Like, I suspect, everyone, I was shocked to hear the news from Liverpool last night, where a man drove his car into a crowd celebrating Liverpool's Premier League victory, injuring around 50 people, two of whom are in serious condition.
I am as shocked to note the police response.
They are saying the man under arrest is aged 53, white, a businessman, and this is not a terrorist incident.
The last point depends on definitions: time will tell.
I am worried about the suggestion that being white was important.
I am as shocked that it was necessary to refer to this person as a 'businessman'.
Both of these hints point to attitudes revealing prejudice, in my opinion. Why is it relevant that the man is white? And the reference to being a 'businessman' looks to be an attempt to suggest that the apprehended person has status in society, as if that matters.
The dangerous possibility that could follow is that these two claims are being used as evidence to support the suggestion that this is not terrorism, and that the three claims are, therefore, implicitly linked. If so, that is very worrying, revealing a deep prejudice on the part of those issuing this statement, that in turn is pandering to far-right thinking, even if it turns out that these are just statements of fact.
I will be watching this because we are living in dangerous times, and there is a risk that Merseyside police are saying something deeply divisive at this moment.
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Could it be that the police don’t want anyone (possibly Farage) blaming muslims or immigrants and repeating last Summer’s riots?
But then they are playing to Farage’s far-right tune – and that implies he has a valid message. That is precisely ny concern.
In the past I remember crime reporting often included the words ‘the suspect was black …..’ On one of these blogs yesterday someone described a journalist as having a ‘Scottish accent’. Today Merseyside police describe someone who has apparently committed attempted murder as ‘white’.
Usually, the reason for describing someone is an attempt to identify them.
Being black cannot be an aid to identification – it is too broad and served only to imply that many crimes were committed by ‘black’ people.
A journalist on the 6 am Sky News programme with a Scottish accent may be a useful identifier. I don’t watch 6 am Sky News so I have no idea if there is only one journalist who appears on it who has a Scottish accent.
The police description does appear to imply that a white, 53 year old businessman cannot be a terrorist (although I understand the anti-terror police are looking into it). However I think they said it because of the complaints made after the Southport atrocity when the police failed quickly to indicate that the alleged perpetrator was not an ‘illegal immigrant’ and some of the rioting that followed was blamed on their failure. A middle-aged white businessman is not what those who worry about these things would think a likely ‘illegal immigrant’.
Whether the Merseyside police language is indicative of their thought processes is hard to tell.
My honest reaction is that this sounds like clumsy reassurance.
How many times has someone who is more likely to be the victim of racism driven into a crowd recently in Europe?
To me, it could be that the police are noting the details of this idiot because they feel the need to calm down local society’s reaction?
To me, it is a sad indictment of our society to have to put these ‘facts’ out there, but given what happened after the dance class incident, the police are hoping to head off the far right?
Whoever uses a vehicle to express an opinion and results in such injuries is a criminal – black, white, blue with pink spots – whatever – and needs to be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law. If it was one of those big 4 x 4’s lets hope someone thinks about why we need something that big on our roads anyway.
Cars as weapons – awful.
I don’t Richard – this was my reaction anyway.
Here is the first couple of sentences from the police statement as published by the BBC:
“We would ask people not to speculate on the circumstances surrounding tonight’s incident on Water Street in Liverpool city centre.
“We can confirm the man arrested is a 53-year-old white British man from the Liverpool area.”
As I understand it, uninformed speculation and conspiracy theories were already swirling on social media, and after the public disorder following the Stockport murders last year, I can see why some information was released early to try to close that down.
I don’t know who was reporting that this was a businessman, whatever that means, but please let’s just let the police do their job. Liverpool is a very resilient city, red or blue, and I’m sure its community will pull together in solidarity.
My concerns are valid.
I am not stopping the police doing their job, in any way. I am questioning their communications strategy, which I something quite different.
I didn’t say your concerns are invalid. Of course the police should not be prejudiced, or reinforce prejudice.
But the police are damned if they do release very basic information (what relevance is sex, age, ethnicity, etc, we might say) and damned if they don’t (what are they hiding?). So they have to navigate though a landscape where there may be no right answers, and just try to do their best.
A 53 year old white male businessman from the Liverpool area could be almost anyone, from a Polish plumber to the CEO of a FTSE company to a scion of the nobility.
We’ll have to disagree on this one.
A male aged 53 would have been good enough.
My thoughts entirely Richard.
Doesn’t set a good precedent – police statement does indeed feed the racists narrative – implying that white/brown /black matters – rather than the criminal act itself.
Next time they may have to say a ‘brown/black/immigrant person has been arrested’ – or not say anything – and allow the social media jockeys to say ‘we told you so’ and organise their next riot.
Taking a slightly different angle:
https://brokenbottleboy.substack.com/p/36-when-to-look-away
The article shows, if indeed we need to be told further, the utter depravity of the Uk media.
I have not seen (and will not look at) photos of the “incident”.
The reaction of the police shows that they are like the Bourbons “forgotten nothing, learned nothing.
Poor people run over whilst celebrating – what is the world coming to.
I think the Police are in an unenviable position now. Given the state of social media and the prevalence of smartphones allowing instant 24/7 access to spread rumours, misinformation, outright lies, and to consume other people’s dross, the Police can’t win.
If they withhold some identifying information, perhaps due to needing to confirm the suspect is the right one, then the vacuum of information will just be filled by idiots and charlatans and nefarious actors. OTOH if the Police do try and provide some identifying information, such as white, businessman, 53 then it leads to speculation when they don’t do likewise in another instance.
Even with this current information, I’ve seen someone suggest that there was another person involved who was the driver – implying that this mysterious non-existent 2nd person was not white, a businessman, nor 53.
Certain parts of social media are echo chambers and there appears to be enough people who believe all this rubbish to keep it propagating and indeed to feed on itself and grow.
I don’t know what the answer is.
Back in the days when news had to be read from newspapers, or heard from the town cryer, would there have been such a frenzy of speculation, of lies, of misinformation? There was always tittle-tattle but it was also localised. Now someone in a foreign country can pretend to be a local of Liverpool and post whatever they want and crucially gain traction.
“Now someone in a foreign country can pretend to be a local of Liverpool and post whatever they want and crucially gain traction.”
Great Point!
Does the police statement pander to the racists or does it highlight the racism in society?
As soon as it happened social media went into speculation about ethnicity – wanting him to be an immigrant. The fact that police had to basically say “he’s not a foreigner please don’t riot” says a lot.
It panders to racism, whichever way it is looked at.
The thinking seems to be let the public know the driver is male, white, business man – errr a bit like Farage ..because a man who shares the same characteristics as Farage couldn’t possibly be a terrorist, if this information is released then racist riots won’t be triggered.
It says a lot about where portions of UK has got to, not far behind US.
I live in Liverpool, and I am proud of my city.
I’m not a footie fan, but I watched the whole of the Liverpool FC Parade online on YouTube. Husband didn’t go to see them in Allerton Road (very close to us, one of our shopping places) because it was raining. He went off to do food shopping in Asda instead!
The Liverpool Police have said that the reason they said it was a white man who drove in and injured all those people is that some people were beginning to suggest it was a Muslim person. The police here were trying to prevent religious hate.
I am incredibly sad that this happened after such a wonderful and fun parade.
Apparently what happened was the barrier was raised so an ambulance could go in to look after someone who had had a heart attack. The driver of that car just followed the ambulance in. He has also been accused of drug driving.
What I don’t understand is how driving a car into a crowd of people is not a terrorist act. It clearly is. Regardless of whether this worthless prick was white its still terrorism.
Which, I think, is what your article is saying.
But fuck the BBC, they are useless.
I share your bemusement on that point.
Like many of the comments made already I think the police are caught between the devil and the deep blue sea on this.
Though our neoliberal politicians often say that police operations should not be subject to interference from politicians we would be nieve to believe that the operations of the police were not influenced by political considerations as well as public order ones.
For some people the Police made the wrong call and or executed badly. For others the police were doing the right thing.
I’m sure given mass psychology currents that can develop quite quickly on line an attempt to disturb such flows seems to be commendable on balance.
Of course I wish it wasn’t need.