Riots broke out in several cities in the United Kingdom and Belfast, Ireland, this past week, prompting multiple countries to issue travel warnings for their citizens in those countries. The police have arrested over 300 people in these racist riots, which began after three young girls were murdered in Southport in the north of England on 29 July. This is the worst outbreak of civil unrest since the 2011 riots.
So far, Nigeria, Malaysia, Australia, Indonesia, the UAE, and India have advised citizens to stay away from the riots, which have been worse in cities outside of London. South Africa has not yet issued such a notice.
What is clear is that these rioters are targeting visibly black or brown people as well as immigrants and asylum seekers. There have been several recorded instances of rioters setting fire to hotels housing asylum seekers, while public facilities like libraries have also been ransacked and destroyed. Some rioters have also taken to looting shops.
On Sunday, the freshly-elected UK prime minister, Sir Keir Starmer, said: “This is not protest. It is organised, violent thuggery and it has no place on our streets or online.” In an ironic twist, he was the head of the crown prosecution in 2011 when the murder of a young black man by the police sparked widespread riots, resulting in the arrest of hundreds.
According to media reports, the riots were prompted by far-right groups spreading misinformation online about the killings in Southport, which were committed by a UK-born man of Rwandan heritage, who has since been arrested. These groups then organised anti-immigrant marches across the country, which quickly turned into violent clashes with the police as well as vandalism, destruction of property and assaults on non-white people.
Politicians of all political persuasions in the UK have condemned the riots. Nigel Farage, the leader of the anti-immigrant Reform Party, has also scrambled to distance himself from the rioters. Other political figures have directly blamed him and his inflammatory rhetoric for what’s happened, including Dianne Abbott, the UK’s first black member of parliament, who said: “Nigel Farage must be happy this morning. Anti-immigrant marches up and down the country and black and brown people living in fear.”
He spearheaded the movement that resulted in the 2016 Brexit moment, when the UK exited the European Union, ostensibly so it could better control its borders. However, figures show that UK immigration is now higher than before Brexit.
While Starmer has called an emergency meeting of the country’s security services, parliament remains in recession. It is not clear at the moment what could be done to quell the violence in the short term finally and what will be done to quash this racist and anti-immigrant movement in the long term.