There May Be Trouble Ahead

Thoughts on the recent riots - why has the government made a mountain out of a mole hill?

As the dust settles on the riots and the King’s Peace is restored it’s hard to reconcile some of the commentary with the tawdry reality. Some 700 people have been arrested, of whom some 350 have been charged, mostly with offences such as violent disorder and drug possession. As yet, none have been charged with terrorism related offences despite been calls for anti-terror laws to be invoked and some sources suggest they are being used. Today the King’s Peace has been restored and The Realm seems secure, despite Elon Musk’s concerns of civil war.

A Short History of British Riots

In terms of British rioting, this week’s events have been small beer.  The more or less weekly pro-Palestinian marches since the invasion of Gaza have had hundreds arrested in the aggregate. For example, just one march on 29 May had 40 arrests. The property destroying BLM riots caused 27 injuries and led to 135 arrests.   The four nights of riots in August  2011 led to five deaths, 3,000 arrests and almost 2,000 people being charged. The poll tax riot of 1990 left 113 people injured and 340 under arrest, with over 100 police officers needing treatment for injuries. The miners’ strike of 1984 had 8,460 arrests.   For the 30 plus years of the Troubles in Northern Ireland riots, which sometimes lasted days, were a routine occurrence with widespread use of petrol bombs, nail bombs, CS gas, water cannon and rubber bullets. There has also been the ongoing saga of football hooliganism – effectively private riots between opposing fans. Over 1,000 were arrested for football violence in 2019, down from 3,000 a decade earlier.

Yet this week’s relatively minor breeches of the King’s Peace led to calls from former counter-terrorism supremo Neil Bazu for the riots to be treated as terrorism.   Indeed they might have been; The Director of Public Prosecutions (DPP), Stephen Parkinson, reportedly used terrorism law in one case.   While the Prime Minister was clear that the riots were criminal activity, not terrorism   he then seemed to cross the divide from government to judiciary by stating that rioters would receive substantive sentences. As a lawyer and former DPP himself, the Prime Minister should be aware that sentencing is the job of judges and magistrates, only once criminals have been found guilty. Starmer’s comments reveal an unpleasantly authoritarian streak. This is not the response of a government that knows what it’s doing, or why

So Who or What’s a Right Wing Terrorist?

Despite the headlines, there is no evidence that these riots come from the “far right,” let alone far right terrorists. There is no coherent far right terrorist organisation in the UK. In 2022 The Director General of MI5, who is clearly the defining expert on UK terrorism, said “The Extreme Right Wing landscape has continued to evolve away from structured, real-world groups such as National Action, to a diffuse online threat. From the comfort of their bedrooms, individuals are easily able to access right-wing extremist spaces, network with each other and move towards a radical mindset.”

If MI5 says there is no far-right terrorist organisation in the UK why were some in government seeking to use anti-terror powers to control the riots? While the initial riot in Southport probably stemmed from factually incorrect tweets on X about the nationality of a killer, the rest of them were something between racist thuggery and blowing off steam about the consequences of mass immigration and illegal migration. They spread, perhaps,  because many in the UK feel that the country is not being run in their interests and some, perhaps under the influence of alcohol and drugs, are prepared to riot about it.

Yet the government and most of the media are keen to blame this on the far right, but what is the far right? If MI5 is correct then it’s just aging football thug Tommy Robinson plus whatever the latest incarnation of the English Defence League is called. That’s a bunch of racist cretins who are an occasional threat to the King’s Peace, but not the Realm. Hooliganism is not terrorism.

So What Happened?

An appalling killing at a dance school on July 29^th led to rumours on social media. The disorder started in the wake of the killings. On 30^th July a group of about 1,000 rioted outside a Mosque. Those sentenced so far have histories of violence and some were intoxicated. Some were out to shout at Muslims, others were just out for violence.

On 31^st July Merseyside Police arrested a suspect but didn’t release his details – as is normal for arrestees younger than 18. The lack of information led to wild rumours circulating on social media, which in turn led to an angry mobs in other cities. By the time the Police released details of whom they had arrested, a person born in the UK, rioting had broken out in about 15 cities and went on for several nights.

A bit of property was damaged, some people got a sore head and some policemen got injured. No one was killed and the number of rioters tailed off quickly, largely I suspect due to excellent policing (outside London) and a general loss of interest among the hooligans. At no stage were the police on the brink of collapse (as the Met was in the London riots of August 2011). At no stage was any central, political demand made. Outside of Belfast (where they have more experience of rioting than most) no petrol bombs were thrown. No CS gas was used, no rubber bullets fired and no water cannon deployed. Brian Booth of the Police Federation of England and Wales called for them, but was rightly ignored.

It’s hard to see anything there that justifies the media frenzy, let alone Musk’s conclusion.

So Why The Media Frenzy?

For reasons unknowable most of the  press and most politicians decided to label this hooliganism as far-right violence, without defining what they meant by “far right.” To the left the phrase can mean fascist dictatorship, racist thug or an authoritarian capitalist government (of which there are vanishingly few).  A great many of them include Reform in their definition, although the BBC and others have retracted that opinion and apologised.

In many ways the media reports what it is given by governments and interest groups, rather than investigating itself. This government, and individuals within it, have cause to be alarmed as the realities of uncontrolled, mass migration start to impact. For 20 years Labour has been committed to multi-culturalism; clearly it isn’t working.

Reform is the only party to state explicitly that it would control both legal and illegal migration to the UK. (Remember, most migration is legal; of the 2 million or so who arrive din the past couple of years fewer than 100,000 came by boat). For every 2.3 votes Labour got in the general election Reform got one. That is not reflected in the allocation of parliamentary seats (412 to 5) but Reform voters won’t evaporate. That’s a problem for the UK and, more immediately, a problem for Starmer. He has power, but not authority.

If you can’t win the argument, and Labour can’t, like any aging and slow full back you play the man, not the ball.

The Smear Campaign

The Labour party and much of media decided to  paint Reform UK as a far right, racist party, even though its policies demonstrably aren’t.  Reform’s chairman, Zia Yusuf, is a Muslim whose parents came to the UK from Sri Lanka in 1980. As he says here on GB News the riots are a symptom of the British state’s failure to integrate the more than two million immigrants who have arrived in the UK in the past three years. Zia also makes the point that whenever anyone questions the benefits, control, management or need for such huge migration they tend to be labelled racist.

But immigration is not about race, it’s about nationality and economics. Two years net migration of 1.5 million is a population increase of 2% in two years. Where’s the additional infrastructure? From housing to hospitals to schools to roads and sewers it hasn’t been built.

The Economic Impact

The economy grew by just 0.1% in 2023 and GDP per capita has only just recovered from covid.  Remember that’s an averaged number – some people are doing better, others are doing worse. I would guess many of those hurling the bricks were in the latter category.

The nation is getting bigger, poorer and divided. Correlation isn’t causation, but a simultaneous upswing in migration and stagnation or worse of living standards (which is what GDP per capita measures) is a recipe for trouble. Order may have been restored, but the economy isn’t fixed. As I wrote here, that’s a far from trivial task. Nor are our borders any less porous than they were under the useless Tories.

Perhaps the government isn’t afraid of the non-existent far right, but of the future. Labour is the party of the state machine. Already it has doled out some unaffordable, generous pay rises of 5.5%. to public sector workers .  (If I sound jealous I am – driving a truck is worse paid in 2024 than it was in 2023).

The government doesn’t have the funds pay for this, let alone fix the UK’s infrastructure. It doesn’t have the stomach to secure the borders. Its ability to raise money in the bond markets is constrained by the need to service existing debt. Taxing the rich until the pips squeak didn’t work in the 1970s and won’t today when the rich are far more mobile and heading for the exit.

We have had a week of affray. Labour’s flawed and undeliverable policies (and we haven’t even touched on net zero) are not going to deliver growth, increase real  GDP per Capita, improve immigrant integration or reduce net migration. Tensions will therefore remain. A Prime Minister would tread very softly and ensure his ministers chose their words carefully.

Language Matters

Uniting a fragmented county takes leadership and clear communication. It requires getting the disaffected to trust in the government and it requires realistic promises. So far Labour and The Prime Minister have failed on every level. It’s not entirely their fault; the language of political categorisation from far left to far right is meaningless, which renders political discussion impossible.

In general usage, far-left means Marxist and/or communist. Soft left means socialist. Right means capitalist. Far right has several meanings. Firstly, if far left means a communist state then logically far right should mean the opposite, which is a state based on the individual. (Extreme right would be no state, just individuals which looks a lot like anarchy). The second meaning is fascist (think Pinochet) with no democracy and rule by a totalitarian autocrat. A third meaning is a racist Hitler worshiper, although of course Nazi means National Socialist. A spectrum which can’t consistently define its boundaries is worthless, promoting confusion rather than clarity.

A better spectrum is “big-state” to “little-state.” Big-state includes the monoliths where the state controls pretty much everything, like North Korea, China and The Soviet Union. Litte-state are the libertarian capitalists, such as the USA and Switzerland. Most of the rest are in the middle – EU members tending to the big-state and pre-election, post-Brexit UK moving from there towards the Swiss and American little-state models.

In this context the Prime Minister’s problem is stark; he leads the party of the state in a country that voted decisively against the large(ish) state of the EU. Worse, his predecessors failed to deliver much in the way of actual movement towards a smaller state, quite possibly in part due to the UK’s state machine (or some individuals within it) not wanting to go there. Having been given power by the lowest vote share ever for a government in the UK, Labour’s programme (in short a bigger state and closer ties with EU) doesn’t have much of a mandate. The last thing Labour and big-state advocates want is clear discussion of this uncomfortable reality, so we’re stuck with name calling instead of debate. Being able to mis-label the opposition far-right without challenge allows the Starmtroopers and the media to parrot slogans rather than to think.

The growing confusion over language has expanded recently to include all aspects of diversity and an ever increasing list of protected characteristics. While discrimination on the basis of race, gender etc. is highly illegal, and can even be a hate crime, the existence of discrimination often relies on motive rather than action. That motive is often derived from what is said, which in turn makes speaking (or writing, I add anxiously) about such issues fraught with danger. We’re in a pretty pickle when the recent explosion of the number of genders and/or sexes means that even our Prime Minister, once a senior lawyer and presumably aware of the law, is unable to define what a woman is.

Back to1984 (or 1948)

Some might consider this a schoolboy point, but controlling the use of language and creating a fictional public enemy were the bedrocks of Big Brother’s power in George Orwell’s novel. In a world where our movements, writings and (for some suspects) conversations are almost immediately available to the state, individual liberty is at risk. So is freedom of thought and clarity of expression.

The groupthinkers who believe unrestricted migration to the UK is desirable cannot be challenged if every question is labelled racist and ignored rather than addressed. To believe that concerns about immigration are solely racist doesn’t accord with what I found campaigning for Reform in Swansea West, where Muslims and Hindis pledged their votes to Reform, complaining about the issues caused by uncontrolled migration. Of course, Torsten Bell, the uber-apparatchik who won the seat, has gone long on racism, rather than addressing the real problems. Labour MPs are either not seeing reality or have learned doublethink. (Torsten is also a great believer in wind power, which does require doublethink for reasons I outlined in another article ).

If the vilification of Reform is an attempt by Labour (or the state) to create a public enemy they have a problem; one in ten of the electorate (and one in six of those who voted) chose Reform.

Policing

Outside of London the police did their job; their lot in riots is not a happy one but they’re trained, equipped and paid to do it. Generally they did it very well, maintaining their discipline and impartiality while restoring order. They’re also doing an excellent job of tracking down rioters. Would it be churlish to wish they were as effective at dealing with the more run of the mill crimes of burglary and robbery?

The Met made it look more difficult. The Commissioner had to apologise to the press for his petulance when asked about two tier policing. That’s not an idle question. On 8^th August the BBC quoted him as thanking anti-racist demonstrators. Surely he should have been asking them to go home as their presence might trigger more volence? The picture in the article (reproduced below) triggers questions.

What are Palestinian flags doing there? The Gaza-groupie demonstrations routinely chant “from the river to the sea” – widely thought to be an incitement to genocide. (Earlier this year a woman was arrested for chanting it in Manchester.)

Who paid for the signs? Producing them is not cheap (about £4 each, excluding the handle) and takes time and organisation. It’s the sort of thing that big political parties are very good at. It’s stretching credulity to believe that a spontaneous crows would produce them, particularly as they seem to support the government’s line that questioning migration is fascist or racist. It seems about as spontaneous as party members demonstrating in support of the government of the Soviet Union or North Korea.

Why do people have to protest against racism anyway? It’s already illegal and the police crack down on it. Surely at a time of heightened tension, with sporadic rioting breaking out, the Met can’t spare bodies. Surely they could have blocked the march, pointing out that it had potential to increase the public problems and drain their resources. The anti-fascist crowd have a track record of violence too, both in this disorder and historically. Or was this a coordinated photo op? It it was then the Met have become part of the government propaganda machine rather than upholders of the law.

Of course The Commissioner has a difficult job; not least becasue one of the people he answers to is the London Mayor, Sadiq Khan. Typically and idiotically Kahn said yesterday that he doesn’t feel safe in London as a Muslim following “far right” riots. How does he think the 150,000 Jews in London feel every Saturday courtesy of the Gaza-groupies who march there (and in other cities) most Saturdays.

What Next?

This entire episode started due to the widespread acceptance of a misleading tweet following an awful multiple murder. Thankfully in the UK the latter are rare, so these circumstances aren’t likely to recur soon.

In the interim intelligent individuals will reflect on the lunacy of believing anything that you read on social media. With a bit of luck some of the less intelligent will too, although whether they remember that when they’re fired up with drugs and alcohol is doubtful. The courts will sentence the guilty as they (and they alone) see fit. Those sent to prison will add to the overcrowding . It may be that the high probability of imprisonment deters future rioters.

Meanwhile migration (legal and illegal) will continue and pressures on housing, hospitals and infrastructure will increase, as will resentment. Unfortunately the political dialogue won’t improve. Even as I type, the group “Stand up to Racism” (a limited company with opaque ownership) are planning a demonstration outside Reform’s headquarters.  I doubt they intend a rigorous academic debate on the merits of migration.

The big question is what the government does. Its options include somehow rapidly reducing poverty and improving infrastructure – particularly housing and the NHS. That was its manifesto commitment. If, as seems likely, it can’t deliver that rapidly it must control migration. Doing so effectively would almost certainly require policy steps, such as leaving the ECHR. That’s counter to almost everything it says it believes in. Of course, hypocrisy in Labour politics is hardly new, but this would become another Clause 4 moment. Blair won that (just about) but Starmer is no Blair.

So I fear the government will continue to propagate the simplistic dogma that anyone who questions the wisdom of migration is a “far right racist.”  That would criminalise Reform, the third most voted for party at the general election. For the government to criminalise part of its opposition is not a feature of liberal democracy.

If that happens I’m afraid Elon Musk’s tweet might have been prophetic.

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