Full force of politics? Government strategies to defeat the far right

Acts of violence against people of colour and far right rioting then spread to Hartlepool, Manchester, Aldershot, Liverpool, Sunderland, London, Belfast, Blackpool, Hull, Nottingham, Bristol, Portsmouth, Tamworth, Rotherham, Middlesbrough, Blackburn, Weymouth, Darlington, Leicester, Stoke, Bolton, Plymouth and Leeds. It was the most widespread racist rioting in this country in a century.

The last time there were race riots across so many UK towns and cities was in 1919 (there have been intense but spatially concentrated race riots in more recent history, most notably in 2001, 1958 and 1947). Then, like now, rioters attempted to justify their violence against actual or perceived immigrants in the name of working-class interests.

The government responded to the 1919 race riots by repatriating Black and Brown citizens to their colonies. That this is not a palatable, or even possible, policy option today is a testament to progress. The UK has moved a great deal away from prejudice.

Yet enough prejudice remains for organised political violence against people of colour to persist. The 2024 race riots have had a profound impact. The targeting of mosques, asylum seeker accommodation, and social infrastructure (including a library and a citizens’ advice centre) has shaken communities across the country. For a few days, many people in this country feared leaving their homes. Although public attitudes to race and racism have undergone a monumental shift in recent decades, it is crucial to not mistake progress-made for problem-solved. What should the government do in response to the 2024 race riots?

The basic process of far right violence involves the mobilisation of people who support or sympathise with far right views to express them in behavioural terms, such as racially motivated hate crimes (Figure 1). This reaction usually requires a catalyst, favourable conditions and the correct compounds coming together, each of which warrant thinking through.

Figure 1: policy strategies to combat racist violence and far right rioting

Source: authors’ analysis

There are four points at which the government and politicians can intervene in this process, and therefore four strategies they should consider in response.

1. Policing and punishing criminal behaviour
2. Cutting off channels to far right mobilisation
3. Creating conditions that constrain far right behaviour
4. Persuading people to reject far right views

To date, the government has focussed on the first strategy. Using the “full force of the law”, it has effectively policed riots and sought to bring swifter-than-usual sentencing to those who have committed crimes. At the time of writing, the response, which has drawn on lessons from the 2011 riots, has been effective. The rioting has stopped.

Policing and punishing crime is an urgent and necessary response to rioting. It is not, however, sufficient if the goal is to defeat the far right, rather than to stop a riot. That is because the 2024 riots are not just acts of thuggery, they are also acts of racism.

Thankfully, the party in charge of the British state is bestowed with more powers than law enforcement. As we move out of the acute phase of the riots, the government should use the “full force of politics” to defeat the far right.

Cutting off channels to far right mobilisation

Far right violence is often sparked by a galvanising event, usually in the form of a high-profile crime attributed to an immigrant. In this case, a mass stabbing in Southport was misattributed to a Muslim immigrant by far right activists online. There are two factors here the government has some agency over: the radicalisation pipeline that turns people into far right activists and the way in which major events are interpreted in the age of social media.

First, there is a role for the government in ‘diverting’ people away from the radicalisation process that turns people to violent right-wing extremism. This is currently done primarily through the Home Office’s Prevent programme, which focuses on stopping people from taking part in all forms of terrorist activity.

The government’s approach to preventing far right extremism has faced criticism. The Royal United Services Institute (RUSI) has warned that violence from the far right tends not to be treated as seriously as that from Islamist extremism. The Shawcross review of the Prevent programme, whose recommendations the previous government accepted in full, was the subject of major controversy when it sought to broaden the focus on Islamist extremism and narrow the focus on the far right. In the aftermath of the 2024 race riots, the government should carefully scrutinise the Prevent strategy and ensure far right extremism is seen as a top priority.

The government should also think hard about how modes of far right mobilisation have evolved with the emergence of new digital media technologies.

The last time there were race riots in the UK, 2001, most people made sense of major events (such as high-profile crimes) through newspapers, TV and radio, each of which have human gatekeepers in the form of editors. Today these have been largely displaced by social media platforms operating on algorithms primed for attention. Misinformation and disinformation can spread like wildfire. Another difference since 2001 is that far right groups like the English Defence League have given way to cult-like individuals such as Tommy Robinson and Andrew Tate, whose methods of indoctrination and mobilisation are primarily reliant on social media technologies.

The common factor to both problems, misinformation and bad actors, is social media. Could the government better use its regulatory and legal powers to stop social media platforms enabling and amplifying harm, without unduly constraining freedom of speech? A version of this question was debated in the five years it took the last government to pass the Online Safety Act 2023. That discussion will need to re-open.

Creating conditions that constrain far right behaviour

Most of the time, people with far right views, such as those who support violence against immigrants and minorities, do not usually express them in behavioural terms. The 2024 race riots remind us that sometimes they do. That is only usually possible under certain conditions. Some, like hot weather, the government has no control over. But there are at least two factors over which the government and politicians do.

First, resource scarcity — such as housing, jobs and healthcare — matters. In Immigration and Conflict in Europe, Rafaela Dancygier shows that xenophobic violence and racist rioting usually only occur under conditions of economic scarcity. It is no co-incidence that all but two of the 23 towns and cities affected by riots are poorer than the English average, while a dozen are in the most deprived decile. Nor is it surprising that race riots have emerged in a country in which the two greatest social challenges are timely access to healthcare and housing.

To be sure, this ought not to be conflated with the notion that the race riots are an expression of working class interests; they are not. Inferences about the characteristics of individuals should never be made from the geographies they come from. Research has found those who support hate crimes against immigrants and minorities are distributed roughly equally across the household income distribution.

Addressing economic scarcity and inequality is a stated aim of virtually every democratic government in history. The current UK government has intentions to do this through economic growth, with a welcome focus on spatial distribution, housebuilding and public service reform. The race riots are one more reason why they must succeed where previous government have failed.

Second, social norms can cage or catalyse the process by which racist attitudes become racist behaviour. In pluralist democracies like the UK, social norms largely deem the expression of prejudice and far right views unacceptable. Norms, however, are never fixed. In his forthcoming book The Normalisation of the Radical Right, Vicente Valentim shows that far right views are becoming more socially acceptable and that mainstream politicians are helping to drive that. Recent ministers bear particular responsibility. Theresa May’s Home Office drove “go home or face arrest” vans around deprived neighbourhoods; former home secretary Suella Braverman spoke of an “invasion” of people crossing the English Channel; and the Sunak government repeatedly used the tagline “stop the boats” while planning to send asylum seekers to Rwanda.

It is increasingly common in British politics for politicians to talk of people seeking asylum as though they are less than human. If they do, others will too; people take their cues from politicians.

In the coming months, some politicians are likely to double down. They will argue legitimate concerns about immigration and Islam lie behind the riots. In doing so, they are legitimising acts of racist violence. Rival politicians should push back. 86 per cent of the public, and 84 per cent of Conservative voters, say those participating in the riots do not speak for people like them. Mainstream parties should be wary of trying to outflank those on the populist right on immigration; voters are unlikely to trust them to implement far right policies when more ‘authentic’ options are available.

As the party of government, Labour politicians have the greatest agency in setting norms that better constrain the far right. In scrapping the Rwanda asylum scheme, the government is making steps in the right direction. There is now an opportunity to take on the arguments of the far right with a story of social connection grounded in mutual respect, common decency and shared values. If the government doesn’t clearly articulate its views on identity and immigration in modern Britain, those debates will be dragged in a direction that further normalises the far right.

Persuading people to reject far right views

To be sure, only a minority of people in this country have far right views. It is, however, a significant minority. Around one in five people in the UK supports or sympathises with violence against refugees and minorities (Figure 2).

Figure 2: one in five people in the UK believe acts of violence against refugees and minorities are sometimes justified

Source: Bischof et al, forthcoming

Variation between countries suggests the share of the population who support hate crimes is shiftable. It is not that people in Denmark, France and Hungary are inherently different to those in the UK; it is that social and political institutions in those countries have led to a higher or lower prevalence of support for xenophobic violence among the public.

Which is to say, to assume the stability of far right views is to discount the worth of a process that seeks to change them. Attitudinal change is complex but at least two things are important: lived experience and the ‘elites’ you listen to.

Your experience of the world shapes your view of it. Put simply, the more someone born in the UK interacts with people born outside of it, the less likely they are to have anti-immigrant attitudes. Known as intergroup contact theory, the idea of social mixing as a means to social cohesion has informed government policies from Rwanda to the USA. Disconnected and fragmented communities are the exact conditions in which far right views grow and thrive.

For nearly two decades, UK governments have commissioned social cohesion reviews but have not acted sufficiently on their recommendations. The new government should scrutinise these reviews and do what others have failed to do: develop a clear-eyed cohesion and resilience strategy for the country.

This strategy will need to be place-based, taking into account how and why some local communities are more resilient to division and extremism than others. In some places, austerity, and the resulting the stripping away of community services and social infrastructure, have undoubtedly played a role in undermining community cohesion; re-investing in these spaces of social mixing will be important. In other places, strengthening civil society groups, like those who mounted effective local messages of unity in recent weeks, will be the most effective approach. The strategy should also take head-on questions about the asylum system and social cohesion, including how asylum accommodation is dispersed around the country (a topic IPPR will be returning to in a forthcoming report).

How your experience of the world interacts with the political messages you encounter is what determines whether someone develop far right views. This crucial role on the supply-side of politics should not be overlooked.

Some, although not all, people with far right views have democratic grievances: they lack trust in democratic institutions and perceive the political system is unfair to people like them. Right wing populists and far right activists supply ideologies that connect people’s grievances to those who are different from them. They are indoctrinating some groups into xenophobic and often misogynistic worldviews with ruthless effect. In a phenomenon sweeping liberal democracies including France, Germany, the USA and the UK, there is an emerging synergy between the narratives of household-name populists on political platforms and far right activists on digital ones.

This will keep happening until there is better competition on the political supply-side. Ultimately, countering the far right is a political project. This is the key challenge for the government. Having won the battle of votes, can it win the battle of ideas? To crush rather than quell the far right, it will have to.