The renowned social historian David Kynaston observed at the weekend that multicultural Britain has made huge progress compared with 60 years ago, when local Conservatives ran a notoriously racist election campaign in the West Midlands constituency of Smethwick. He is, of course, quite right. It is impossible to imagine a serious political figure delivering a speech like the inflammatory 1968 “rivers of blood” address by Enoch Powell. But the response of some on the contemporary right to the recent disorder in Leeds shows that there is no room for complacency.
After rioting broke out in the deprived multi-ethnic district of Harehills following the removal of children from a Roma family into care, the home secretary, Yvette Cooper, swiftly condemned the violence, which saw a police car tipped over, officers attacked and a passing bus set on fire. A series of arrests have since been made, with more likely to follow. Leeds city council has, meanwhile, announced that it will undertake a review of the case that sparked the unrest, which took place in an area with a large Roma population. That review should also seek to address known causes of alienation and mistrust in a troubled community.
These measured responses contrasted starkly with interventions from the Reform party’s Nigel Farage and Lee Anderson, who capitalised on the incident to ventilate a wider xenophobic agenda that they do not bother to conceal. Ignoring the facts of the case entirely, Mr Farage asserted that “the politics of the subcontinent are currently playing out on the streets of Leeds”. For his part, Mr Anderson stated: “Import a third world culture and you get third world behaviour … I want my country back.” The former minister for immigration Robert Jenrick, who seeks to drag the floundering Conservative party deeper into similarly divisive terrain, lamented failed integration strategies and called for a radical rethink on immigration.
As an exasperated editorial in the Yorkshire Post rightly complained, Mr Farage passed judgment on a city “without a clue of the issues” involved locally. He will not care about that though. His strategy – now as an elected parliamentarian – is to use any opening to develop a British version of the “American carnage” rhetoric deployed by Donald Trump, whatever the cost to social cohesion.
That, in turn, will give oxygen and legitimacy to street leaders of the far right such as Stephen Yaxley-Lennon, the co-founder of the English Defence League. As footage of the Harehills unrest circulated online – itself a factor in the escalation of tensions – Mr Yaxley-Lennon claimed that the area’s newly elected Green councillor, Mothin Ali, was an active participant. In fact, Mr Ali played a courageous peacemaker role, shielding police officers from violent protesters and defusing tensions. That did not prevent the pushing of a false and Islamophobic social media narrative.
During a parliament in which they will posture as the true rightwing opposition to Labour, we can expect more pernicious takes from Mr Farage and Mr Anderson. The Powellite politics of the 1960s may belong to a dark chapter of Britain’s past. But Reform’s insidious form of revivalism must be contested vigorously and vigilantly.
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