“TThe English soul is awakened and stirred to anger by the actions of these people.” audienceDouglas Murray of the National Guard spoke to former Australian Deputy Prime Minister John Anderson, and while the comments may sound like a response to the recent riots, they were actually recorded last year (an edited clip of the old interview was uploaded to Anderson’s website last week, but has since been removed).
“These people” Murray refers to are immigrants. “I don’t want them here,” he insisted. “It has to be said, and I’m happy to say it.” The police have lost control of the city, Murray argued, and “if the military isn’t going to be sent in, the public is going to have to step in, the public is going to have to sort it out themselves, and it’s going to get very brutal.” The statement may sound like a prescient warning; it also sounds like a dangerous excuse for violence.
It’s worth remembering how this unrest began. Following the murder of three girls at a dance class in Southport, many concluded that the killer was a Muslim who had arrived in a small boat across the Channel. This bigoted assumption became the springboard for arguing that the tragedy stemmed from “uncontrolled immigration” and the refusal of immigrants to integrate.
The first “protest” took place outside a mosque in Southport. Windows were broken and walls were destroyed. Even after the suspect was identified as Axel Rudakubana, born in Cardiff to devout Christian immigrants from Rwanda, protesters continued to target mosques, set fire to immigrant accommodation and attack black and Asian passers-by, and many commentators continued to portray this as an inevitable outpouring of anger against the “liberal elite”.
Liberal commentators have often, and rightly, been accused of treating working-class voters who support the wrong politicians or have the wrong views on immigration as racists or ignorant. In their response after the Southport riots, many critics themselves treated working-class people as if they were really stupid and bigoted, conflating racism with working-class anger.
Working-class discontent in towns like Sunderland and Stoke has been fuelled by a housing shortage, an Uber-enabled labour market, NHS dentist To Broken public transportBut attacks on mosques and migrant hotels, on people of the wrong skin colour or worshiping the wrong God, are clear examples of bigotry – and rather show how discontent can become distorted in a national dialogue fixated on blaming immigrants for society’s ills.
Academic Matthew Goodwin described the suspect in the murders of three young girls in Southport simply as “the son of Rwandan immigrants”.
From what little information we have, there are many ways to describe Rudakbana: British. Born in Cardiff. Christian. Child actor. Diagnosed with autism spectrum disorderNo doubt we will learn more about him as the trial progresses.
But for Goodwin, only one aspect of Rudacbana’s existence matters: he was the “son of immigrants.” For some, “immigration” has become the sole explanation for society’s tragedies and ills.
To understand how we got to this point, we need to understand a complex web of developments. First, and paradoxically, there is the growth of a more liberal society. Unlike half a century ago, Britons are more comfortable with racial difference and very few people believe that to be British you have to be white.
This may seem like an odd time to talk about a more liberal Britain, but the current surge in racism is not based on the prejudices of the 1970s and 1980s to which many draw parallels: Britain was then more instinctively racist than it is today, despite recent events.
But liberalisation also needs to be seen in context. Not so long ago, Britain was proud of being more tolerant of immigration than its European neighbours and of avoiding the rise of far-right parties seen in countries like France, Italy and Germany, even if reforms were partly responsible for that.
But even if Britain has managed to prevent the rise of truly far-right parties, as it has across Europe, a reactionary identity politics has developed that has generated hostility towards Muslims and minorities. The current unrest is the product of this kind of hostility expressed not through organisations like France’s Rally National or Germany’s AfD, but in more immature forms of aggression.
Parts of the working class are tolerant of identity theory because much of the left, and indeed much of society, has embraced identity politics while condemning class politics. For many people today, their framework for understanding their relationship to the world is cultural or ethnic (“Muslim,” “white,” “British”) rather than political (“liberal,” “conservative”).
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As Social Democrats move away from their traditional working-class base, leaving many feeling abandoned and voiceless, some in that base are turning to the language of identity to find social anchoring. Being “white working class” often feels as much about being white as it does about class location.
Whether in white or minority communities, identitarianism has entrenched sectarian movements and encouraged people to see those who step outside their identity boundaries as a threat. It has also allowed the far right to rebrand racism as a white identity. Mainstream conservatives have become comfortable talking about white Europeans “losing their homelands” or “committing suicide,” Britons “giving up territory,” and lamenting cities like London. The whiteness fades away.
“We’re not allowed to talk about immigration,” critics argue. For the past decade, we’ve barely talked about immigration. What they really mean is that we don’t talk enough about immigration in terms of identity. There is much to discuss about immigration, not just about numbers, but about integration, cohesion, and belonging. Framing that debate in identity terms will have disastrous consequences and stifle the possibility of rational debate on these issues.
At the same time, the riots should not be treated solely as a law and order issue, nor should they be used, as is currently happening, to further restrict rights, broaden the scope of terrorism laws, expand censorship, and normalize the use of facial recognition technology.
Questions of freedom are as important as questions of immigration, identity and the abandonment of working-class communities. How we address the intertwining of these three issues will have long-term implications for British politics and society.
Kenan Malik is a columnist for the Observer.
This column differs from the version that appeared in the Observer on Sunday, August 11. The opening paragraph has been changed to reflect the fact that Douglas Murray’s interview took place last year, not after the Southport riots.
