The ever-evolving stories lining this month’s newspapers have contained an eruption of opinion regarding the country’s two most disputed groups: Islam and immigration. Tension has matured across one particular political front: the far-right. Reform UK, although ostensibly centre-right, holds one principal rhetoric: ‘freezing’ immigration.[1] In February, we heard MP Lee Anderson, stating “the Islamists have got control of [Sadiq] Khan.”[2] A social civil war has been brewing, with Britain under attack by a group of people claiming that Britain is under attack (self-defeating, I know).
Axel Rudakubana entered a Southport dance studio on the 29th of June, targeting children with a blade. The result was the murder of three girls, an attempt on ten others, and two injured adult staff.[3] His attack damaged not only these people, not only their families, but the community of Southport. Shortly after, the country shared a collective hurt. There is no world where children – too young to hold any moral conscience – are deserving of death.
A deeply emotive story, though the country failed to park emotion at the doorstep: this proved irrational. When details of the assailant were largely unknown, claims surfaced that Axel Rudakubana – then unnamed under child anonymity laws – was a Muslim. Only 10.8% of the UK’s Muslims are black, and Rudakubana is not one of them.[4]
Still capitalising on the opportunity to ‘kill two birds with one stone’ (that is, fighting against both Muslims and immigrants), far-right leaders used social media to spread the false belief, irrespective of Rudakubana’s true identity. These lies were accompanied with a call to arms: leading anti-Islamist, Tommy Robinson, telling his followers “if you riot they listen to you.”[5]
To clarify, the UK will not listen to anyone who riots. Regardless, many citizens chose to listen to Robinson’s words, and the country subsequently fell into an infectious series of violent protest. The rioters held a confused stance between hatred against Muslims, hatred against immigrants, or both at the same time – reason was clearly beyond them. Many of the far-right would travel considerable distances to take part in organised malign activity, of such a severe degree that the far-right’s integrity immediately rotted.
The far-right have used the rhetoric of ‘Islamic damage’ against British society to qualify their behaviour; but this qualification is entirely invalid. The reality is that the Southport attacker isn’t Muslim, he’s Christian. With parents from Rwanda, he is black. Him being black doesn’t make him Muslim, nor does it make him an immigrant (he is Welsh born). Him being Muslim or an immigrant still wouldn’t mean all Muslims or immigrants will behave how he did. In fact, the description of ‘Muslim’ anywhere near the motivation of ‘rioting’ in this context is blatantly Islamophobic, with ‘immigrant’ undeniably racist. It is self-evident that Islam has become an invented enemy.
I believe that discussion concerning immigration cannot be held now, else the country will only be appealing to the far-right. Our response requires punishment, not accommodation. And what could their rhetoric be? Immigrants ‘stealing’ jobs from proper ‘Anglo-Saxon’ bloodlines? [note: you’d still be a Germanic settler, so shut up]. I struggle to comprehend how people can complain about this when they’re rioting on a Wednesday night. One could jestfully call them jobless. Answering the complaints of the far-right with such haste shows a weak face against injustice. The far-right don’t deserve this conversation yet.
Even if all Muslims and immigrants acted the way Rudakubana did, two wrongs don’t make a right. Rioting isn’t right – and it also isn’t one of your rights.
First, let’s acknowledge the legal interpretation of hate crime. Surprisingly, Parliament lacks a bill rendering hate crime illegal; though instead it is considered an aggravated form of a basic offence (most commonly, assault), which enhances the sentence for an offender (the spirit being to establish hate crime as unwelcome), and criminalise the act of ‘stirring up hatred’[6] (most commonly, under religious grounds).[7]
Note that people have a legal right to claim asylum in the UK. The most the far-right can argue (logically, despite this clearly being a virtue in deficiency) is to complain to the government, not the asylum seeker themself. An asylum seeker is not culpable of any moral or legal misdemeanour should they use their legal right.
Next, the far-right’s opposing liberty: the legal right to protest. Following the second world war, and in the wake of the cold war, the European Convention of Human Rights (ECHR) was formed.[8] Parliament officiated this with the Human Rights Act in 1998. With respect to protest, article 10 is our interest. “Everyone has the right to the freedom of expression.”[9] But don’t be as hasty and thoughtless as the far-right were with their irrational response: there’s more to it. An addendum which limits the participation of expression. The following (and it is almost all) criteria apply to the far-right’s riots:
- the interest of national security;
- public safety;
- the prevention of disorder/crime;
- the protection of morals (we like to protect our rich history of immigration, in which Muslims have held an instrumental role);
- the protection of the reputation/rights of others (these riots are physically fighting against the legal right for people to claim asylum);
- maintaining the authority of the judiciary (these riots are intervening in immigration, if they want to argue that someone is an illegal immigrant, then let the justice system manage it – at the same time, please don’t label any foreigner you don’t like the look of ‘an illegal immigrant’)
Therefore, it wouldn’t be controversial to definitively state that the riots emerging from Southport were illegal.
Finally, a distinction to perk up the ears of any constitutional lawyer: public disorder and rioting. These are two branches from the same tree, concerning violent group conduct in public. Riot is violence of twelve or more participants with a common purpose, which would cause an average (rational) person to fear for their safety; whereas violent disorder is the same, but for three or more participants.[10] What follows is an intellectually uncertain discussion, prone to be dismantled with the single objection: ‘hearsay’. In the face of public disorder/riot, police would much prefer to label with the former, and seek distance from the latter. A Merseyside police report following the Southport riots showed tentative restraint in using the term ‘riot’, using the term ‘disorder’ instead.[11] Should the authorities label the riots as rioting, this would imply that the police have lost control and authority of an area of the UK, and could leave them liable for damages.[12]
This would matter less if it didn’t impact sentencing. The maximum sentencing for riot is ten years imprisonment, a number which falls to five years for violent disorder. This could leave an offender charged for five years imprisonment, despite the necessity for a greater sentence – all in an effort for the police to save face. Should this claim be correct, there is an injustice hiding behind the headlines of reporting on our legal system.
Obviously, proving this is difficult. The police’s motivation in charging violent disorder – especially its nature in being an organisation, not a single person who can face interrogation and deposition – can only be proven through inference. From the photos and videos accompanying media reports, there surely seems to be beyond twelve people acting unlawfully – especially keeping in view the fact that ‘stirring up hatred’ is criminalised.[13]This isn’t to say that we won’t be seeing offenders charged with rioting – but it seems that the current convictions (as of writing) have avoided the charge. Should the charge of riot fail to be adopted, a significant legal injustice has passed under the radar.
Notwithstanding the far-right’s sentencing ‘discounts’; an ignorant belief has circulated: two-tier policing. This claim argues that the police take a discriminatory approach against the majority, in favour of the minority – more precisely, the police ‘treat white people harder than they treat [Muslim/black/foreign] people’. Much like the initial riots, there was a confused sentiment regarding who they were talking about in particular – complaints tended to be aimed at a mix of Muslims and immigrants, who the far-right believe are being treated with greater sympathy than white people.
For once, the far-right are actually correct. Just not the right way round. In 2022/23, black people were 3.4 times as likely to experience use of force by the police than their white counterparts. Empirical evidence clashes with ‘two-tier’ claims. Which is correct: the slurred racist’s rhetoric of ‘well they’re coming here and taking my jobs and I hurt them and I get in trouble and I’m angry about that [sad face]’; or objective fact?
Contained within the plethora of footage the nation has seen this month, Muslims setting fire to hotels, or hurling bricks at police vans has not been seen – but I’ve seen plenty of white people doing exactly that. And when those white people are caught for setting fire to hotels and hurling bricks at police vans, whilst Muslims (largely, if not entirely) are innocent and unresponsive, the far-right still somehow manage to make claims to an injustice in policing.
“If you’re part of these protests, standing up for what you see as right or wrong, you will be harshly punished. And he [Keir Starmer] put pressure on judges in order to deliver for him.”
Katie Hopkins
Katie Hopkins, a fossil of the far-right, chipped in. She treated the riots as protests; a much more fitting term would be organised violence. She treated the riots as an advocation of qualities and ideals; a much more fitting phrase would be an attempt to suppress a part of society. Her third claim, that the Prime Minister ordered a harsh approach to justice, is much more salient.
If Starmer has organised a ‘knee-jerk’ justice, this would be a political move – and the law should not be some means to a political end. Working off of the emotive response ‘Britain opposes racism and needs to get rid of it immediately’, is less reasonable than taking a few moments to breathe, then dealing with the unrest. Should you favour this emotive response, you could fall victim to be using the legal system as a political vehicle – two spheres which should never (but always do) intersect. Starmer sought to respond to hate crime with an iron fist, perhaps to quell the politically-right as a by-product. Ultimately, Starmer’s instruction was to use the court as a messenger to warn hate crime of its opposition – and whether that is an unjust politicisation, should be personally reflected on by the nation. At the beginning of this piece, I criticised the far-right for failing to park emotion at the doorstep, leading to irrationality. But if the judicial response shares this jump to emotion – the same criticism can be put to the legal system.
This month’s riots across the countries has raised numerous (but barely reported) legal discussions. Concerns over free speech and the right to protest are straightforward – the riots were wrong. Concerns over two-tier policing, however, are more nuanced in their ethics and values. Perhaps this is an exceptional social disruption not seen since thirteen years ago. Or perhaps this speaks to a wider schism in society, one which is only breaking larger with time. Under an LBC discussion, one listener hit the head on the nail:
“They aren’t far-right, they’re far wrong”
[1] Policy 1: Immigration, Sub-section 1: “Freeze Non-Essential Immigration” https://assets.nationbuilder.com/reformuk/pages/253/attachments/original/1718625371/Reform_UK_Our_Contract_with_You.pdf?1718625371
[2] https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2024/feb/23/tory-mp-lee-anderson-claims-islamists-have-got-control-of-sadiq-khan
[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=2024_Southport_stabbing&oldid=1241845401
[4] https://www.ons.gov.uk/datasets/create/filter-outputs/b0f5e61b-5c48-4a61-921f-a13781d87d45
[5] https://x.com/TRobinsonNewEra/status/1818365157459837072
[6] https://www.cps.gov.uk/legal-guidance/racist-and-religious-hate-crime-prosecution-guidance#RRHatredAct2006
[7] https://commonslibrary.parliament.uk/research-briefings/cbp-8791/
[8] https://www.echr.coe.int/documents/d/echr/Convention_ENG
[9] https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/1998/42/schedule/1/part/I/chapter/9
[10] https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/1986/64
[11] https://www.merseyside.police.uk/news/merseyside/news/2024/july/arrests-made-during-disorder-in-southport/
[12] https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/Vict/49-50/38/enacted
[13] https://www.cps.gov.uk/legal-guidance/racist-and-religious-hate-crime-prosecution-guidance#RRHatredAct2006