The weekend scenes of encircled mosques guarded by police, and hotels accommodating asylum seekers attacked by mobs intent on violence, were among the most disturbing seen on British streets for many years. In their scope and intensity, these riots were of a different order to relatively isolated incidents in the past, such as the petrol bomb attack on a Dover immigration centre in 2022. In Rotherham, where a group of rioters broke into a Holiday Inn and attempted to set the building on fire, the bravery of outnumbered police averted a potential tragedy.
Responsibility for this horror naturally lies with the perpetrators, who exploited the tragic murder of three girls in Southport last week as a convenient pretext for xenophobic violence. It is, as Sir Keir Starmer clearly intends, imperative that they are swiftly seen to suffer the consequences of such thuggery in court.
It will not, however, be sufficient to address these events primarily through the legal lens of violent disorder and criminality. In Southport and places such as Sunderland and Stoke, hundreds of rioters, mobilised through social media, brought the spirit of the far-right pogrom to the streets of our towns and cities. In Middlesbrough, masked youths targeted an area with a large immigrant population, smashing the windows of houses and car windscreens. These actions were a challenge to Britain’s peaceful multi-ethnic identity.
As Dame Sara Khan, the independent adviser for social cohesion and resilience under Rishi Sunak, told this newspaper, that did not come about in a political vacuum. According to Ms Khan’s own research, the inflammatory rhetoric deployed by successive Conservative governments in relation to immigration has palpably nourished extremism on the ground. “You just see extremists co-opting that,” she notes. “You see people saying, well, if politicians can use that language, why can’t we?” Nigel Farage’s insidious manipulation of social media is further contributing to this merging of horizons between Reform, parts of a radicalised Conservative party and the extra-parliamentary far right.
Thankfully, the likes of Suella Braverman, who as home secretary described irregular migration as an “invasion” and later suggested that “Islamists” were now running Britain, will not be in office anytime soon. But the pious condemnation of the violence by senior Conservative figures sits uneasily with their party’s relentless framing of immigration as a menace to the nation. It also leaves Labour with a task that goes far beyond the rapid administering of criminal justice in the courts.
As Ms Khan argues, ineffective legislation permits pernicious racist narratives to be freely propagated, particularly on social media. This lacuna in our extremism laws must finally be addressed. Just as importantly, the mainstreaming and normalisation of far-right discourse on immigration in Britain, as elsewhere in Europe, is a political fact that requires a response. The reality of Britain as a multicultural society needs to be defended and celebrated, both rhetorically and through the provision of real resources and support to challenged areas.
As has been said many times in the aftermath of Southport, the overwhelming majority of Britons will view the events of the past few days with utter revulsion. But the riots are also evidence that the ideas of the far right have gained much more than a foothold in our national politics. It will perhaps be the most important task of this new Labour government to take them on.
