The summer of 2024 looks set to go down in history as one in which the long simmering grievances of the far right finally boiled over into coordinated, widespread, nationwide violence. At the time of writing, white mobs have rioted against Muslims and immigrants in numerous towns and cities across England, including Hartlepool, Sunderland and Middlesbrough. Over the weekend of 3-4 August, social media was awash with chilling footage of Black and Asian homes, businesses and places of worship being attacked.
It is not the first time racial violence has erupted on Britain’s streets – far from it. Cardiff, Liverpool and South Shields in 1919, Deptford in 1949, Notting Hill and Nottingham in 1958, and Middlesbrough’s “Cannon Street Riots” of 1961 are just some examples of violent outbursts against racial minorities over the last century. That’s not to mention the threat of the National Front in the 1970s, the British National Party in the 1990s and 2000s, and the English Defence League in the 2010s.
Events will often play out in a familiar way, with grievances centred around jobs, crime, murder, rape, disease, etc. – in fact, there is very little which can’t be racialised and transmuted into a narrative of white victimhood, whereby a real or imagined transgression is held up as evidence that Muslims, Jews, Africans, Indians, Pakistanis, Poles or some other target group is a threat to British society. Of course, when white English people commit crimes, their race is purely incidental; when black people do, it is because they are black.
Britain and the world
It is important to understand that such violence is bound up with Britain’s history of colonialism and empire. In the 19th century, Britain’s global dominance was often justified on the basis of a mission to civilise the world, what Rudyard Kipling famously described as “the white man’s burden“. Britain’s governing class – its politicians, landowners, businessmen and press barons – sold the myth of empire to the wider population through speeches, pamphlets, books, songs, exhibitions, national celebrations, and more. In doing so, they popularised white supremacy and created a deep reservoir of ideas about British people and their place in the world, one which has informed debates around immigration ever since.
Although many will sneer at the rioters as uneducated louts, it is a mistake to frame racial violence in this way. As ever, current outbursts of violent white supremacy have been cultivated and nurtured over a long period by some of society’s most powerful institutions. The slogans chanted by rioters such as “Stop the boats” and “We want our country back” – popularised by mainstream politicians – reveal a great deal about Britain’s self-image as a nation under siege from sinister outside forces. As the sociologist Paul Gilroy observed of immigration debates 20 years ago:
“In Britain these arguments are tied to an obsessive repetition of key themes – invasion, war, contamination, loss of identity… Later groups of immigrants may not, of course, be connected with the history of empire and colony in any way whatsoever. However, they experience the misfortune of being caught up in a pattern of hostility and conflict that belongs emphatically to its lingering aftermath.”
Agenda setting
How are such ideas propagated in 2024? It has been clear for some time now that the “outrage economy” of unregulated social media platforms, sponsored by right-wing venture capitalists like Elon Musk, are hardwired to spread hatred and rage. The unprecedented scale of this summer’s riots perhaps underscores the power of new media to accelerate and intensify long-existing trends. But that’s not the whole story – not even part of it.
Britain’s newspapers – still read by millions despite their ailing sales, and their reach now extended by the aforementioned new media platforms – have been spewing out hatred against Muslims and immigrants for decades.For all the talk of online disinformation, the role of the British press in the debasement of the public sphere remains one of the most politically significant developments of the last 50 years.
With their constant framing of Muslims and immigrants as terrorists, spongers and extremists, newspapers like the Sun and its ‘respectable’ stablemate the Times continue to wield massive power in setting the UK’s political agenda and influencing public opinion. When the Sun drew directly on neo-Nazi propaganda in a bid to discredit Labour’s former leader in 2019, there was barely a murmur of dissent from the rest of ‘Fleet Street”. Lest it be thought that the Times is any better, it is less than a year since the Home Secretary herself was given free rein in its pages to propagate the myth of ‘two-tier policing’ which is now driving many of the rioters.
Racist consensus
Indeed, it is fair to say that the press and politicians are in firm lock-step on issues of migration and race. Under the stewardship of Boris Johnson and Dominic Cummings, the Conservative Party effectively absorbed the populist right from 2019 onwards, and when gangs of white racists began to terrorise migrant hostels and mount their own “patrols” of the English coast in 2020, they were implicitly egged on by Tory backbenchers. Chillingly, at the beginning of the hysteria around “small boats” in 2020-21, the Conservatives were regularly polling at almost 50%.
And what of the current party of government, the Labour Party? To its eternal shame, it has been hardly much better. As recently as last week, one of its MPs told parliament that her constituents “want their hotel back”– the hotel was duly petrol bombed by the far-right just five days later. In December, a Labour shadow cabinet minister took to the airwaves to decry the expense of accommodating refugees in hotels, describing them as “people who may be a danger to this country”. The party’s leadership spent the final weeks of the recent General Election campaign ramping up its rhetoric against immigrants, with Keir Starmer even indicating that he would cooperate with a right wing French government to curb border crossings. None of this should come as any surprise given Labour’s history on such matters: as the anti-racist scholar Sivanandan famously put it, what Enoch Powell says today, the Tories say tomorrow, and Labour legislates for the day after.
No pasaran
What can be done? Perhaps predictably, the government’s response so far has been to frame the riots as an issue of law and order to be dealt with by the police and courts. This has been accompanied by some disturbing rhetoric which indicates the rioters’ grievances are legitimate even if their methods aren’t.
Needless to say, legal crackdowns are not sufficient to stop fascism, and it is not hard to envisage a situation in the next 3-4 years where an unpopular and ineffective Labour government is assailed on its right by a new fascist organisation feeding further on Tommy Robinson’s victim narrative. It is worth remembering that nearly a million people voted for the fascist BNP the last time Labour were in government, foreshadowing Brexit and the realignment of the right which took place over the ensuing decade. What horrors await us in the late 2020s and 2030s if we don’t organise collectively against the far right now?
If communities think they can mobilise enough people to outnumber the fascists on the streets, then it’s important that they do it. Although the far right has been emboldened by recent events, they were also humiliated in some places, and future generations will no doubt look back for inspiration at the little “Cable Streets” which emerged in places like Sheffield over recent days.
In Middlesbrough on Sunday evening, 200 local people defied calls to “stay at home” and instead gathered peacefully in front of their mosque, in a display of dignity and bravery which has already been viewed more than a million times online; likewise, the spectacular 3000-strong peaceful defence of The Beacon in Newcastle’s West End will be remembered for many years to come.
The spontaneous, multicultural community “clean ups” which have emerged in the aftermath of the riots are a further reminder that the answer to fascism lies partly in bonds of solidarity and friendship within and across different communities. Such grassroots initiatives, involving charities, businesses, trade unions and other local organisations, will be key to the struggles ahead.
CLICK HERE TO DONATE TO OUR CROWDFUNDER
HELP US BECOME STRONGER SO THAT WE CAN CONTINUE TO DELIVER POWERFUL CITIZEN JOURNALISM!
