of the far-Right that this country has suffered in recent years.
The Government’s Commission for Countering Extremism has recommended a new offence of “hateful extremism” to catch hate preachers, both Islamist and far-Right.
Sceptics have warned of the difficulty of establishing a precise-enough definition that is workable in law without impinging on free speech.
But while there are no easy answers, Ms Cooper and the Prime Minister, Sir Keir Starmer, will know that demands for more action are likely to grow.
