A young South Asian man is walking down a street in Hartlepool when, without warning, he is punched in the face. Onlookers cheer, laugh and yell racial slurs. “A Paki got banged,” one shouts as those around him begin to smash the windows of small businesses and violently kick down the door of a nearby house. In neighbouring Middlesbrough, a group of white men erect a makeshift checkpoint, halting traffic and interrogating drivers about their ethnicity, demanding to know if they are “white” or “English.” These shocking, racist acts did not unfold in the 1970s. They occurred just under a year ago in the North East of England.
Last summer marked the worst instance of racist violence in over a century. Across Britain, more than a dozen towns and cities were impacted, with smaller, more geographically isolated Black and Asian communities particularly vulnerable.
The simple narrative is that these riots were sparked by the tragic stabbings of three young girls in Southport and online disinformation surrounding the suspect’s identity. Figures like Tommy Robinson, Andrew Tate, and Elon Musk are accused of amplifying hate and spreading falsehoods. While their actions undoubtedly stoked the flames, the underlying climate of hostility towards Muslims and migrants in Britain long predates them.
Islamophobia is not the preserve of a few fringe bigots on the far-right. It is an issue across the political spectrum. For decades, politicians and the press have spread a moral panic about British Muslims, depicting our communities as a fifth column within British society. This goes beyond mere prejudice — Islamophobia has often functioned as a political tool and been used to justify invasions abroad and authoritarian legislation at home. More recently, it has been deployed in response to the large national demonstrations in solidarity with the Palestinian people.
Former Home Secretary Suella Braverman led the charge, decrying those marching in support of a ceasefire as hate marchers. The narrative quickly escalated into claims of mob rule and an Islamist takeover of the streets, fueled by inflammatory newspaper headlines targeting the marchers. Lee Anderson went a step further, indulging in dogwhistle racism in his claim that Sadiq Khan, the mayor of London, was controlled by Iislamists. Even Labour politicians fed into this narrative, with generalisations being made about intimidation and abuse from Muslim constituents who demanded more from their elected representatives. This gave Nigel Farage the confidence to proclaim on national television that British Muslims don’t share British values. And all of this had an impact. In November 2023, there was a reported 600% increase in Islamophobic hate crime.
There was another moral panic that fuelled the fire this summer – and one that never seems to go away – a frenzy about immigration. It has been incredibly rare for politicians to champion the contribution that immigrants have made to Britain both historically and in the contemporary context. Instead, years of sensationalist newspaper headlines and political sloganeering about “stopping the boats” have depicted them only as a threat to be dealt with in the public consciousness.
In Tamworth and Rotherham, rioters quite literally tried to burn down hotels housing refugees. It is no coincidence that the “stop the boats” slogan used by the then Prime Minister Rishi Sunak during a press conference in 2023 was emblazoned on a banner in front of a hotel housing refugees during riots in Hull.
Politicians and journalists don’t just respond to public sentiment on migration — they actively shape it. According to a recent poll, 45% of Brits believe that most migrants come to Britain illegally. But the truth is 96% of migrants come to Britain through legal routes.
We have seen this before. In the 1980s, we had front-page headlines about an ‘invasion’ of immigrants and inflammatory rhetoric from mainstream politicians such as then prime minister Margaret Thatcher, who warned that the UK might be “swamped by people with a different culture”. All of this combined to create a toxic atmosphere where Black and Asian people faced racist attacks on the streets of Britain.
The race to the bottom on migration has only got worse since then. The governing Labour Party boasts about deportations with Starmer adopting Farage-esque talking points, lamenting the Conservative Party’s “one-nation experiment in open borders.”
In the aftermath of the 1958 riots, where Black people in Nottingham and Notting Hill faced racist pogroms, both Labour and Tory politicians called for restrictions on migration without acknowledging the pain and trauma of those impacted by the senseless violence. History repeats itself once more, with the terms of the debate on migration once again being set by the far-right. Without changing the narrative on Muslims and migration, the atmosphere of hate that led to racist riots last summer will not disappear.
These narratives, scapegoating migrants for society’s problems are picking up traction in some of the poorest areas in Britain. In fact, seven out of ten of the most deprived parts of the country were hit by racist riots last summer. Teenagers who smash windows and loot shops in their own communities are invariably teenagers with very little pride in the places they are from and very little to lose.
In former pit villages, once thriving coastal communities and post-industrial towns, there is a profound sense of loss. Communities once built around industries and secure unionised jobs that could feed a family have seen their areas fall into decline. With deindustrialisation, they lost not just their livelihoods but their sense of community. Many are searching for answers. And the far-right are feeding off their despair and alienation, providing scapegoats not solutions for their problems.
These communities have also seen the steady erosion of their social infrastructure as a result of austerity cuts – community centres, libraries, youth clubs and leisure spaces that keep communities connected. The end result is a lack of social interaction and increasing polarisation.
Addressing material need in these communities is vital. But it’s equally important to recognise the working-class in Britain is multiracial and multifaith. Diverse working-class communities in towns and cities like Luton, Bradford and Birmingham have also been ravaged by deindustrialisation and decline.
We need an alternative narrative that recognises the commonality of struggle across these different communities. One that says, regardless of race and religion, we all want money in our pockets, food on the table, a roof over our heads and safer streets.
The atmosphere of hate neither began with the riots nor did it end there. Just last month, six mosques in London were vandalised with anti-Muslim graffiti. And a chilling death threat, ‘remigration or die’ was sprayed outside a Muslim primary school in East London. Our communities have fought back against racism in the past and we will do it again. But we must not underestimate the scale of the challenge ahead. Racist narratives have the backing of billionaires, MPs, TV channels and social media platforms.
We must also be strategic in where we dedicate our time and energy. We know that Muslim women disproportionately bear the brunt of Islamophobia, with those visibly identifiable as Muslim far more likely to be targeted in anti-Muslim hate crime. We also know that the experience of smaller more geographically isolated Black and Asian communities is very different to that of much larger communities in diverse towns and cities. Any anti-racist organising efforts, whether that be demonstrations or public events must be mindful of this reality. Are we preaching to the converted or engaging with those who may disagree with us?
The latter is by no means easy but it’s fundamental to building an alternative. In the end, we know that the divisive blame game of the far-right offers no real solutions to working-class communities. So we must boldly articulate the alternative. One that states loud and clear that we can address material concern without pitting communities against one another. One that makes clear that migrants and minorities have been a convenient scapegoat for successive governments who have presided over the managed decline of Britain. One that says Britain has the resources to invest in our communities and improve people’s lives. An unapologetic anti-racist alternative rooted in the politics of hope. We know where its absence leads.
Responding to the Racist Riots
This blog is part of our sector-wide initiative ‘Responding to the Racist Riots‘. This initiative focuses on confronting the root causes of the August 2024 racist riots and establishing long-term strategies for violence prevention, led by the Race Equality Foundation and partners, Muslim Charities Forum, the Alliance for Racial Justice, and NAVCA.
