Demonstrators toss a trash bin during an anti-immigration protest, in Rotherham, Britain. (Reuters)
Sir Keir Starmer, the newly-elected Prime Minister of the UK, has had a strange welcome. One month after the election which he won handsomely, there are riots across England (not in Wales or Scotland or Northern Ireland) by far-right groups, following a knife attack on July 29 in Southport that left three children dead. The police have been attacked. Hotels which were housing immigrants have been torched. Over 150 people have been arrested by the police. Starmer has said that courts will sit day and night to deal with the guilty. It has been a short honeymoon.
The dissatisfaction about immigrants is not new. The previous government kept promising to stop illegal traffic of boats carrying asylum seekers across the English Channel so they could claim refugee status and stay in the UK. Most of these immigrants are not refugees but economic migrants who come for a better life. But the English, especially the White population (in what is now a genuinely multi-racial nation) are unhappy. There has been sluggish growth in the economy since 2008, with inflation, a shortage of affordable housing (the English like owning rather than renting property) and immigrants crowding into schools and hospitals. Or so it seems to the less well-off.
There have been such riots before. I recall when the oil price rise had spiked inflation in the 1970s, there were race riots in London and Liverpool because Afro-Caribbeans had come to work in the health service and their numbers dominated areas like Brixton in London. But the UK lived through those riots. The police were criticised for their racism and have since cleaned up their act.
But the last 15 years have been occupied with debates about Brexit. Leaving Europe was all about preventing Europeans from the poorer eastern parts from arriving in the UK, seeking a better life as was their right. Hence a referendum, followed by the decision to exit.
A demonstrator runs away from a police officer during an anti-immigration protest, in Rotherham, Britain. (Reuters)
Add to this routine Islamophobia, which has been there since 9/11, although British Muslims had no part in the attack. After the tragic knife attack in a children’s dance programme, rumours were spread that the culprit was Muslim in the social media. While parents grieved, rioters attacked mosques and torched police vans. It was a sudden conflagration.
It will calm down, no doubt, and the guilty will be punished. Attacking the police is the last straw. No English person would defend that and there would be no protest if the guilty get their due. However, the underlying economic situation needs to improve and improve fast. Fifteen years of Conservative government have impoverished ordinary people, although tax cuts helped the better off. It will be some time before things can get better. Starmer is on notice. He has to deliver change and deliver it fast.
The writer is an economist and member of the UK’s House of Lords
