What caused the race riots in the UK?

Arzu appeared on TRT’s Roundtable to discuss the causes of the race riots in the UK in the past few weeks.

Riots by far-right groups in the UK have left many Muslims feeling scared and isolated in the country they call home. What do these actions say about the state of race relations here?

 

 

Guests:

Arzu Merali Co-founder of the Islamic Human Rights Commission

Dal Babu Former UK Metropolitan Police Chief Superintendent

Frances Fitzgerald Former Member of the European Parliament from Ireland, Former Irish Deputy Prime Minister And Advisor to G7 on Equality

Claire Pearsall Former Special Adviser at the UK Home Office

 

Transcript

 

Enda Brady:

 

Riots by far-right groups in the UK have left many Muslims feeling scared and isolated in the country they call home. What do these actions say about the state of race relations right here?

 

Hello and welcome to Roundtable, I’m Enda Brady. Now asylum seekers, British Muslims and minorities have been subjected to physical abuse, riots and arson attacks in recent weeks. But much larger counter protests against far-right hatred have also taken place. What’s driving the anger in towns and cities in both the UK and neighbouring Ireland?

 

The UK’s seething summer of discontent. The brutal murder of three young girls and a far-right misinformation campaign, which falsely claimed that the perpetrator was an illegal Muslim immigrant, have fanned the flames of hatred. The episode has once again exposed deep rifts in the country and highlighted the frustration over the lack of economic opportunity felt by many.

 

It turns out the 17-year-old male charged with the killings was born in the UK to Rwandan parents and is not part of the Muslim community. But the result for many British Muslims? Fear. As we approached the monsters, people looking at us differently than usual, we felt our place which we’ve never done before. We were scared for our lives and we thought at one point, are we actually going to make it through the night? Everyone was demolished.

 

The streets was like a war zone. Many British Muslims are now calling for Islamophobia to be criminalized. The government has so far sidestepped those demands. Prime Minister Keir Starmer, whose brief post-election honeymoon has come to an abrupt end, has fast-tracked the justice system to prosecute the rioters. This is not protest. It is organized violent thuggery. And it has no place on our streets be it no doubt, those that have participated in this violence will face the full force of the law.” And just as police and minority communities braced for the far-right protests to spread, this happened.

 

Thousands gathered in parts of London, Bristol, Brighton and elsewhere to denounce the rioters. Many observers said they outnumbered the right-wing groups. The majority of people in Britain are for a multicultural society and are against the violence of the racists and the fascists. Racists may not represent the majority in the UK, but there’s a long history of right-wing politicians capitalising on suspicion of new arrivals.

 

In 1968, Conservative MP Enoch Powell warned of a violent backlash against uncontrolled immigration. Today it’s figures like the leader of the Reform Party, Nigel Farage, who won a seat in July’s election, partly on an anti-migration platform, and right-wing social media campaigners like Tommy Robinson, whose real name is Steven Yaxley-Lennon, who are trying to capture the spotlight.

 

Robinson and others from the British far right have also been active outside the UK. The stabbing in Ireland last November of three children and a care assistant by an Algerian immigrant unleashed a wave of violence. Far right figures and even celebrity mixed martial arts fighter Conor McGregor called for action, with McGregor tweeting that Ireland is at war. Mobs attacked buildings that were being converted to house asylum seekers.

 

A common theme fuelling anti-immigrant sentiment both in the UK and Ireland is a chronic housing crisis. Many on the right claim that asylum seekers get preferential treatment for public housing while natives struggle to get on the property ladder. The latest unrest in pockets of the UK and Ireland have exposed deep fault lines in their social fabric. Can their leaders bring communities closer together before they’re completely torn apart?

 

 

Well, let’s meet our guests. Joining us from London is Arzu Merali. She is co-founder of the Islamic Human Rights Commission. Dal Babu is a former UK Metropolitan Police Chief Superintendent. He’s also in London. In Dublin, we have Frances Fitzgerald. She’s a former member of the European Parliament from Ireland. She’s currently an advisor to the G7 on equality and former Deputy Prime Minister or Tánaiste of Ireland. And here with me in the studio is Claire Pearsall, former Special Advisor at the UK Home Office.

 

You’re all very welcome to Roundtable. Arzu, I’ll come to you first. Just tell me the last few weeks living in England as a Muslim lady who wears a hijab, just tell me what it has been like for you going about your daily life.

 

 

Arzu Merali:

I think with or without the hijab, this kind of identification of Muslims has been happening for a decade now. There are different marks of Muslim-ness. It’s not even simply just the dress anymore. And all of us, to a greater and lesser extent, have been, how can I put this politely, expecting something like this, and we were already being cautious. Now this has turned into being, you know, very terrified and being extremely cautious to the extent of not even going outdoors in some cases. It’s not been great, but it’s not been a shock. Let’s put it that way. And I think some of us, you know, we live in different areas where there’s been a lot of mobilization, anti-fascist mobilization, a lot of the community coming together, but that’s not the universal case. We are really in a very extreme situation in the United Kingdom, and none of this should be a surprise to anybody. The rise of the far right has been sort of mooted as some kind of exceptional minoritized form of violence, you know, the kind of exception to the rule; and that this is somehow the cause of societal racism that we have in society. But all the research, including research, I’ve been involved in and IHRC which has been involved in for decades, points to it being completely the other way around. In fact the rise of the so-called far right is a result of Islamophobia. That Islamophobia has been entrenched in institutions, its systemic, its structural, and along with other types of racism, we need to tackle it.

 

It’s a last gasp really that way whether we can tackle it before we really find ourselves in societal chaos and breakdown. I’m sorry to put it that kind of depressingly. This is not something that finished with the [anti-fascist, anti-racist] mobilizations on Wednesday. We’re going to see more of this. And we need some proper serious reflection from not just this government, but all the institutions of government, the media, et cetera, as to what has been their role in this in fuelling Islamophobia for decades.

 

EB: Let’s bring in Dal. Just Dal as a senior police officer, Dal, how does it make you feel, hearing that, you know, from hardworking members of society fearing that they can’t leave their houses? How has this happened?

 

Dal Babu: Well, it’s absolutely shocking and appalling. And while the Chancellor has been around the world selling our country, the backdrop has been racist, fascist thugs trying to burn and kill people in hotels, asylum seekers.

 

That is the reality on the ground. It reminds me of when I was growing up in the 1970s. It was common for me, my brothers, my sisters, trying to get a bus being attacked, being spat on, traveling to school, you’d get attacked, traveling to work, you’d get attacked, and you’d have your windows smashed. And I thought that was all behind us now. So it was very, very sad when we saw how, to far right, using the internet mobilized. You had your useful idiots who were on the periphery, but you had racist thugs who were sort of basically going out there doing the dirty work of the far-right paymasters. And I think what you saw on the internet, particularly on things like X, is people like Tommy Robinson, who had been banned and kicked off the site, being allowed back on, having his followers increased by hundreds of thousands over the last week. And just spewing out vile hatred and we talk about misinformation. I mean, some of this was downright lies after that tragic and appalling killing of those three young girls. We heard on the internet, rumours, names, that it was a Muslim recently arrived, asylum seeker on a boat. All of that was untrue. All of that was, none of that had any depth of truth in it. But that’s where we were. And people were happy on X and on other sites to share that information, share those lies.

 

People call that euphemism of misinformation, but it was lies. It was deliberate lies to cause as much pain for people and disharmony. And then we had Elon Musk, the owner of X, talking about civil unrest and almost being in delight at the problems that were being caused. So I think the contribution in mobilizing people to cause disorder and to facilitate lies and misinformation.

 

EB:

 

Let’s bring in Frances. Frances, you served as Justice Minister in the Irish government. Yvette Cooper is the new Home Secretary in the UK government. She has said this week that criminals, people need to realize criminal behaviour has consequences. We’ve seen almost a thousand people arrested now.

 

Some of the rioters have been given three years in prison. What’s your take looking in from the outside at what has happened in the UK over the last few weeks from a justice point of view?

 

Frances Fitzgerald:

Well, from a justice point of view, I think she’s absolutely right. And we’re taking the same approach here, that if there is criminal behaviour, masquerading as protests, one has to deal with the criminal behaviour and people have to be arrested and brought before the courts. We’re seeing the same thing happening here. Prison sentences being given to rioters who have actually seriously assaulted members of our police force on Garda Síochána. You know, burnt Garda cars caused a lot of damage, a lot of injuries, and this is criminal behaviour. Now we can talk about, you know, the actual riots and everything that’s been happening. Okay, you can have a discussion about it being multifactorial and we can do that and certainly the internet and incitement and misinformation, we just did a report in the European Parliament on misinformation, these all play a part. But if the behaviour is criminal, and it is what much of the behaviour we’ve seen, it has to be dealt with by the criminal justice system. So, and I think we’re seeing very robust responses because there is a difference between acceptable protests and protests that are really putting life and limb at danger both in the UK, in Ireland, North and South.

 

So very serious issues. That’s not to say that there are underlying issues such as the previous two guests have spoken about. The fear of the other, you know, the other dismissing people, not being able to, you know, have an inclusive society. And all of the other factors, you know.

 

 

EB:

You can talk about communities and community engagement, all of that. But nothing justifies the sort of behaviour that we are seeing. Francis, I just want to ask you specifically, Dal brought up a name there, Tommy Robinson, whose real name is Stephen Yaxley Lennon. He lives in Tenerife. He is someone who is prolific on ex-Twitter, constantly chipping in with a narrative against migrants in the UK. He seems to have a real issue with Muslims.

 

 

This guy lives in Tenerife. He’s on an Irish passport. I believe his mother is Irish. Do you have any concerns about someone like him holding an Irish passport?

 

FF:

Well, I have concerns about his behaviour, I have to say. I mean, the criteria that one uses to take a passport away, that’s a whole kind of other story and another process. But I have huge concerns about the behaviour. I have huge concerns about social media. We have the new Digital Services Act across the EU and governments are now busily working out an implementation plan for that in each of the member states. But you still run into issues around, you know, some things that can be seen to be harmful but not illegal. But certainly if the behaviour is illegal, you know, in our day to day offline, then it should be illegal online and I think we’ve got to get a much more robust response from the social media companies and I think that governments need to be giving a more social, a more robust approach to the social media companies because we can’t have this wild west, we can’t have this level of disinformation being spread. We saw it in the riots in Dublin, in an area called Coolock. We saw how social media from 3am in the morning was spreading information because the government were moving in, you know, to build up this facility for international asylum seekers.

 

EB:

Claire, I just want to come to you on that issue of social media platforms. How is it possible to control something like X when you’ve got the owner of it, Elon Musk, actively chipping in, criticizing the British Prime Minister and saying that there will be civil war in the United Kingdom, I mean, this is just an absolute mess, isn’t it?

 

Claire Pearsall:

It absolutely is. And unfortunately, with social media, it’s going to be very, very hard to put that genie back in the bottle. We are used to having news and information at our fingertips 24 hours a day. And that news goes around incredibly quickly. Previously, we would have had to have waited until the following day to pick up a newspaper, listen to a news report. But now it’s instant and also unverifiable. And I think that’s what we’ve seen, is this rise in unverifiable information, probably from some hostile states abroad, if you’re looking for somebody to point the finger at. But what you do about it is incredibly difficult because you have freedom of speech arguments. Now I’m all in favour of freedom of speech, but it doesn’t come free of consequence. And I think Francis said it well just a moment ago that, if it is illegal to do that on the streets, then it should be illegal to do that online. And I think that goes for speech as well.

 

So I think that people have to realize that they are publishing information when they put it on the internet, just as in a newspaper or in a magazine, those publishers are responsible for the content. And I think that’s where we’re going to come back to. The social media platforms themselves should be the publisher and they should be held responsible, but you’re going to have an enormous argument as to whose jurisdiction, whose decision it is that something is either offensive or illegal or inciting. So I think that’s where the problem is going to come. So many different countries are going to be involved. So many different places where computer servers are held. So that kind of data gathering is going to be very, very difficult.

 

 

EB:

Arzu, I thought it was desperately sad that in the aftermath of three little girls being murdered in Southport, some people’s first reaction was to somehow link this to Islam when there was no connection whatsoever. How does that make you feel when there’s this constant narrative that if there’s horrific crime committed, people are going searching to see was a Muslim responsible?

 

Arzu:

Sadly, this wasn’t the first time that’s happened. And we’ve been cataloging this and we’ve got to the point where we don’t really even issue reports and write about it anymore because we’re just writing the same thing. Something goes bang, somebody is killed, some awful atrocious thing happens. All of these kinds of horrors. And there’s a finger pointing at Muslims. And frankly, this was going on even before 9-11, but it has accelerated since that time. All of which without justification. I just wanted to pick up on something that we sort of miss when we’re talking about this. And this is, you know, when something awful happens, even if it had been a Muslim, and it wasn’t in this case, it doesn’t seem to be, does that justify that action? No, it doesn’t. It doesn’t matter who that person was, whether they were, you know, for want of a better phrase, white or English, or a Muslim, or someone with a migration background, an asylum seeker or whatever, it does not justify any kind of retaliatory action whether from people on the streets or from the state.

 

And I think this is the situation that we’re in now, that we are in one or other time getting some kind of retaliation as these things progress. And, you know, yes, it was targeting Muslims, you know, but also migrants, asylum seekers. You know, huge swathes of people are getting caught up in this otherization. And we are not in a good place in British society. Dal was talking about growing up in the 70s. I mean, I remember it clearly. And I think for a while, you know, we thought it had is gone, this is not the future for my children.

 

And what a lot of us are finding is that for a while we were able to outrun it, you know, we had some kind of social mobility, but those communities which didn’t have that social mobility, they’ve known for all of these decades that things are just getting worse. And it’s caught up with the rest of us. We can see clearly now we are thinking about whether we’re going to be chased down the streets. We’re thinking about what time we’re going to get home on public transport or whether to take public transport, whether or not just, you know, if we don’t have a car, stay at home. It’s crippling.

 

EB:

I want to bring Dal back in. Dal, I want to look at the policing response. One thing that really struck me in all of this was how quickly there was leadership on this. So Keir Starmer, the new British prime minister, four weeks into the job, he’s an ex-prosecutor. He was in charge years ago of the Crown Prosecution Service. And I think, do you feel the response from the judiciary: big number of arrests, very stringent jail terms, the courts dealing with these people very quickly. Do you think that helped quell the situation?

 

Dal:

Absolutely, 100%. I think there’s two key things. One is Britain’s police force is across England and Wales forces are, there’s 43. They coordinated very, very well and actually managed to get 6,000 police officers who were right trained in strategic positions ready to be deployed to where there was any disorder. Those officers are still in place, but you’ve seen that mobilization having a massive impact in deterring the far right. These are mainly white racist thugs and men by and large, although we’ve heard some are children and very few are women, but mainly white men who have sort of got racist ideologies. And then the other aspect of it that I thought was very, very significant was the sentencing. And we saw people who’d been rioting and within seven days they’d been arrested, interviewed, and sentenced, charged, placed to the court and sentenced for three years. And that, I think, sent out a very, very strong message. And we’ve had almost 1,000 arrests now. And people are now realizing that when, because many of them, social media, that’s the ironies, some of these people were not the sharpest tools in the box. They shared images of themselves. They shared images of rioting. And that then gave the police a real opportunity to sit back. And they didn’t make arrests necessarily on the night disorder happened, but they were able to collect significant amounts of information, images from the internet, images from social media, and then place that in front of people when they were arrested. And the vast majority of people are pleading guilty because the evidence is so overwhelming. So I think those factors of a significant police mobilization, the strategic points and be ready to go to those areas, and the heavy sentences had a significant impact

 

Last week, Wednesday, things stood up. We got a number of organisations on Telegram, on X, saying that these are the places that are going to be targeted. And the local community came out in force and outnumbered the far-right racist folks that had been causing mayhem the week before.

 

 

EB:

Francis, I see a hashtag, #Irelandisfull, that does the rounds amongst far-right people in Ireland, who are a tiny, tiny minority, the same as they are in the United Kingdom.

I just want to look at housing. So this is one issue that they keep bringing up the far right, saying that migrants, asylum seekers, people coming to Ireland are getting priority of housing. So I want to look at housing prices. So according to official UK data, average house prices have risen by more than 50% over the last 10 years. And that outpaces a 46% increase in weekly wages over roughly the same period. In Ireland, the disparity is even more stark. House prices up by nearly 128% over the last decade, wages only a third higher. What would you say to these people on the far right in Ireland who are constantly banging on about foreigners getting housing while native Irish people, as they call themselves, are being overlooked?

 

FF:

Well, what you’re seeing being portrayed is a sort of a nexus between, you know, migration, immigration and the housing crisis in Ireland. The housing crisis in Ireland has happened over the last, I’d say, five to 10 years. It is really a marker of our success, a growing economy, more people coming to work and live here. We still have quite a number of children and like many countries across Europe and so on. And we have more demands. We’ve also seen a big increase – we have to be honest about this.  We have over 100,000 Ukrainians who have been warmly welcomed to Ireland, and we have an increase in asylum seekers. When I was Minister for Justice, believe it or not, only back in 2016, I was dealing with about 4,500, 5,000, 6,000 asylum seekers that we were bringing into, that were coming into Ireland, and were being dealt with at the time of the big European crisis in relation to migration.

 

So Ireland has dealt with a very sudden increase in people looking for international protection here and the Ukrainian people who have come here. And as I say, warmly welcomed. So there is a sense that obviously we’ve had to put far more services in place and housing and accommodation than ever before. And there is a shortage of housing for asylum seekers. And indeed we’re working very hard and making sure this housing for the population in general and we’re succeeding there are more and more houses being built. So there is this nexus and of course what happens then it gets abused with this phrase Ireland is full. I mean Ireland is not full. Ireland you know will deal with its international obligations in relation to asylum seekers and so on. We do not want to see abuse of the system but we do not want to see either the far right populace using the numbers of people who are coming here as an excuse for this appalling racist behaviour.

 

EB:

Thanks, Frances. Claire, one final point. I want to end on a positive note here. Just briefly, how much did it warm your heart to see people turning up outside the mosque in Southport the next day with brushes and brooms and a brick layer starting to redo the damage that had been done? Because that is the real spirit of England, surely.

 

CP:

It absolutely is. And they were so proud of their community. They were proud that the mosque is a central part of their community, who had also given enormously during the pandemic, and they wanted to work with it. And interestingly, also in Liverpool, the mosque there was going out offering bott

les of water to those who were protecting it from the racist crowds outside. And that is the real spirit, and it is communities working together. That’s what we need to be proud of.

EB:

Claire, Arzu, Dal and Francis, thank you all so much for your insight on that.

 

Remember you can see more discussion and debate on our YouTube channel, just search for Roundtable TRT World. And if you like what you see there, please do hit that subscribe button. But for now, from me and to Brady and all of the team here, goodbye. And thank you for watching.