Goodbye, Tommy Robinson, goodbye. (Free to Read)

"Stupid white men" have handed the English street to their worst enemies. Good work guys

The Daily Mail turns antifa

“White riot. I wanna riot. White riot of me own”.  So sang Joe Strummer of The Clash in his celebrated 1977 single.  He said he was expressing solidarity with black rioters in the Notting Hill Carnival the year before, not pleading for a race war.  I’m not sure the BBC would get the irony today.

Last week, we witnessed what looked like the largest white riot in Britain since the 1950s race riots in London.  I’m not exactly sure when a riot is officially classed as a race riot but I assume trying to burn down asylum seeker hotels qualifies.  Riots in Belfast during the Troubles were also of course white.  But that was white on white, sectarian violence quite different from last week’s racist attacks on Asians and asylum seekers.

August 2024 has been almost unique in the last half century of rioting in UK cities precisely because of the race of the principal protagonists.  In times past, it has generally been members of ethnic minorities who’ve taken to the streets - often with the tacit approval of people on the left, like Joe Strummer.

As recently as 2011, thousands rioted across English cities in that year’s hot August in scenes very similar to last week. There was looting and arson, attacks on police. That was sparked by the police shooting of Mark Duggan during an investigation into gun crime in the Black community.  It was, if you like, an early version of the Black Lives Matter  - though back in 2011 Keir Starmer didn’t take the knee - he ordered the courts to fast track prosecutions of the 3000 who were arrested.

Starmer didn’t call for exemplary sentences of ten years, nor did he class the 2011 rioters as terrorists, as the current DPP, Stephen Parkinson is contemplating. Yet, five people died in the 2011 riots and there was at least one rape. No doubt Elon Musk will claim this as proof of his jeer about “two-tier Keir”.

In one sense the Twitter/X libertarian is right. The white rioters will tend to be treated differently, precisely because they come from the majority race and are not assumed to be victims of prejudice and social deprivation. Many of them are hardened criminals.  There will be little judicial sympathy for rioters’ complaints about “losing their country” to immigrants. Or their whining that they get treated more harshly than black people. Of course they do. There is no moral equivalence here.

The fact that many non-rioters agree that immigration is too high is actually irrelevant. That does not excuse what we witnessed in English cities. The riot was counterproductive for their own cause as we have just seen with the massive counter demonstrations.  This was a show of strength on the streets by anti-

fascists, Muslim groups and trades unionists and was applauded by the Met police chief, Sir Mark Rowley. Any complaint that this was preferential treatment by the police of one side (a demonstrator photographed by the BBC held a banner saying “no justice; no peace”) was drowned out by celebration in the media of this stand against “hate”.  If the “stupid white men” had only reined in the violence last week the police might have been wary of appearing to support Muslim vigilantism. They have now handed the English street to their enemies. Good work guys. Even the Daily Mail is celebrating the anti-fascist demonstations.

What the Tommy Robinson-idolising mobs don’t seem to realise is that what used to be called the “far right” in Europe does not on the whole resort to street violence these days.  Anti-immigrant parties like the National Rally, the Brothers of Italy or the Alternative fur Deutschland have got the message that violence doesn’t pay. You don’t hear Georgia Meloni or Marine Le Pen celebrating football hooliganism. Opponents of mass migration are a lot more electorally successful when they forgo violence and start seeking votes in elections - as indeed the success of Reform demonstrated last month by attracting four million votes and four MPs.

Politicians like Nigel Farage and academics like Matt Goodwin have to be incredibly careful not to appear as friends, however remote, of street fighters like Tommy Robinson. Not amplifying misinformation, a la Farage, would be a good start. Burning  asylum centres is indeed “far-right thuggery” and Keir Starmer is right to call it that even if Mr Goodwin disagrees.  It is not a capitulation to wokism to condemn it.  This thuggery, moreover, alienates the very working class people who may be legitimately concerned about the impact on their communities of the policies of successive governments.

White rioters will always be treated differently - they should know that.  It’s no good complaining that efforts were made to “understand” the origins of the 2011 riots in racism, police oppression, urban decay and similar social factors.  It was the Scarman Report on the Brixton Riots in 1981that set the template for the sociologising of urban unrest.  Lord Scarman ruled that the riots were caused largely by  “political, social and economic disadvantage, and widespread racial discrimination”.  He was undoubtedly correct in this analysis, though he also pointed out that social deprivation is not an excuse for criminal activity.  Only the latter qualification applies to last week’s rioters.

Britain is a tolerant country and that has simply been reflected in successive inquiries into riots in the Black and Asian-led riots. It is one of the UK’s notable achievements that its citizens have, on the whole, become more tolerant of racial minorities over the last thirty years. This has been reflected in  countless social surveys over the years, even by highly partisan anti-racist groups like Hope Not Hate.   In many ways Britain is becoming a settled multi-cultural country.

It is  worth reminding ourselves of this social tolerance amid the current fascists-are-coming alarmism from some on the left. Contrary to the over-wrought claims of people like the former Newsnight political editor, Paul Mason, there is no evidence that Britain is turning fascist. Last night just confirmed that obvious fact.   Just calling Nigel Farage a Nazi does not make him one. The Reform leader was anyway a victim of street violence not a perpetrator of it. Like him or loathe him, Farage is not a national socialist promoting an racial supremacist ideology who seeks to extinguish parliamentary democracy. Britain is NOT going Nazi.

So we all need to ‘keep the heid’ about all this, as people say in Scotland.  Scottish readers will of course wish me to point out that these riots should actually be labelled English, not British riots.  The disturbances that began in Southport following the murder of three children by the son of Rwandan immigrants did not extend north of the Border. There has been much anger from saltire emojis on Twitter, and National columnists like Wee Ginger Dug,  at the BBC failing to make this clear.

There’s some justification for this muted celebration of Scottish exceptionalism. There simply haven’t been attacks on asylum centres or baiting of Muslims in Glasgow.  Indeed, it was really rather unhelpful for the former SNP leader, Humza Yousaf, to say that he was thinking of leaving Scotland because his family didn’t feel safe.  I can’t think of any country in Europe right now where a Muslim politician’s family would be safer than in Scotland.

Some nationalists like Mike Small of the website Bella Caledonia, seem to think that Scotland is culturally immune to racism. He says the riots are rooted in “a particularly English ethnocentrism” but there’s a fairly obvious demographic reason why riots, white and black, have generally taken place in English cities.  Immigration has always been much greater south of the Border. Scotland remains around 95% white, for reasons I’ve never fully understood, so there hasn’t been the critical mass of culturally alienated ethnic minorities for the far right to demonise. Scotland’s bad weather helps calm tempers too, I suppose.

After England’s hot August, there will be now be a reckoning.  Those four hundred or so found guilty of breaking the law will now spend a couple of years in jail to reflect on their folly.  No early release for them I suspect.  There is also likely to be a witch-hunt of every non-left commentator and politician in the country as the left tries to consolidate their gains on the street. The culture wars that everyone talks about will now start in earnest, led ironically by morally righteous commentators on Elon Musk’s own Twitter.

Every anti-woke writer from JK Rowling to Jeremy Clarkson will no doubt be blamed for creating the intellectual “climate” which encouraged the white rioters.  The Labour government has already dropped the law against no-platforming in universities so expect them to become even more left-liberal monocultures.  Twitter’s wings will be clipped. It’s not going to be pretty, but it is inevitable.  The stupid white men who started this white riot will have a lot to answer for.

ENDS