INNUMBERS
* 400 people arrested after six days of rioting in parts of England and Northern Ireland.
* 6,000 police officers were mobilized nationwide to deal with further expected unrest.
Alex Whitman
LONDON: England and Northern Ireland have been gripped by riots for the past week amid a cloud of misinformation and perceived government failure. Commentators are divided, however, on the root causes beyond claims of “far-right fraud”.
Since 2011, when the police shooting of a black man sparked nationwide riots, Britain has seen similar scenes of violence, with mobs tearing up shops, torching cars, targeting mosques and torching hotels hosting refugees. .
From Prime Minister Sir Keir Starr to the world's second-richest man, Elon Musk – who compared the scene in Britain to a civil war – everyone has weighed in on what caused the riots and what it means for the country.
Responding to an attempted arson attack on Sunday at the Holiday Inn Express in Rotherham, South Yorkshire, where asylum seekers were awaiting a decision on their status, Starr said the rioters would face “the full force of the law”.
“I guarantee you will regret participating in this disorder, whether it's in person or online to beat up this act and then run away yourself,” he said at a press briefing. “This is not protest, this is organized, violent hooliganism and it has no place on our streets or online.”
Such is the severity of the damage to communities and the number of injuries to police officers that the Director of Public Prosecutions, Stephen Parkinson, has said that some of those arrested may face terrorism charges.
Speaking to the BBC, Parkinson said: “Where you have organized groups planning activities for the purpose of advancing an ideology and there are actually serious obstacles, yes, we would consider terrorism offences.
“Yes, we are willing to look at terrorist crimes, and I know of at least one instance where that is happening.”
Sources who spoke to Arab News did not disagree with claims that the violence was more than “violent thugs”. However, they cautioned against dismissing the need to examine underlying social issues.
One source, who works in education and asked not to be identified, said the disorder comes on the back of an election campaign that tapped into legitimate concerns seeking to blame the country's ills on the perceived negative effects of mass immigration.
“Combine this with the misinformation surrounding the identity of the girls' killer that served as the catalyst for the riots, and you see the chickens coming to roost,” the source said.
On July 29, an attack on a children's dance and yoga workshop at a community center in Southport, north of Liverpool, left three girls dead and 10 others – eight of them children – injured, allegedly by a 17-year-old.
Because of the suspect's age, police were legally obligated to withhold his identity, inadvertently creating a vacuum that was quickly filled by misinformation circulating on social media that claimed the suspect was a Muslim who had entered the country illegally.
The spread of misinformation isn't helped by the chiming in of online influencers who themselves regularly post anti-immigration, anti-Muslim sentiment to further a political agenda.
Zouhir al-Shima, head of research at Valeant Projects, a UK-based firm that uses artificial intelligence to combat disinformation, said identifying the root causes of the riots can be difficult, as there is a mix of deliberate manipulation by those pushing it. Anti-immigrant agenda and widespread bot activity.
“Since August 3, accounts and networks linked to Reform UK have been widely active on X and Facebook with claims of two-tier policing,” Al-Shimale told Arab News, citing the right-wing political party. The recent general election.
“They're pouring a lot of resources into this to test certain lines and stories and see what sticks, but essentially suggesting that the police are allowing Muslim thugs to riot while they target 'white patriots' who are 'just angry about the state. their nation.'
Suggestions for two-tier policing have centered on alleged “soft handling” by police at “left-wing, pro-Palestine” rallies in London weekly since October 7 and earlier Black Lives Matter rallies.
Based only on the scale of disorder, the comparison is poor. A recent pro-Palestinian march of 10,000 people injured three police officers. By contrast, around 750 people rioted in Rotherham on Sunday, injuring at least 12 officers.
According to polling data from YouGov, opposition to the riots is almost universal across every segment of the public, with Reform UK voters the only group showing any substantial level of support at just 21 per cent.
It is also a clear minority, with three-quarters (76 percent) of reform voters opposing the riots. Support among other voters is much lower – just 9 per cent of Conservatives, 3 per cent of Labor voters and 1 per cent of Liberal Democrats favor disorder.
However, there are views that incite riots and sympathies for far-right groups such as the English Defense League, which are thought to be orchestrating the violence.
Indeed, legal immigration to the UK has increased dramatically over the past 30 years, while illegal arrivals through the English Channel have continued despite the previous government's commitment to “stop the boats”.
The latest estimates on migration from the Office for National Statistics show that around 1.2 million people immigrated to the UK in 2023, while 532,000 people emigrated, bringing the total migration figure to 685,000.
About 29,000 people crossed the English Channel in small boats in 2023, down from 46,000 in 2022, although the overall number of small boat arrivals has increased significantly since 2018.
According to the University of Oxford's Migration Observatory, the share of foreign-born UK workers has risen steadily over the past two decades, from 9 per cent of the workforce in the first quarter of 2004 (2.6 million) to 21 per cent. percent in the first quarter of 2024 (6.8 million).
It found immigrant men were more likely to be employed than UK-born men, but immigrant women were less likely to be employed.
Although refugees are not allowed to work, nor do they receive housing or adequate welfare payments when their applications are reviewed, a section of the public in Britain fears that the needs of the new arrivals are put before their own, while the ethnic structure of their communities changes around them.
Despite this, voter behavior in the UK's recent general election shows that immigration is not a priority issue for most. “A very good (though still imperfect) indicator is a national poll,” Noah Karl, a sociologist and right-wing commentator, wrote in a recent piece for Aporia magazine.
“The UK held one just a few weeks ago, and the results provide little basis for saying 'the English' have had 'enough' of mass immigration. 56 per cent of white people voted for a left-wing or progressive party, while another 26 per cent voted for the Conservatives (a de facto pro-immigrant party ) voted for only 16 percent supported the reform.
“In fact, the share of white people who support left-wing or progressive parties has increased since 2019. I say this as someone with broadly conservative views.
“Now, you can claim that things have changed since the election because of the riots in Leeds, the stabbings in Southport and other incidents. But it hasn't really changed.
“Before the last election, white British people were already victims of Islamist terrorism, gangs, BLM riots, 'decolonization' movements, accusations of 'white privilege', etc. But they still chose to vote overwhelmingly for pro-immigration parties. .
“Although polling suggests that most Britons want to reduce immigration, they are clearly more interested in 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 acting as a catalyst for violence, while rioters seek to emulate the disorder seen elsewhere in the country due to misinformation and fed on their smartphones.
Some of the blame, however, can also rest with the political debate that pervades Britain today.
Paul Reilly, a senior lecturer in communication, media and democracy at the University of Glasgow, said one underlying reason could be a lack of accountability for social media platforms to spread misinformation. But he also points to another group.
“I would argue that political commentators, influencers and politicians have played a key role in this by creating a toxic political debate about migration,” Reilly told Arab News.
“Social media platforms may do well to remove hate speech and misinformation. But they are not treated as publishers and held accountable for the content they host. I expect a debate on the temporary shutdown of online platforms during civil unrest as a viable policy.”
However, Reilly also challenged Southport MP Patrick Hurley's assertion that the violence was only down to “lies and propaganda” spread on social media.
Instead, citing his research into the role of social media in political unrest in Northern Ireland, he says that while online platforms have been used to share rumors and misinformation, which has fueled tensions, such online activity has tended to “follow rather than pre-riot”.
Writing in The Conversation, he said: “If political leaders are serious about avoiding further violence, they should start by tempering their own language.”
However, he added: “Politicians are better off blaming online platforms instead of acknowledging their role in generating toxic political debate around refugees and immigration.”
A legal researcher, who asked not to be named, told Arab News that the riots were symptomatic of a failure to address wider wealth inequality, which had created space for misinformation to spread.
“It's just a replication of what we've seen time and time again with cuts to public services. In the absence of government accountability, people look for someone to blame,” the person said.
“If there is one bright spark, those who come out to clean up after the riots represent a much higher proportion of the affected communities, indicating that there is still buy-in for a better tomorrow for a government that cares.”
