Innumbers
* Six days of rioting have left 400 people arrested in parts of England and Northern Ireland.
* 6,000 police officers have been mobilized nationwide to deal with anticipated additional unrest.
Alex Whiteman
LONDON: Riots broke out in England and Northern Ireland last week, fuelled by a mix of misinformation and perceptions of government failure. But commentators are divided on the root causes beyond claims of “far-right violence.”
Britain has not seen such violence since the police shooting of a black man in 2011 sparked days of nationwide rioting, with crowds destroying shops, burning cars, attacking mosques and even setting fire to a hotel housing refugees.
Everyone from Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer to the world's second-richest man, Elon Musk, has likened the situation in Britain to a civil war, giving their thoughts on the causes of the riots and their implications for the country.
Starmer said rioters would face the “full force of the law” in response to the arson attempt on Sunday at the Holiday Inn Express in Rotherham, South Yorkshire, where asylum seekers were being held while awaiting decisions on their status.
“Whether you participate in this chaos directly or encourage it online and then get away with it, I guarantee you will regret it,” he said at a news conference. “This is not a protest, this is an organized, violent assault, and it has no place on our streets or online.”
The damage to the community was so severe, and many police officers were injured, that Attorney General Stephen Parkinson said some of those arrested could face terrorism charges.
In an interview with the BBC, Parkinson said: “If you have a group that is planning to do something with the aim of spreading an ideology and really causing serious disruption, then yes, we would consider it a terrorist offence.”
“Yes, we are willing to look at terrorist crimes, and we know that at least one such incident has occurred.”
Sources interviewed by Arab News disagreed with the claim that the violence was more than “violent assaults.” But they warned against ignoring the need to examine underlying social issues.
A source in the education sector, who asked not to be named, said the chaos was the result of a campaign that raised legitimate concerns that mass immigration was creating a national ill.
“When you mix in the misinformation surrounding the identity of the girl's killer and that becomes the catalyst for the riots, what you're seeing is the chickens coming home to roost,” the source said.
Three girls were killed and 10 people (eight of them children) injured in an attack on a children's dance and yoga workshop at a community centre in Southport, north of Liverpool, on July 29, believed to have been committed by a 17-year-old.
Because of the suspect’s age, police were legally obliged to not reveal his identity, which was quickly filled by misinformation that was inadvertently spread on social media, suggesting that the suspect was a Muslim who had entered the country illegally.
The spread of misinformation was aided by online influencers, who regularly posted anti-immigrant and anti-Islam sentiments to further their political agenda.
Zuhir Al-Shmaleh, research director at the Valent Project, a British company that uses artificial intelligence to combat disinformation, said it could be difficult to pinpoint the root causes of the riots, as they are a mix of deliberate manipulation by anti-immigrant campaigners and widespread bot activity.
“Since August 3, accounts and networks linked to Reform UK have been very active on X and Facebook, advocating for a second-tier policing,” al-Simale told Arab News, referring to the right-wing party’s gains in recent general elections.
“They’re pouring a lot of resources into this to test out certain lines and narratives and see what works, but the bottom line is that the police are allowing Muslim thugs to run wild, and they’re implying that they’re simply targeting ‘white patriots’ who are upset about ‘the state of their country.’”
Proposals for a two-tier policing system focus on the police's “soft response” to weekly “left-wing, pro-Palestinian” protests in London since October 7 and the Black Lives Matter demonstrations that followed.
The comparison is abysmal in terms of sheer scale of disorder. The recent Palestinian demonstrations saw up to 10,000 people take part, injuring three police officers. By contrast, the riots in Rotherham on Sunday, involving some 750 people, left more than a dozen police officers injured.
YouGov polling data shows opposition to the riots across almost all sections of the public, with only Reform UK voters showing any real level of support, at 21%.
Even this is a clear minority, with three-quarters (76%) of Reform voters opposing the riots. Support from other voters is much lower: only 9% of Conservative voters, 3% of Labour voters and 1% of Liberal Democrat voters support the riots.
Yet there is also sympathy for far-right groups such as the British Defence League, which are seen as organising ideologies and violence that fuel the riots.
In fact, while legal immigration to the UK has increased dramatically over the past 30 years, illegal immigration across the Channel has continued despite previous governments promising to “stop the boats”.
According to the latest immigration estimates from the Office for National Statistics, around 1.2 million people will move to the UK in 2023, with 532,000 emigrating, resulting in a net migration of 685,000.
Around 29,000 people are expected to cross the English Channel in small boats in 2023, down from 46,000 in 2022, but the overall number of people arriving by small boat has increased significantly since 2018.
According to the University of Oxford’s Migration Observatory, the share of workers born overseas and employed in the UK has risen steadily over the past two decades, from 9% (2.6 million people) of all employed people in Q1 2004 to 21% (6.8 million people) in Q1 2024.
The study found that immigrant men were more likely to be employed than British-born men, but immigrant women were less likely to be employed.
Asylum seekers are unable to work and are denied housing or substantial welfare benefits while their claims are being considered, but some in the UK fear that the needs of new arrivals will be put ahead of their own as the ethnic makeup of the surrounding communities changes.
Nevertheless, the behavior of voters in the recent British general election suggests that immigration is not a priority issue for most. “A much better (but still imperfect) indicator is national elections,” wrote sociologist and right-wing commentator Noah Karl in a recent article for Aporia Magazine.
“The UK did one just a few weeks ago, and the results gave little evidence to suggest that ‘British people’ have ‘had enough’ of mass immigration. Fifty-six percent of whites voted Left or Progressive, 26 percent voted Conservative (in effect a pro-immigration party), and just 16 percent backed Reform.
“In fact, the percentage of white people who identify with a left or progressive party has increased since 2019. I say this as someone with broadly restrictive views.
“Now, you could argue that things have changed since the election, with the riots in Leeds, the stabbings in Southport and other incidents. But in reality, they haven't.
“Before the most recent election, white Britons had already been targeted by Islamist terrorism, gangs, the BLM riots, the ‘decolonisation’ movement and accusations of ‘white privilege’. Yet they still voted overwhelmingly for pro-immigrant parties.
“Polls show that most Britons want to reduce immigration, but they appear to be more concerned about issues such as the cost of living, housing and the NHS.”
Many commentators have therefore placed much of the blame on social media platforms for their role in fueling the violence, with misinformed mobs watching from their smartphones as they mimicked the unrest elsewhere in the country.
But some of the blame may also lie with the political discourse prevalent in Britain today.
Paul Riley, senior lecturer in communication, media and democracy at the University of Glasgow, said one root cause could be the lack of accountability on social media platforms for allowing misinformation to spread. But he pointed to another group.
“I would argue that political commentators, influencers and politicians have played a key role in this issue by creating a toxic political discourse around migration,” Reilly told Arab News.
“Social media platforms can do a better job of removing hate speech and misinformation, but they are not treated as publishers and are not held accountable for the content they host. I expect the discussion about temporarily shutting down online platforms during civil unrest to become a viable policy.”
However, Reilly also disputed claims by Southport MP Patrick Hurley that the violence was caused by “lies and propaganda” spread on social media.
Instead, he cited his research on the role of social media in political unrest in Northern Ireland, saying that while online platforms were used to share rumours and misinformation that fuelled tensions, such online activity tended to “follow rather than precede rioting”.
In his contribution to The Conversation, he said, “If political leaders are serious about avoiding further violence, they must first use their language moderately.”
But he added that it would be more reasonable to blame online platforms rather than acknowledge the role politicians play in creating toxic political discourse around asylum seekers and immigration.
A legal researcher who asked not to be named told Arab News that the riots were a symptom of the failure to address growing wealth inequality, which has created a space for misinformation to spread.
“It’s just a repeat of what we’ve seen time and time again with cuts to public services. When government is unaccountable, the public will look for someone to blame,” the person said.
“If there is one bright spark, it is that those who came out to clean up the rioters seem to represent a much larger portion of the affected communities, which shows that there is still support for a better future for governments who care.”
