These were the headlines after an extraordinary night. “Peaceful atmosphere at Sheffield”, “No signs of disorder in Liverpool”, “Anti-immigration protesters outnumbered in Southampton”, “Hate not welcome here, Walthamstow crowds shout”, “Geordies united will never be defeated”. The bad, mad and testosterone-crazed stormtroopers of Britain’s racist right were driven off the streets of towns and cities by the better people who would have none of it. Decency, humanity and the forces of civilisation prevailed by sheer force of numbers.
A month in, Labour faced its first crisis blowing in from a clear blue sky. Who’s in control? That’s the primary test of any government. “I will keep you safe,” Keir Starmer promised early in the day, and indeed the “full force of the law” and a “standing army” of 6,000 police did just that, aided by the crowds of citizens praised today by police chiefs. Met police commissioner Mark Rowley cited “the show of unity from communities” that “together defeated the challenges we have seen’’. Let that message go far and wide.
Slapping instant sentences on the violent, their faces and names plastered on screens while warning that hundreds more would follow them into jail, helped to do what the state must do, beyond all other duties: safeguard its people. How very close we came to the unspeakable horror of hotels full of terrified migrants incinerated by mobs of haters. If things are calmer today, let’s not forget what has passed.
Riot hovers ever-present just beneath the veneer of civilisation, a layer of male violence ready to erupt in exuberant hate. This time, and not for the first time, it was encouraged by shameless leaders nowhere near the streets themselves.
Building through the Brexit years, increasing in toxicity, the right and their press allies have singled out group after group as “the enemies of the people”. From those who have agitated on social media to a home secretary now gone who talked of a migrant “invasion”, they have given the hooligans cause to target “others”. It’s par for that course. Go as far back as you like and it’s usually the “elite” and their press barons who ignite the fight. The vicious Gordon riots against the Catholics were led by Lord Gordon. Now it’s the likes of Suella Braverman and Robert Jenrick’s call just yesterday to criminalise the words “Allahu Akbar” and Rishi Sunak’s poisonous “stop the boats” campaign that have stoked the flames. They seek the respectability of mainstream politics, but they disgrace it. They, like Tommy Robinson and Laurence Fox, stand accused as inciters and exploiters of that strand of ever-ready violence.
We know what happened last night. We know who took a stand. Yesterday’s mendacious Express headline “UK riots spark far-left protests” symbolises the attempt of the right to deny the uprising of ordinary decency against the right and the likes of the despicable Express. But we saw with our own eyes the sheer numbers, thousands upon thousands, who went out to defend mosques with homemade cardboard signs of wit and sincerity: hail to the “nans against Nazis” in Liverpool. We know. Note how much of the press refers mainly to the decent defenders of law offices, mosques and churches giving food to penniless asylum seekers as “counter-protesters”, not anti-racists. We are not fooled. Anti-racism was the catalyst for the pushback. Anti-racists were at the forefront.
What we learned last night and what we told the world was that the rightwing media, the GB News presenters and the Telegraph hysterics, for all their foghorn power, do not represent a country that just elected a social democratic government with a huge majority. The great uniting election message was a determination to oust a Tory government that shamelessly tried to use immigration as an “anti-woke” distraction from the economic and social destruction caused by their austerity policies.
As parts of the country were effectively shut down last night, with shuttered shops and boarded-up offices, the police and the new government moved to reintroduce decency to our streets.
Starmer faced a primal hazard for any government, but he and the home secretary, Yvette Cooper, emerged as competent and equal to the challenge. That bodes well.
Still, riots do have effects. Watch now as everyone tries to interpret what has happened to their own political advantage. Nigel Farage claims “the public have woken up” as a YouGov poll shoots immigration to the top of the list of public concerns, which it never was in the election. The editor of the Sunday Telegraph, Allister Heath, in full froth, under the headline, “These sickening riots have exposed our social model as a fraudulent sham”, says: “Our zero-sum game welfare state is crippled by massive dependency and a misplaced sense of entitlement. We need a rethink on immigration …”
Immigration was always going to be as much of a problem for Labour as for the Tories. At least it can begin to address it without making impossible Canute-like pledges such as Sunak’s “stop the boats”.
When the fighting stops, the battle for the narrative begins, and if we have reached that stage, hold the thought today that it was not just forces of law and order that won the day, but also the multitudes of people, ordinary decent people, who came out on the streets to defend the streets, defend their values, protect vulnerable people and to prevent more outrages. In the end, they were the story.
Polly Toynbee is a Guardian columnist
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