Britain's riots reveal a nation adrift for decades

Editor's note: Alexander Norton, a special commentator on current affairs for CGTN, is deputy features editor for the daily British newspaper the Morning Star. The article reflects the author's opinions and not necessarily the views of CGTN.

As anti-migrant riots raged on August 4, Keir Starmer, a law-and-order prime minister if ever there was one was unequivocal: "Whatever the apparent cause or motivation we make no distinction. Crime is crime."

His prescriptions were simple: facial recognition technology and preventive action to stop the "far-right thugs" from leaving their homes, and dark noises about censoring social media.

This was quickly followed by swift trials and harsh sentencing for the first wave of arrested rioters, to act as a deterrent.

This seemed to work. On August 7, what had been feared to be hundreds of potential flashpoints, according to a widely circulated far-right hit list threatening refugee centers and immigration lawyers, attracted only a handful of protesters — and thousands of counter-protesters.

This was the first night since August 2 that did not see some form of race riots on the British mainland.

Many commentators, eager to put this whole disturbing episode back in its box, took Starmer's "crime is crime" mantra a step further: not only must the riots be condemned, but they could not be — should not be — explained. To explain them in any way, would be to justify them.

But the British public, when polled by YouGov on August 6, was candid: 67 percent said immigration policy had contributed to the disorder, while overwhelmingly condemning the rioters themselves. A further 55 percent said "previous Conservative governments from 2010-24" bore responsibility for the disorder.

If they had been asked, would those surveyed have traced this malaise back even further, and identified every British government since 1979?

Taking this longer view, the anti-immigrant riots that have swept through the country's forgotten industrial heartlands are not so much a surprise as an inevitability — the violent spasms of a nation that has spent decades lying to itself.

Since Margaret Thatcher gutted heavy industry in the 1980s, Britain has been a ship without a rudder, lurching from one crisis to the next with no overarching plan beyond appeals to British resilience, self-reliance, and above all, tolerance.

This directionless drift has led to a perfect storm of societal ills, chief among them the government's chronic dishonesty about migration.

For years, successive administrations have played a duplicitous game: publicly decrying immigration while privately relying on it to prop up an economy entirely skewed towards unproductive finance capitalism.

Despite denials, obfuscation, and "tough talk" calculated to offend and distract attention into a futile debate over what was and wasn't acceptable language for commentators and politicians to use, there has been no actual variation in the pattern of migration itself.

In 1995 net immigration into Britain was approximately 75,000; in 2000 it had risen to around 160,000; in 2005, approximately 267,000; in 2015, 332,000 and in June 2022 a record-breaking 504,000.

During this period the government changed from Conservative to Labour, back to Conservative. There were no less than eight prime ministers. Not a single administration attempted to even acknowledge, let alone present a positive reason, for this steep increase in immigration. Instead, they portrayed it entirely negatively, by claiming that, if elected or re-elected, they were going to bring migration numbers down.

What was the vision for the new country this increasing steep curve would create? No administration would say — because there wasn't one. There was no point in attempting to build one when there was no overarching plan at all, save for short-term profit.

Within the logic of neoliberalism, the idea of matching unprecedented levels of inward migration with properly funded integration and careful social planning for housing and employment is unthinkable: after all, the neoliberal state is always in the process of relinquishing control — of its industries, of its public services, and of course, of immigration. A free market removes checks, balances and tariffs not only on currency but on the flow of human beings themselves.

What little cash can be taxed and spent on any concept of social harmony will mirror the dazzling variety of options offered by consumer culture: it's far easier to sponsor multiple identities to exist in parallel, taking advantage of pre-existing community networks of religions, languages and community elders among migrant populations, than to pursue the harder and more expensive task of building a national project.

But perhaps the greatest betrayal has been the steadfast refusal to present a new vision — complete with new jobs — for the regions that were once the engine of the nation's wealth and stature, whose industries were liquidated in the 1980s and 1990s to pay for a stake to be gambled away by the casino that is the City of London.

It is no coincidence that the vast de-industrialized regions of Northern England have become the focal points of the recent anti-immigrant riots. In the absence of a national project to believe in, people will cling to the basest forms of identity — even if that means turning on their neighbors.

Police crackdowns, better surveillance, and restrictions on far-right agitators can only keep the peace for so long; they cannot deflect from the growing sense that this is a nation that has been rudderless for decades now, and that tolerance is no substitute for a national identity based on any small sense of destiny: a tomorrow that will be better, according to a plan set today.

Until Britain finds some way to force its elite to have an honest conversation about its place in the world — and more importantly, the place of all its citizens within it — these riots will be but a prelude to greater upheavals.

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