‘I Predict A Riot: The Manufacturing of Islamophobic and Anti-Migrant Hate On Our Streets’

Britain’s streets have been shaken by a series of riots that have led to significant damage to public and private property across Leeds, Southport, Southend on Sea, Bristol, Rotherham, Bolton, Middlesborough, Manchester, and Hartlepool – with more unrest planned in the days ahead.

The chaos appears to have been created and amplified by right-wing agitators, intent on encouraging divisions by promoting Islamophobic conspiracy theories that present Muslims as a cultural threat to Britain.

But we must be honest about the fact that it is not only fringe rabble-rousers who have engaged in this kind of rhetoric. Some senior politicians from mainstream parties, as well as government appointees, have helped to set the mood music for such violence through a gradual normalisation of the demonisation of Muslims and refugees in this country. Both share culpability for what is now unfolding.

It began after the killings of three children in Southport. Soon after, the town was subjected to a campaign of terror and mass thuggery by supporters of the far-right figurehead, Stephen Yaxley-Lennon (known as ‘Tommy Robinson’), who falsely  alluded to the suspect being a Muslim asylum seeker. Yaxley-Lennon has long been a cause célèbre for the far-right, and is known to have received support from a nexus of pro-Israel, Islamophobic think tanks and individuals over the years. 

Others jumped aboard the effort to blame ‘multiculturalism’ for the killings and the unrest that followed.

Reform Leader and MP Nigel Farage – who Neil Basu, the former head of counter-terrorism at the Metropolitan Police accused of inciting violence – and actor-turned-far-right influencer Laurence Fox.

Although police swiftly quashed the idea that the suspect had any connection to Islam, the disinformation had already spread like wildfire on social media – catalysing days of anti-refugee, anti-Muslim, protests. Hotels housing refugees have been set alight. Asian-owned stores and people perceived as Muslim have been openly attacked. Shops have been looted. Scores of police officers have been injured in confrontations with rioters. Hundreds of arrests have been made.

While it is easy to focus on how these protests have been aided and abetted by the ‘usual suspects’, there can be little room for doubt that more mainstream political figures have also enabled this far-right resurgence, directly through employing extremist rhetoric themselves.

Going back years, we can find numerous examples of senior Conservative Government officials deploying rhetoric that dehumanises Muslims and refugees, with these groups often framed as a ‘fifth-column’ who refuse to assimilate into Britain or respect British institutions.

We have been told that refugees crossing the English Channel are at odds with “British values”. Gaza solidarity marches have been characterised as “hate marches”, “Islamist”, and “extremist”. Some have even appeared to claim that the Gaza protests pose a kind of existential threat to British culture.

Labour MP for Tamworth, Sarah Edwards, has faced calls to resign after her 30 July speech in Parliament, in which she said that people “want their hotel back” because it had been used “for years” to house asylum seekers. Days later, the Tamworth Holiday Inn was attacked by rioters with petrol bombs and fireworks, leaving one police officer who was defending the facility with a broken arm. It is not difficult to argue that such remarks embolden the far-right and helped to normalise its talking points. 

Government advisors have also consistently failed to adequately recognise the threat posed by a resurgent right-wing.

Last year, a report into the Conservative Government-commissioned Shawcross Review of the counter-terrorism Prevent strategy was published – and widely criticised for calling upon the authorities to refocus efforts away from right-wing extremism to Islamist extremism, despite the fact that more referrals had been made to Prevent in recent years for the former.

A coalition of charities and human rights groups warned in February that Shawcross had “minimised the threat of the far-right” – risking an increase in “Islamophobia and racism”. Indeed, looking at the riots now being unleashed across Britain’s streets, they have clearly been vindicated. The Shawcross Review has aged very badly. 

Earlier this year, another widely criticised, Conservative-commissioned review was published. This time, the report was penned by the Government’s Advisor on Political Violence and Disruption, John Woodcock (now known as Lord Walney). While Lord Walney did discuss far-right threats, much of his attention was on Gaza solidarity protest groups, climate awareness movements, and what he called the “far-left”. Publicly, he has  repeatedly called a number of Gaza solidarity groups “extremist”, and called for MPs to be banned from engaging with a range of Palestine solidarity organisations. 

Figures such as Sir William Shawcross and Lord Walney – both of whom have connections to the pro-Israel lobby – appear to have been wearing ideological blinkers that prevented them from seeing the danger to our country posed by the xenophobic right.

Perhaps this is part of what the government’s former Lead Commissioner for Countering Extremism, Dame Sara Khan, had in mind in recent days when she told reporters that, despite “the writing [being] clearly on the wall for some time”, the Conservatives failed to act against the burgeoning threat of right-wing extremism. However, Dame Khan herself is a somewhat discredited figure in the Muslim community, and has been highly critical of mainstream Muslim civil society groups for opposing the Prevent strategy. It is a shame she was not more critical of the Conservative Government, and the Islamophobic and anti-migrant undertone of its party and policies, when it was in power. 

The assortment of actors that have helped normalise Islamophobic rhetoric also include right-wing think tanks such as The Henry Jackson Society and Policy Exchange.

The Prevent strategy, which human rights organisations have long decried for its discrimination against Muslims, has sat alongside years of vilification of Muslims and migrants by the right-wing media. 

The Government must not only deal severely with the violent thugs terrorising our streets through the law, but also address the root causes of these riots by tackling the hateful, far-right, racist, and Islamophobic ideology that pervades our political climate.

Adeeb Ayton is head of policy at MEND (Muslim Engagement and Development)