Why Britain riots

Riotous summers seem to occur in Britain with about the same frequency as sunny ones: roughly every decade. Sometimes it’s Afro-Caribbeans protesting (Brixton in 1981), sometimes Asians (Oldham in 2001). The white working classes rioted over the poll tax in 1990 and in Southport this year. The riot in Harehills, Leeds, last month was precipitated by social services removing children from a Roma couple.

Whatever sparks the unrest, what all riots have in common is that they involve mindless destruction. Rioters smash and burn their own communities and opportunists descend, trying to exploit the situation for political ends. Fake news and misinformation abound.

So it is with the current round of riots, which began in Southport last week, sparked by the killing of three girls, and the serious injury of several others, at a dance class. The riots have since spread from an initial attack on a Southport mosque to targets as diverse as a police station in Sunderland, a library in Liverpool and a branch of Shoezone in Hull.

The term ‘far right’ has become seriously debased in recent years. If you opposed illegal migration or the Covid lockdowns or the imposition of low traffic neighbourhoods you might be called ‘far right’. But for once some of these rioters really do seem to deserve the label. At least some of them seem to be motivated by racial ideology, waving banners that say things like ‘There ain’t no black in the Union Jack’.

Even so, to call them ‘far-right riots’ is to over-estimate the level of organisation involved. It didn’t take long for Labour to say it was ‘looking at’ banning the English Defence League, though the EDL no longer really exists, and hasn’t for years. In contrast to many European countries, Britain doesn’t have a far-right political party, or even a far-right movement of any significance.