NUMEROUS
* 400 people arrested after six days of rioting in parts of England and Northern Ireland.
* 6,000 police officers mobilized nationwide to deal with expected future unrest.
ALEX WHITEMAN
LONDON: Riots have gripped England and Northern Ireland in the past week amid a cloud of misinformation and perceived government failures. However, commentators are divided on the root causes beyond the claims of the “far-right hugger”.
Not since 2011, when the police shooting of a black man sparked days of nationwide riots, has the UK witnessed scenes of such violence, with crowds of people smashing through shops, burning cars, targeting mosques and even setting fire to hotels housing asylum seekers. .
Everyone from Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer to the world's second-richest man Elon Musk – who compared the scenes unfolding in Britain to a civil war – weighed in on what caused the unrest and what it could mean these for the country.
Responding to Sunday's attempted arson of a Holiday Inn Express in Rotherham, South Yorkshire, where asylum seekers were being housed awaiting a decision on their status, Starmer said the rioters would face “the full force of the law”.
“I guarantee you will regret taking part in this disturbance, either directly or those who did this online and then ran away themselves,” he told a news conference. “This is not a protest, it's organized, violent action and it's not happening on our streets or online.”
Such was the severity of the damage to communities and the number of police officers injured that the director of public prosecutions, Stephen Parkinson, said some of those arrested could face terrorism charges.
Speaking to the BBC, Parkinson said: “Where you have organized activity planning groups for the purpose of promoting an ideology and planning really, really serious disruption, then yes, we will consider terrorism offences.
“Yes, we are willing to look into terrorism offenses and I am aware of at least one case where that is happening.”
Sources who spoke to Arab News disagreed with claims that the violence was anything other than “violent misconduct”. However, they cautioned against dismissing the need to examine underlying societal problems.
One source, who works in education and asked not to be identified, said the unrest came amid an election campaign that took advantage of legitimate concerns, trying to blame the country's ills on the supposed negative effects of mass immigration.
“Combine this with the misinformation about the identity of the girls' killer, which served as a catalyst for the riots, and what you see is the chickens coming home to roost,” the source said.
An attack on a children's dance and yoga workshop at a community center in Southport, north of Liverpool, on July 29 saw three girls killed and 10 others – eight of them children – injured, allegedly by a young for 17 years.
Because of the suspect's age, police were legally required to withhold his identity, inadvertently creating a vacuum that was quickly filled by false information circulating on social media claiming the suspect was a Muslim who had entered the country illegally.
The spread of misinformation has not been helped by the intervention of online influencers who regularly publish anti-immigration and anti-Muslim sentiments to push a political agenda.
Zouhir Al-Shimale, head of research at Valent Projects, a UK-based firm that uses artificial intelligence to combat disinformation, said identifying the root causes of the riots could prove difficult because there was a mix of deliberate manipulation by those that push an anti-immigrant agenda and widespread bot activity.
“Since August 3, accounts and networks linked to Reform UK have been massively active on X and Facebook, with claims of two-level policing,” Al-Shimale told Arab News, referring to a right-wing political party that made gains in recent general elections.
“They're putting a lot of resources into this to test certain lines and narratives and see what sticks, but essentially they're suggesting that the police allow Muslim thugs to riot while they target 'white patriots' who are pure and simply upset about “the state of their nation.”
Suggestions of two-tiered policing focused on the police's alleged “soft handling” of “left-wing, pro-Palestine” marches held weekly in London since October 7 and earlier Black Lives Matter rallies.
Based on the size of the disorder alone, the comparison is poor. A recent pro-Palestine march of up to 10,000 people resulted in the injury of three police officers. Instead, the roughly 750 people who rioted in Rotherham on Sunday left at least 12 officers injured.
Opposition to the riots is almost universal across every section of the public, according to polling data from YouGov, with Reform UK voters the only group showing a substantial level of support, at 21%.
Even this is a clear minority, three-quarters of reform voters (76 percent) opposed the riots. Support among other voters is much lower – just 9% of Tories, 3% of Labor voters and 1% of Lib Dems favor deregulation.
However, there is sympathy for the ideas fueling the riots and far-right groups such as the English Defense League believed to be orchestrating the violence.
Indeed, legal immigration to the UK has increased dramatically over the past 30 years, while illegal arrivals across the English Channel have continued despite the previous government's pledge to 'stop the boats'.
The latest migration estimates from the Office for National Statistics suggest that in 2023 around 1.2 million people migrated to the UK, while 532,000 people emigrated, leaving a net migration figure of 685,000.
Around 29,000 people were detected crossing the English Channel in small craft in 2023, down from 46,000 in 2022, although the total number of small craft arrivals has increased substantially since 2018.
According to the University of Oxford's Migration Observatory, the share of workers employed in the UK who were born abroad has risen steadily over the past two decades, rising from 9% of the employed workforce in the first quarter of 2004 (2.6 million) to 21. percent in the first quarter of 2024 (6.8 million).
It found that migrant men were more likely to be employed than UK-born men, but among women, migrants were less likely to be employed.
Although asylum seekers are not allowed to work or receive a house or substantial welfare payments while their claims are being processed, some in the UK public fear that the needs of new arrivals are being put before their own while what the racial composition of their communities is changing around them.
Despite this, voter behavior in the recent UK general election suggests that immigration is not a priority issue for the majority. “A much better (though still imperfect) indicator is national elections,” wrote right-wing sociologist and commentator Noah Carl in a recent article for Aporia Magazine.
“Britain held one just a few weeks ago, and the results give little reason to say that the 'English' are 'fed up' with mass immigration. Fifty-six percent of whites voted for left-wing or progressive parties, and another 26 percent voted for the Conservatives (a de facto pro-immigration party). Only 16% 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 generally conservative views.
“Now, you could argue that the situation has changed since the election, because of the Leeds riots, the Southport stabbing and other incidents. But it hasn't really changed.
“Prior to the most recent election, white Britons had already been subjected to Islamist terrorism, grooming gangs, BLM riots, the 'decolonisation' movement, accusations of 'white privilege' etc. However, they still chose to vote overwhelmingly pro-migration. parties.
“Although polls suggest most Britons want to cut immigration, they seem to care more 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 acting as a catalyst for violence as rioters fueled by misinformation seek to emulate the disorder seen elsewhere in the country and fueled on their smartphones .
Part of the blame, however, may also lie with the pervasive political discourse in Britain today.
Paul Reilly, senior lecturer in communications, media and democracy at the University of Glasgow, said an underlying cause could be a lack of accountability for social media platforms that allow misinformation to spread. But it also showed another group.
“I would say political commentators, influencers and politicians have played a key role in this, creating a toxic political discourse around migration,” Reilly told Arab News.
“Social media platforms could do better in removing hate speech and misinformation. But they are not treated as publishers and held accountable for the content they host. I would expect a viable policy to debate the temporary shutdown of online platforms during civil unrest.”
However, Reilly also disputed Southport MP Patrick Hurley's claim that the violence was solely down to “lies and propaganda” spread on social media.
Instead, citing his research into the role of social media in the political unrest in Northern Ireland, he says that while online platforms have been used to share rumors and misinformation, which have inflamed tensions, such online activity tended to “follow rather than precede riots”.
Writing in The Conversation, he said: “If political leaders are serious about avoiding further violence, they should start by moderating their own language.”
However, he added: “It is timely for politicians to blame online platforms rather than acknowledge their role in producing 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 a failure to address growing inequalities, which created a space for disinformation to spread.
“It is simply a reproduction of what we have seen time and time again with the cutting of public services. Amidst an absence of government accountability, the population will look for someone to come,” the person said.
“If there is one bright spark, those coming out to clean up after the riots appear to represent a much larger share of the affected communities, indicating that for a government that cares, there is still buy-in for a better tomorrow.”
