Many will have watched pictures from Rotherham and elsewhere as racists rioted in pursuit of the neofascist goal of threatening the right of people to live in peace.
No supposed grievance can justify such abuse. No excuse can be offered for it. There is no human rights defence for what these people have done: behaviour of this sort can never qualify as protest. No one should, therefore, describe it as such, but the media is still doing so, too often. If evidence that we have a problem with the media in this country is required this is it.
What else needs to be said?
First, those breaking the law know there is no court or prison capacity to bring them to account. The Tories are to be thanked for that.
Second, Labour is only talking tough. It is refusing to call out the fact that all this behaviour is motivated by Islamophobic racism. I have a horrible nagging fear that they would not be so reticent if it was Jews and synagogues that were being attacked. The sense of hypocrisy, or the possibility that that Labour (like the Tories) has a deep-seated Islamophobia problem feels very real.
Third, talking tough is a distraction when the reality is that there are deep seated problems in communities across the UK. I find the trolls accusing me of being unaware of that fact deeply annoying when I have been drawing attention to these issues for years. I will do so again now. Decades of austerity, but most especially since 2010, have heightened tension, disquiet and alienation. I understand all that. What worries me is that there is no apparent sign that Labour do. If they really think that ‘talking tough' will solve these tensions they are deeply mistaken.
Fourth, whilst tiny minorities are involved in these activities, those fuelling their anger are powerful. Years of anti-immigrant lies by the Mail and Express helped create the sentiments that have fuelled what has happened. Similarly, far-right politicians in the Tories and Reform have done the same thing. They need to be held accountable.
But, fifth, beyond these there must be ultra-far-right-groups who must be behind this. What are their goals? I think it safe to assume it is the destruction of the state as we know it. But when this appears to be an open objective of leading politicians in the US the likelihood that there are those of like mind here has to be high. The stakes are very high.
So what to conclude?
My suggestion is that until our politics changes these tensions will exist. Until our politicians acknowledge that neoliberalism has failed the conditions for these disturbances will continue.
There is gross inequality in the UK and until that is tackled the underlying stresses in our society will continue. My worry is that unless that fact is acknowledged and tackled nothing will change.
That change is possible. It can be financed. We could have a fairer, more quotable, richer society. But will Labour even try to deliver that? I wish I knew.
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Just seen Nadhim Zahawi’s disgraceful comments on the front of the Telegraph. An exercise in both sides-ing what is actually an active far right terror campaign given all legs it needed by the former government he represented. The Conservative Party itself should be badged as a terrorist organisation and outlawed.
Agree.
Apparently a taxi with 4 Philipino nurses (on their way to a shift in a hospital) was attacked. Vile.
Why does the UK need to employ philipino nurses? (thus taking much needed medical staff away from the Philipines)
Why does the UK not train its own? (ditto doctors, or indeed engineers and technicans of all sorts).
These questions are not asked by the MSM – but as the blog notes wrt neo-libtardism (I’m not even going to dignify it with its correct name) that lack of people that keep society functioning is a design feature of neo-libtardism. The actions of the neo-libtards in the BoE – designed to keep people poor, designed to inflame tensions.
The outward cause of the riots – Twitter, the MSM inflaming tensions between people (with more in coomon than divides then) over decades, a modest number of thugs…. and … the neo-libtards in the Treasury and the BoE – fat, happy, self-satisfied, overpaid and very much part of the Uk establishment (which can also be characterised as such).
With regard to Filipino Nurses, thankfully this is one of the few places where their departure to work in our NHS has less impact, as many train specifically to go overseas and send remittance money home. They are excellent, well trained nurses, but their distance from home makes them especially vulnerable to exploitation. That is why we fail to recruit enough nurses here; disgracefully, it simply costs less to scavenge qualified medical staff from countries who could ill afford to train them. Labour must immediately end the policy of paying 20% less to those recruited from abroad.
In my documents on Collaborative Circular Migration I suggest training some of our medical staff overseas where the cost would be lower and our negative impact on other healthcare systems would end. Also among the Collaborative Circular Migration documents I put forward a plan for a special Earn, Learn, and Return (ELR) Visa to provide temporary labour in certain worker shortage areas, but with financial incentives to ensure that they are committed to leaving the UK willingly. If the so-called ‘economic migrants’ from developing countries could apply for this visa overseas it might prevent dangerous journeys and people drowning in the channel trying to reach UK shores in small boats.
Despite their fanaticism over the importance of work, the Tories never required Asylum seekers to work and pay their own way. There could be only one reason for this policy: the Tories wanted to encourage migrants to disappear into the community, join the illegal job market and thereby help to destroy the power of our unions. This was the same devious reason that they inexplicably reduced the number of people handling asylum claims, they deliberately ground the whole system to a halt. The Rwandan scheme was never going to work, but it was a useful distraction tactic diverting attention from the real Tory agenda: providing an endless supply of dirt cheap labourers with zero rights, ripe for exploitation by disreputable employers!
All Asylum seekers should automatically be assigned to the ELR Visa program so that they can work, pay their own way and save for their potential return, resettlement elsewhere or future life in the UK. Farms that require seasonal pickers could be tasked with providing worker accommodation and jobs to those awaiting a decision on their asylum claim. Crops have been left to rot in the fields while this eager workforce has been incarcerated on a barge or cooped-up in hotels; an expense shamefully deducted from our already depleted Foreign Aid Budget. These people came here primarily to work and earn a better life for themself: I say let them work. Will the far-right thugs gang up to pelt field workers picking our food crops?
Labour needs to staff the immigration service properly so that they can get through the backlog of Asylum seekers as quickly as possible. The Labour Government must also be explicit in outlining our International legal obligation to Asylum seekers. Naming and shaming those who are caught attacking or vandalizing is a good idea. While the most serious violent offenders belong in jail, others should receive heavy fines and community service. The inventor in me is wondering if it would be possible to design an electronic tag that could disrupt their internet access? Would it be possible for internet providers to legally deny them service in the future?
We need only look to the past to find that it was the poverty and deprivation in Germany that brought Hitler to power blaming Jews. The UK is heading down the exact same road due to government engineered inequality, homelessness and child poverty. The far-right led by Tommy Robinson, egged on by Farage and Reform, have found their ‘other’; this does not end well. Labour must ditch their austerity agenda, tax wealth and use their first 100 days to demonstrate that they are going to end homelessness and child poverty in the UK.
I would suggest that the Security Services need to get to work on dismantling whatever is behind these riots, prosecuting those responsible and making public what they find.
Imagine what would be happening now if this was a left wing orientated bunch of riots/protests?
Think back to the miners…….
My view in response to John Boxall’s post is that the reason why we get words not action is because action would reveal that the support and financing of this behaviour is deeply embedded in the elite establishment of this country – support for it goes right to the top.
Direct action against those perpetrating this behaviour along the lines of treating them as terrorists would result in us being able to strip their shady networks in a week. But it would be very embarrassing if we got to know who is supporting this in the background. I reckon some big names would be revealed.
But no, in the perverse country that we live in now, jailing climate change protesters is the way to go!
If Colonel Smithers is to be believed, the elite in this country hobnob with each other anyway whilst pretending to be at each other’s throats, it is good political theatre and keeps us focussed on what they want us to focus on whilst they rake it in.
We are being played in my view, this whole thing to our elites is nothing but a game to them, like John Gray’s ‘New Leviathans’ (p.16):
‘The new Leviathans – offer(ing) meaning in material progress, the security of belonging to imaginary communities and the pleasures of persecution’.
I cannot think of a better way to sum up modern life.
The real enemy within is not the Left in this country, it has always been the Right and it is always the Right that accuses its enemies of its own crimes first so that it makes its ‘own reality’ and creates enough room to operate freely.
So much for our ‘democracy’.
Thank you, PSR, for the shout out.
You should see them at places like the Spectator summer and Christmas receptions, Cornbury and Kenwood House festivals etc.
I mentioned Farage and Jo Johnson, whose wife Amelia Gentleman is one of the toffs at the Grauniad, and have mentioned Euan Blair and Sunak, I forgot to mention Jacob Rees-Mogg and Jess Philips. The media and political nexus, blue, yellow and red, is another bit of theatre. They are laughing at us, especially as we fight one another for crumbs from their top table.
I find it hard to believe that the police can identify, find and arrest the three peaceful Just Stop Oil protestors for 5 years each before they even take any action, and yet are compeltely clueless about these riots and their perpetrators.
My personal view is that the best thing to ensure a peaceful and trouble free society is to ensure that there are enough jobs that pay a wage that will support a family for all those that want/are able to do them.
OK its a bit more complicated than that but thats the ‘executive summary’
I have just watched part of a program on Al Jazeera on the subject of the riots and the reasons for it.
They gave the subject half an hour and had three well qualified people-not politicians- one of them has done a study of on-line propaganda and its effects on political action. Another was from the Runnymead trust. They had a calm, informed conversation.
Such a contrast to the tabloids and Sky/BBC where it tends to be politicians and journalists. We need a wider range of voices.
Yes, my news channel of choice as well Ian, but, and it’s a big but, all of them, including the interviewer, repeatedly called them U.K riots. To my knowledge, no such events have taken place in Scotland.
Alex, yes I noticed that.
I watch several channels and use the web being a layabout retired guy.
What is noticeable is that the questioner sets the agenda by the questions asked. So on economic issues they are usually in a neo-liberal framework. Other possible perspectives are ignored -on several issues. For example, we get ‘how do we stop Iran?’ Not why is Iran hostile?
Unless we have an amount of background knowledge, a lot of the discussion is fairly meaningless or reduced to emotional and binary questions. I sometimes feel nostalgia for the days of three channels which had informative documentaries ( e.g. World in Action) which people watched because they couldn’t be bothered to turn over. But it meant they did pick up some information. However, the web gives us the chance to test the info we had dealt.
We need to give people more time to give their opinion and the reasons they hold that opinion. In that way we can see where they are coming from. Democracy is only workable if the electorate is well informed.
“First, those breaking the law know there is no court or prison capacity to bring them to account” According to reports, the Courts intend to sit around the clock to deal with the accused which is, apparently, what happened after the last big riots in England in 2011.
As at least some of the behaviour falls within the definition of terrorism, the prison capacity will have to accommodate them. People charged under the Terrorism Act are very likely to be remanded whilst awaiting trial.
Some people, in fact, may very well find themselves charged with encouraging terrorism even if they have not actually been at any of the riots we have witnessed. Some keyboard warriors on Twitter and elsewhere are in for a very rude awakening.
From the CPS:
“The Terrorism Act 2000 defines terrorism, both in and outside of the UK, as the use or threat of one or more of the actions listed below, and where they are designed to influence the government, or an international governmental organisation or to intimidate the public. The use or threat must also be for the purpose of advancing a political, religious, racial or ideological cause.
The specific actions included are:
serious violence against a person;
serious damage to property;
endangering a person’s life (other than that of the person committing the action);
creating a serious risk to the health or safety of the public or a section of the public; and
action designed to seriously interfere with or seriously to disrupt an electronic system.
The use or threat of action, as set out above, which involves the use of firearms or explosives is terrorism regardless of whether or not the action is designed to influence the government or an international governmental organisation or to intimidate the public or a section of the public.
Action includes action outside the United Kingdom.
It is important to note that in order to be convicted of a terrorism offence a person doesn’t actually have to commit what could be considered a terrorist attack. Planning, assisting and even collecting information on how to commit terrorist acts are all crimes under British terrorism legislation.”
Remanded where? Jailed where? I’ve been asking on Twitter and am told by what appears to be an informed source #legalTwitter that current inmates will be let out to make way for them. Govt takes a dimmer view of rioters than it does run of the mill crims, apparently, and given the deep stake it has in maintaining order I can see this would be the case. The general public, though, might not be overwhelmed by the thought of the presence among them of those who, in their view, also belong in jail, somewhere, somehow.
I wonder how they might express their discontent? We must wait and see…
Ever since Thatcher’s neoliberal revolution the State has been hollowed out, reviled, dismantled; solidarity through unions, decent jobs for decent wages and decent hours, local infrastructure, fairness and equity has been attacked and destroyed. We see poverty, food banks, poor housing, people having to choose between heating and eating, the demonisation and othering of “out” groups like benefits claimants (ie people applying for that to which they are entitled), immigrants, ethnic and religious groups, and blatant cruelty in the approach to social welfare. Then there’s the problem with the so-called constitutional settlement, the entitlement, patronage and nepotism of a small elite. Liars and grifters in the highest offices of the land, racists too and corruption.
And it has all been normalised.
Reap what you sow.
Thank you and well said, Richard and readers.
It’s not just the right wing press and MPs who should be held to account, let us not forget comments by Starmer and Ashworth during the campaign.
Yesterday, a Chicago-based friend and former (London) colleague messaged me about the BBC’s coverage on its US off shoot. The BBC called the attacks “pro-British marches”, explained how “immigrants had an adverse impact on the prospects of the white working class” (implying taking their jobs and moving up the employment value chain) and used footage from Channel 4 news where Alex Thomson talked about “an Asian mob”. My friend, a former Labour party official, has just returned to the US after 20 odd years in London.
Yesterday, on three occasions, at first separately and then together over supper, my parents expressed worry about staying here for the first time. They migrated from Mauritius 60 years ago, aged 19. In the run up to the violence, we had contemplated selling up in Mauritius as we are unlikely to return, but are now having second thoughts. At my age, I need to sort out badmin, to borrow Richard’s term.
Over the week-end, Richard asked on X whether the EDL should be proscribed. That could be difficult as the EDL has powerful sponsors from across the pond and at the far end of the Med. When the EDL was set up in 2009, it had 2 shareholders, Robinson and a defence league based in NYC. The original name was longer, but just the E is used. There are suggestions that Robinson was allowed to escape from here (to Cyprus) because of his patrons, who also back Starmer and Farage.
Thank you Colonel Sir, I think that that is all entirely believable.
I fail to see how Yaxley-Lennon got out except maybe the country is so understaffed now but remembering how the HNWIs were able to fly in and out of the country during Covid reminds me that money talks in this post Johnsonian dump we live in like never before.
What did you say previously?
‘Emigrate’?
I nearly left this country after university but I stupidly stayed in order to join Blair’s crusade to improve the public sector.
I feel like right mug now to be honest.
Thank you, PSR.
It’s interesting that you mention HNWIs and covid.
I live near the Blair family estates in Buckinghamshire and heard complaints from the villagers in Wotton about lock down being for the little people.
The restrictions on flights after 9/11 did not apply to HNWIs. For example, smaller airfields in upstate NY were used to bypass the NYC area airports. It’s the same in NYC and London for HNWIs wanting to traffic for sexual gratification.
@ PSR
“… I stupidly stayed in order to join Blair’s crusade to improve the public sector.”
Well that was a bit of a damp squib, but he saved the foxes.
Oh!
No he didn’t even do that.
HNWI’s?
High net worth individuals
On your second point, I think the language we use when discussing these incidents needs to be changed. In your post you mention anti-immigrant stances. You hint at what we would call anti-semitism when discussing violence against Jews. And yet when it comes to Muslims, we overwhelmingly call it islamophobia, not anti-islamism. I think that this kind of normalises, or possibly excuses it, as if it’s just a fear and everyone fears something and maybe there’s things to fear.
It’s got nothing to do with fear. For rioters like this it’s hate. I appreciate that it’s something of a quirk of the british language that -phobia has come to mean both a fear and a hatred of something. But I think we need to be more ready to call out Muslim hatred as anti-islam instead. Anti-islamism makes it explicit that we are dealing with the hatred and othering of a particular group, which I don’t feel that calling it islamophobia really does.
As for whether labour will address the inequalities that led to this, Starmer strikes me as the kind of politician that strives for punishment over prevention, and revenge over rehabilitation. We saw that when he suspended the labour MPs who voted against him recently. I saw it in that C4 interview about his time prosecuting the 2011 riots. So I’m not going to hold my breath for him to really fix this.
Now that capitalism is on the way out perhaps Universal Basic Income will stop the desperation of the people who have nothing.
@ Matthew T Hoare
UBI is a nice idea.
Don’t expect to see it happen. Even the potential beneficiaries will balk at their next door neighbour getting something for nothing. There is NO chance.
Will Labour address the deep-seated injustices fueling far-right riots? Tackling these root causes is essential for fostering social harmony and preventing further unrest.