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August 7, 2024 - 7:00am
Over the past six days, Britain has experienced its worst rioting since the summer of 2011, when the Metropolitan Police shot and killed a black man in North London. At the time Keir Starmer, as director of public prosecutions, kept the courts running 24/7 to bring the rioters to justice, and he has now vowed similarly punitive action.
For Starmer, Home Secretary Yvette Cooper and other Labour figures, the violence and its causes are largely down to far-Right racism and anti-immigration bigotry. But some of the areas that have experienced the most intense rioting do not have an immigration problem. In fact, many of the flashpoint areas are extremely homogeneous.
In Sunderland, police faced “serious and sustained levels of violence” during riots over the weekend as buildings and cars were burned. According to the 2021 census, which provides the best data available despite the record mass immigration that has occurred since, 94.6% of 274,200 people in Sunderland identified their ethnic group within the “White” category. Only 3% identified as “Asian, Asian British or Asian Welsh” (compared with 2.7% the previous decade). Only 1.8% of the population is Muslim.
| UK riot flashpoint areas don’t all have high Muslim populations |
| Proportion of overall population identifying as Muslim in selected cities/towns (%) |
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In Tamworth, where a viral video showed rioters targeting a migrant hotel, 0.5% said they were Muslim while 95.8% identified their ethnic group as “white”. In Blackpool around 1,000 protestors were involved in violent clashes, with police horses separating anti-immigration protesters and anti-racist protestors. Only 1.4% of the city’s 141,000 population is Muslim, while only 2.6% of residents identified their ethnic group within the “Asian or Asian British” category.
Rotherham — a town which will always struggle to shake its reputation for the grooming gangs scandal — actually has a relatively small Muslim population of 5.1%, yet a hotel housing migrants was still attacked. By contrast Bolton, which also experienced riots with one of the largest Muslim counter-protests, has a 20.1% “Asian or Asian British” population, up from 14.0% in 2011, with 19.9% describing themselves as Muslim, up from 11.7% the decade before.
These case studies show that there is no exact rule about which places are likely to experience rioting, as both ethnically homogeneous and diverse parts of the country have suffered. But places where people feel left behind and totally abandoned by the South-East — the seat of power and the only solvent region — are naturally more susceptible to violent protest.
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SubscribeMaybe they’re also rioting against a ruling class that clearly hates them and wishes them ill.
Unfortunately the rioters aren’t burning The Dorchester.
Probably because that isn’t where the ruling class or their paid politicians live…
You have to attack the ruling class cockroaches where they live and hide.
It’s worth remembering that other areas with much higher immigrant populations did not have those characteristics a couple of decades ago. I suspect that most people in the areas where riots have occurred worry that their area is heading in the same direction – and that no-one in power cares.
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When cities that were once affluent thanks to thriving internationally renowned industry supported by the establishment (eg Stoke and the pottery industry) turn to ruin after years of neglect of the local working class, it’s hardly surprising that frustration at the willingness of government to spend millions on unsustainable immigration schemes is running high.
I read something this week that stayed with me: Lonfon is the 6th largest economy in the world with a poor country attached to it.
Absolutely spot on. Financialisaton has created a gulf between the regions. 8 of the 10 poorest regions in Northern Europe are in now the UK (along with the no 1 richest area – also in the UK)
Yes. And the poorer areas are often nearly 100% white, while London isn’t majority British white. Ranting about white privilege then is just pouring salt into wounds.
Actually we are an NHS with a poor country attached to it.
Only with a poor quality sticking plaster.
Not so.
Britain is not a poor country by any measure. And there are many, many wealthy regions outside London.
Yes, there are also poor and run down regions. But it is nothing like as bad as you portray. Nor is it beyond us to do something about helping the poorer regions. Of course, if we continue to import huge numbers of unskilled and poor immigrants we’re not going to make much progress. Deliberately choosing to pursue “growth” through a token increase in net GDP while eroding GDP per capita is – in words the left like to use – a race to the bottom.
Here in South Lincolnshire we have some of the best agricultural land in the entire country. Thousands are employed on the land, and thousands more in the food processing and packaging. Your McCain chips come from here. Del Monte fruit. You’ve probably never heard of Bakkavor. They’re huge. Five factories locally.
And Ed Milliband has decided to carpet miles and miles of prime food producing land with solar panels. 5000 hectares at Essendine near Stamford is confirmed. A 9 mile long chain of 5 separate solar fields is planned from Crowland (on the border with Cambs) to past Spalding. All connected by 400 MW, 50 m tall powerline that will go from Whitby in Yorkshire through the length of Lincolnshire, parts of Cambs to the Norfolk coast.
Lots of people unemployed. Dozens of HGVs every day down single track farm lanes. Thanks Labour.
It is absolute madness to do this …not only reducing our farming capacity but also requiring us to import energy when sun no shine & wind no blow …
The question of morale amongst the post-industrial working class is overlooked and aligns with the questions of social, political and cultural representation and inclusion:
i) Reform only winning a small number of seats despite a large share of the vote (now apparently popular in young male voters too)
ii) The national football team losing an international final once again
iii) Where the working class feel represented in national football, they witness the cosy sporting support of middle-class British Olympians over an endless 2+ week period as a sort of ‘rubbing their nose in it’ by state media.
Thank you for that.
These
riotersprotestors are the part of the ice berg that is visible above water. There is a much bigger mass underneath, comprised of tens of millions of people. I think this is what the increasingly fascist British state is afraid of.Ultimately, all regimes only really care about clinging onto power. The post-WW2 regimes of Europe have failed utterly and need to go.
Hallelujah, hooray, praise Jah. At last, finally someone is mentioning the taboo ‘e word’ – economics. Class is grounded in economics as much as culture. Instead of endless wittering about a ‘woman is a woman’ etc perhaps attention is shifting back to the real underlying causes of discontent such as asset inequality and rent seeking. But some well fed culture warriors on the right and the left like to go on about ethnic issues because it doesn’t really cost anything, while economic realities are uncomfortable to admit.
This last election produced the least representative government in our history. A huge section of the population has been completely disenfranchised by the Blairite hijack of the Labour Party.
Meanwhile the same population has been driven out of the housing market altogether by the bad policies of the same Blairite cabal, the mass importation of cheap labour and the removal of housing costs as a criterion from interest rate policy.
If Starmer was a man of genuine principle he would immediately reform both the housing market and the electoral system – even if it were to lead to his departure from office.
But let’s not hold our breath, eh?
So you go left on economics – right?
Do you have a substantive question ?
So you go left on economics – right?
No – in the endless war between the grafters and the grifters I’m 100% with the grafters. The problem in Britain is not that people get rich, but that the wrong people get rich. We have far too many middle class freeloaders.
Oh Labour has plans for the housing market, don’t you worry! Their intention is to take all of the illegal immigrants out of disused military camps and hotels, and disperse them in your town or village, all over the country! Multiple occupancy housing, social housing, and private rental accommodation for a start. If you’re on a social housing list, they’re about to put 90,000 new ILLEGAL arrivals ahead of you.
You couldn’t make it up…
And they call themselves the ‘Labour Party’? Isn’t that an offence under the Trades Descriptions Act?
I don’t believe for one minute that this is all the work of the ‘far right’.
I think this feeds into a deeper anger.
There’s a weirdness to the world. A sort of disconnect between what you see, what you’re being told and what you know to be true.
Diversity is our strength. But who is the ‘our’ in that statement? It doesn’t look like a strength. It looks like a mess.
Advertising that insists on depicting family structures that are statistically quite rare. I suspect leaving many potential customers oddly disconnected from the products being sold.
Further advertising telling us that mean tweets to footballers leave scars. I suspect many fans would gladly take the £80K a week salary and live with the online abuse. I know I would. You CAN turn off twitter you know?!
The trans row that goes on and on and on. Creating a new oppressed class of people to join the already long line of oppressed peoples. I suspect many of these peoples are doing an awful lot better than those that are rioting.
The insistence of the female football pundits. Yes, I know that sounds ridiculous. And it is. But who asked for it? How many hardcore football fans said “you know what football is missing. Female pundits”. And sorry, some of them are truly dreadful to be fair.
A police force that runs away. Takes the knee. Does nothing for some protests and is heavy handed at others.
This same police force also has some teeny tiny female officers that physically seem incapable of doing the job of policing. Anyone who has seen the recent footage of a female officer struggling to even move and hold her riot shield will know what I mean. The officer in question looked like a child.
Add in immigration at 700k plus.
An inability to control borders.
No money to fix roads but money for ULEZ cameras.
It just goes on and on and on.
It’s totally bonkers.
And we know it’s bonkers.
And now it’s turning violent. And people in Westminster are surprised.
I’m not.
Comment of the day. Bravo, seconded.
Another one is the virtually complete erasure of white men from leading roles on tv and advertising (unless they’re gay)
The portrayal of straight white men as incompetent nincompoops inadvertising and the ASA ruling out ‘gender stereotypes’. Men do the washing and the childcare (badly) while the women unblock drains and prune trees.
Advertising has been a bit like that for decades. Can’t you take a joke, or is your ego a bit fragile? Men still in charge almost everywhere else in the real world.
But can you honestly say that Muslims are to blame for this? Islam is by and large against a lot of the liberal policies you decry, and ethnic populations like Pakistanis tend to be more conservative in their personal opinions and lives.
Just because the government has ridiculous policies does not mean the rioters are thoughtful people who are just fed up of nonsense. They are the nonsense. Many of them are racists who have lumped themselves in with an otherwise reasonable minded group of people opposed to far left policies, and giving them all a bad name in the process.
And I mentioned Islam where exactly?!
I was listening to the radio the other day where some “entitled” people were discussing the protests. One referred to the problem that the premier league hasn’t started where these proles would go to vent their anger. I wondered what decade the speaker was in and whether they had recently been to a football match? But then again it only mattered to demonstrate how out of touch the “entitled” are these days.
As an aside you shouldn’t refer to them as elite, they’re not they’re the “entitled”.
Or the Cruelites.
‘Starmer said yesterday: “Whatever the apparent motivation, this is not protest; it’s pure violence and we will not tolerate attacks on mosques or on Muslim communities.”’
Two-tier Keir couldn’t be clearer about his priorities, could he?
But what are the rioters protesting about? Perhaps it’s about vegan sausage rolls (they looted a branch of Greggs), or the selection of books at their local library (one was torched in Liverpool).
Here’s a thought.
Maybe the anger at the horrific nature of the crime, combined with the obviously deliberate witholding of information about the motivation for the crime by the police, combined with the blatant differences in how these angry protests were policed and reported on by the media, combined with the constant references to people with concerns about immigration as far right, combined with the forceful narrative control by the press and the government was all actually well perceived and understood by people in working class towns around the country from the outset.
Maybe there is a broader context but that broader context isnt the reason for the riots, its the broader context. Its a bit like the broader context for the murders of 3 children was that the murderer was born in Cardiff and had immigrant parents. Thats not the reason and thats what people are concerned about.
Not one single newspaper i have seen is answering the question why the murders happened, all of them are posing answers to why the protests have happened. Whether true or not, this is perceived as narrative control and is making things worse.
Excellent comment. Spot on
It is narrative control. Pretty much everything coming out of legacy media these days is. And they still think people are listening to them. Reminds me of the ancien regime in France.
Let us eat cake! (Well, brioche instead of white…)
‘cuz the murder was not racially motivated. Black men seem to have a fondness for killing. About half of the murders in the US are caused by blacks.
That’s a racist trope. Over 90% of US murders are by men, yet it’s race you focus on.The figures are similar in most countmries.
Mainly murdering other black men (who probably make up the majority of their immediate community). That the teenager who committed the murders of the girls is black, is imho, largely irrelevant. You might as well point out he was born in Wales (plenty of historic English prejudice towards the Welsh). Perhaps he has mental health problems? That is a more likely explanation, although it changes nothing about the crime and its effect on the victims and their families. Shall we wait for the facts to come out in the trial?
When do the police ever reveal the motivations of a crime? Once the offender has been apprehended, it’s the job of the criminal justice system to process them, and any evidence gathered (ie motivation) is part of the investigation, until the case goes to court.
I want thuggery of any sort to stop right now. It solves nothing – but Government needs to stop labelling people and show ordinary people that they understand why they are unhappy.
It’s not just about Muslims, it’s about total immigration numbers, plus the failure to build the infrastructure to cope with 13 million extra in 3 decades.
No-one wants a migrant hotel or camp in their area. It rubs salt into the wounds about housing priorities and waiting lists.
In the US this has been the way for decades. Places with the fewest immigrants are most against immigration. Go figure.
In any case it doesn’t matter. Democracy is about the will of the people. Logic is not required. If the people want less immigration (or Brexit, or exclusive fishing rights) that’s what their representatives should be doing. Full stop.
It’s all about making whites extinct in their own countries. White elites hate whites as their “luxury belief” system and get virtue from the praise of other nihilistic whites. The corporations get an endless supply of cheap third world labor which they’ve always wanted, but then the supply of white workers has dried up and now they want to replace them. The Marxists have always wanted to destroy the white race and Western civilization generally ever since they could not sell Marxism to the white working class. They will never forgive working whites for that betrayal.
Another explanation might be the areas with low Muslim populations have looked at some areas with high Muslim populations and decided it’s not what they want to happen to them. Is that fair? Certainly not to the majority of Muslims but neither is it fair to force large demographic and cultural changes on communities that do not want it.
Don’t assume this problem does not exist in the south east either. I live near a large town on the south coast that has seen a large influx of (mostly Muslim) immigrants over the last couple of decades and people there do think it has gone too far too fast, the surrounding areas definitely don’t want it spreading to them at the same pace or scale either.
The sense l get is the people who have to make the biggest adjustments and benefit the least feel this is being forced on them by people who may well benefit from high immigration but never experience any of the negative consequences.
The mass protests in the UK make me realise that a ‘civil war’ in the USA may really also happen. Not a civil war with massed armies, of course, but a fight between the People and the forces of the Government, the Police, or the National Guard, or those members of them them that choose to fight against the People. With an armed People, such a conflict would have an uncertain outcome.
Duhhhhh!