THE ROOT CAUSES OF THE UK RIOT

Following the fatal stabbing of three young girls at a dance class in the seaside town of South port in the summer of 2024, the worst unrest that the UK has seen in more than a decade broke out in towns and cities across England and Northern Ireland targeting mosques and hotels housing asylum seekers. It was fueled by the false rumors  fed by the far right circulating online that the suspect was an ‘asylum seeker’ who arrived in the UK ‘on a boat in 2023,’ and that he was ‘Muslim.’ In fact, the BBC and other media outlets identified that the suspect was born in Wales to Rwandan parents.

A BBC article ‘Starmer will be judged on how he tackles root causes of riots’ observes: ‘The prime minister and his aids have pointedly avoided answering questions about the underlying causes of the riots. I’m told the reason for this message discipline is a concern that discussing causes might be misinterpreted as suggesting some of the unrest was justified.’

It asks, ‘What happens, though, when the violence stops, the guilty rioters have been sentenced and the COBR meetings are over? Tackling the long term challenges — even deciding what they are — is set to be a crucial test for the new government, with consequences stretching far beyond the communities affected by this week’s disorder.’

I thought it was important to get at the ‘underlying causes’ of the riots as not being able to talk about it was precisely what was fueling the rise of the far right.  Continuing to not talk about it would only evade the real issue, which is bound to worsen overtime  and implode if left ignored or unaddressed.

A NYT article ‘Britain’s Anti-Immigrant Riots Pose Critical Test for Starmer’ observes the following: ‘It was no accident that violence erupted in several economically deprived regions...Concerns over immigration, which declined in Britain after Brexit, is on the rise again and when jobs are scarce and health care and other services overstretched, immigrants make an easy target for the far right. It quotes Claire Ainsley, a former policy director for Starmer: ‘We have had the far right with us in good economic times and in bad economic times. But it is much harder for them to have any kind of influences when you are in better economic times.’

The BBC article chimes in on the possible root causes: ‘Some diagnose poverty and a lack of opportunity as a root cause….Most of the towns & cities have high levels of deprivation and above average levels of asylum seeker housing….Regional inequality has hardly changed over decades, with poor places tending to remain poor and rich places remain rich.’

It was important to distinguish the root causes from the symptoms: economic deprivation was the root cause and anti-immigration sentiment was the symptoms of the root cause.

Every single developed country affected by populism in the West — US, UK, Germany, France — had remote regions that tended to be homogenous and were suffering from economic deprivation. It was homogeneous because it was too remote for even diversity to reach.

Nobody was paying attention to these regions, and people in these regions didn’t feel seen or heard.  So they were turning to the populist leaders to be heard, who at least articulated their concern, but didn’t have any true intention of helping them and were only using them for their own political gain.

Rather than coming up with real solutions to revive these communities, populist leaders were laying the blame on immigrants for the plight of these regions.  Controlling illegal immigration was part of the economics to protect the working class jobs, but galvanizing anti-immigration sentiment was not helpful in addressing the real needs.

What would it mean to address the real needs of these communities?

One solution would be to build a real economic base for these communities. This could take a form of building on the unique resources that the region has, though it could be that these remote regions have limited resources to build on. It could take a form of reviving the industry that was once there, but were off-shored for cheap labor during globalization, though this needs to be evaluated carefully — whether it was merely trying to reclaim the past that was no longer relevant or adapt to the present.

Another would be to fundamentally challenge the capitalist framework that allows big businesses to wipe out small businesses no matter what and let government intervene to tax the big businesses and support small businesses.

Another could take the form of ensuring equal opportunity for all — by providing access to quality education — bringing everyone, regardless of their background, to the starting point of equal opportunity, while leaving the outcome open. Rather than giving everyone a chance to succeed, the gap between the wealthy and the poor has widened, which is directly parallel to access to quality education.

Ultimately, however, it would be about empowering individuals to access their inner strength and inner authority to rise up to their inner demons and break through their internal barriers — self-limiting beliefs, self-doubt, feeling of unworthiness and unimportance — which all humans have by virtue of having once been a powerless, helpless and dependent child — and open up the channel of expressing their full potential, the tools of which need to be taught and be made widely accessible rather than leaving them up to the individuals to figure out for themselves.