‘Stop the boats’: How the language of division fuelled the race riots

We are in this position after hearing mainstream politicians brand asylum-seekers as an ‘invasion’; suggesting that a ‘hurricane’ of migration was about to hit Britain; that the police were guilty of ‘double standards’ and ‘two-tier policing’. No wonder we now have chaos on our streets, writes Sean O’Grady

Households and businesses could claim compensation as rioting sweeps the UK (Owen Humphreys/PA) (PA Wire)

One of Britain’s less fastidious newspapers has covered the riots under the headline “Far-Right clash with Muslims in rioting”.

Of course, there was some direct confrontation between those trying to attack Muslim communities and mosques during these proto-pogroms, but most of the violence, fairly obviously, came from the far-right mobs looking for a fight with the police.

Indeed, the reason why there were relatively few occasions in which the violent elements of these protests came within close proximity of mosques and Muslim communities was because the police worked so hard to keep them apart.

Many attending the so-called “protests” regarded the police as their enemies. They goaded them, threw rocks and anything else that came to hand; they almost lynched an officer pushed off his motorbike, burned vehicles and destroyed a neighbourhood police office in Sunderland. I’m not sure they would have minded much if any police personnel died in the arson attack.

The Islamophobia that fires these mobs up has been carefully – or in some cases, carelessly – nurtured by politicians on the hard-right, as well as the far-right followers of Stephen Yaxley-Lennon (commonly known as Tommy Robinson). Comms have been facilitated and amplified by “bad actors” taking up baseless rumours invented by Russian-linked news sites, and by the likes of Elon Musk.

One week on, we should never forget how the murders of three little girls at a dance class in Southport were blamed on an entirely fictitious Muslim asylum-seeker straight in from Syria in a dinghy.

The undisputed truth: that the suspect was Christian, of Rwandan heritage and born in the UK, has made no difference to those already enraged. Figures such as Farage blame the authorities for their initial reticence, as if these riots were their fault and would have been justified if the attacker had indeed been a refugee or bogus refugee (which is not a defensible position in any case in a country supposedly under the rule of law).

Language matters. It is striking just how often in these disturbances that slogans such as “Stop the Boats”, a Tory slogan pioneered by Rishi Sunak, and “We Want Our Country Back” – a Reform UK mantra – have been co-opted by baying mobs who have taken over the streets.

Farage declares, with scant evidence, that “three quarters of Muslims pose no threat to Britain” – with the clear implication that a quarter and a “foreign number of young Muslims” don’t subscribe to his own undefined set of values (most of us don’t, as matter of fact).

Yet no-one has done more to boost both Islamophobia and erode confidence in the police than Suella Braverman. In her time, she has done as much as anyone both to legitimise Islamophobia and undermine the police; and these riots and the misery have brought are in part a perverse monument to her time in public life.

It was she, we should recall, who liked to brand migrants an “invasion”; suggested that a “hurricane” of migration was about to hit Britain; that the police were guilty of “double standards” and “two-tier policing”. She was actually in charge of policing as home secretary when she said these things. How ironic. Now, the police are the targets, and are left defending a mosque or a street where people of colour suffer the violence of the baying mobs. Many of the thugs responsible now chant that well-worn phrase: “Stop the boats”.

One of the few glimmers of hope for the future of the country and its constitutional, democratic right-wing strand of politics has been the way Braverman has become so toxic that she couldn’t scrape enough support to launch her long-expected bid for the Conservative leadership. The mood, at least among the MPs and the party establishment, seems to have shifted away from a pact or merger with Reform UK and towards actually taking Farage on.

From the improbable figure of Priti Patel, herself no moderate on the refugee issue, now come words of unalloyed common sense about “two tier” policing:

“There’s a clear difference between effectively blocking streets or roads being closed to burning down libraries, hotels, food banks and attacking places of worship. What we have seen is thuggery, violence, racism… What we saw during the pandemic, we saw protest. We believe in free speech. We saw protests that were being policed. What we’re seeing right now is thuggery and disorder and criminality. There is a complete distinction between the two.”

These are difficult times. Politicians of all parties should refute the cynical lies and propaganda of the far-right, their allies and their useful idiots.

This crisis of law and order creates an early opportunity for those genuine democrats in the Conservative Party to stand up for the rule of law, and not to make excuses for racist yobs. They must break with the recent past, acknowledge the term “Islamophobia” and condemn it for what it is.

Although she hasn’t taken this step yet, if the rest of the Tory leadership was as outspoken as Patel in defending the police, we could be bit more optimistic about getting past this ugly chapter in our national story.