On a summer’s evening in 1978 I was standing on the platform at Redcar Central station, wondering if I had just missed my train. So I approached the only other person on the platform and asked him: ‘Excuse me, do you know what time the next train is due?’ He replied ‘What if it is?’ and punched me hard in the mouth. I hurried away. He was big, probably in his thirties, morbidly obese and pissed. With any luck he should be dead by now.
I don’t quite buy the argument that these ‘far-right’ riots are an example of the dispossessed, effectively disenfranchised, urban working class articulating their many real concerns about our society. I think they’re largely the work of descendants of that fat bully who twatted me for no reason. I’d go further and suggest that they are inextricably linked with football hooliganism. My reasoning for that is the way they look, the way they dress and the fact that one of the supposed organisers up here on Teesside was on a banning order from the Riverside stadium and now allegedly travels to watch Rangers play each Saturday. That gives you an indication of the Ur-politics at work as well.
They do not have aims, other than a fervent desire to tear into the Old Bill and maybe frighten a few Muslims. There is no serious ideology at work. They are not demanding radical Strasserist economic reforms with the abolition of capitalism and the creation of socialist guilds allied to ultra-nationalism – it is instead merely a primal scream of loathing. You will notice that the places that have experienced the riots – Belfast excepted – are heavily footballing towns. This all poses an interesting question: do we, as a nation, prefer it when football hooligans kicked the hell out of each other in organised ‘meets’ before or after games, usually away from the general public, or do we prefer it now they’re torching buildings instead? Whatever, my suspicion is that this stuff will dwindle when the football season gets under way this weekend, especially if it rains a bit.
It is my own belief that we have far, far, too high a rate of immigration at the moment (and for a long while) and we have allowed too many people into the country from cultures which are often averse to our own and done little to assimilate them. This is probably the biggest domestic policy mistake since the second world war and there is, indeed, something sickening when politicians retreat into the cliché of ‘diversity is our great strength’ and all that cant. Diversity has been useful in part – ironically enough, it has improved our national football team, although not to the point where they actually win anything, and it has perhaps made us a little less insular in our collective outlook.
But it has brought with it hideous problems, the demarcation of towns into racially distinct ghettos and a loosening of the bonds which tie us together as a nation. Our reluctance to inculcate in those who came here the notion of what it means to be British (in the way in which the Americans, say, were able to do) and our cringing disavowal of our own rather remarkable, if at times flawed, history has meant that those who came here had very little to feel proud about, living in this strange new land which the Establishment held in liberal contempt.
These rioters are not demanding radical Strasserist economic reforms with the abolition of capitalism
That’s who the XL footie bullies should have been targeting. Not some corner shop owner working 72 hours a week in order to make ends meet. Muslims are a very long distance from being the architects of the social malaise and dysfunction of the UK, even if it sometimes galls that some wish to import some questionable cultural mores. Except to say well, why wouldn’t they, given that they were never given an alternative – and attractive – narrative to sign up to. Multi-culturalism (as opposed to multi-racialism) is a failure, but it is difficult to blame those who came here for that stark and – I would have thought – almost incontestable fact.
And this process continues, of course. We do not merely have two-tier policing, we also have two-tier reporting and two-tier politicking. As the Labour MP Jess Phillips pointed out, Muslims have been gathering ‘because it has been spread that racists were coming to attack them’. Some came out to protect their mosques, but others to attack people. My suspicion is that those vigilantes who did go out looking for trouble will probably be the feature of a Radio 4 drama in ten years’ time which eulogises their rise up against post-colonial repression.
It seems to be enough for the ITV local news services and most of the broadcast media generally simply to refer to the rioters as ‘far right’ and thus be done with it. People have short memories these days, but I think it is just about possible that some will remember how the media covered those revolting and often violent Black Lives Matter protests back in 2020. They probably remember Sir Keir Starmer and Angela Rayner going down on one knee in deference to an organisation which was explicitly racist and wished to abolish the traditional family.
Even if nobody mentions BLM any more, except to comment wryly that it stands for ‘Buy Larger Mansions’, the hideous and divisive policies promoted by that group of thugs and grifters has found its way into school curricula and indeed the national discourse. If our Establishment continues to kneel before any and every culture which challenges our way of life, then not too far down the line it will not just be fat bullies in Stone Island jackets taking to the streets.
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