Recent protests in England

England has recently experienced the worst outbreak of street disturbances for over a decade. In contrast to previous occurrences those participating were almost entirely working class white males. The trigger was the shocking killing and stabbing of several young girls at a dance class in Southport. False social media reports suggested that the alleged perpetrator was a recent Muslim immigrant arrival. However, the person charged was later revealed to be a 17 year old youth born in Wales to Rwandan immigrants.

The new Prime Minister and Home Secretary have denounced those involved in the riots as ‘thugs’, and the courts have imposed heavy prison sentences on some of those taking part. Mosques and buildings housing asylum seekers have been targeted. The harsh response of the authorities has prompted some commentators on the political right to complain of two tier policing and a double standard response to the rioting. There appears to be some justification for these claims.

At the time of the Black Lives Matter disturbances in 2020 Keir Starmer and his deputy were photographed taking the knee in support of these protests. The trigger for this was the killing of a black career criminal and intoxicated illegal drug user by a white policeman in the USA. Thus these protests had nothing to do with the British legal or political system, or the behaviour of the British police. Nevertheless they attracted widespread support on the left of British politics, and their overwhelming sympathy lay with the black population who were deemed to be the victims of racist policing.

During the past few years there have been innumerable protests carried out by the Extinction Rebellion and Just Stop Oil campaigns. Although peaceful they have been enormously disruptive causing widespread inconvenience to the public. These protests were clearly intended to intimidate ordinary people going about their daily activities. Again the left wholeheartedly supported this strategy on the grounds that it focussed public and media attention on what they considered to be the urgent issue of ‘climate change’, a major obsession of today’s ‘progressives’. Former Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn praised these protests as ‘inspiring climate activism’ and ‘a wake up call’.

Politicians and activists are of course entitled to express their opinions, but it is no surprise that they voice their approval of protests on subjects they support, whilst at the same time denouncing those engaged in protests for causes for which they have no sympathy. The police however are supposed to be impartial and thus should treat all protesters in an equal manner. In recent years this has not been happening. The police treated the Extinction Rebellion and Black Lives Matter disruption indulgently, but were happy to use indiscriminate violence against the covid lockdown protesters, and now again with the latest protests deemed to have been carried out by the ‘far right’. So this explains why the accusation of two tier policing has gained such traction.

One benefit of the heavy crackdown on these protestors is that it has revealed the degree to which Labour politicians now despise ordinary working class people. This is unsurprising as their activists now almost entirely comprise middle class virtue signallers, whose primary concern is advancing the interests of vocal minority groups at the expense of the majority white population. Keir Starmer was happy to denounce the protesters as ‘thugs’ but appeared to show little interest in what caused the protests in the first place. The rallying cry repeatedly made by the protesters was that they ‘wanted their country back’ and an end to the continuing huge levels of immigration which has destroyed the cohesion of their communities and neighbourhoods. In treating their fears with such contempt Keir Starmer will have lost a significant amount of what remains of working class support for Labour, many of whom will now be persuaded by the more sympathetic response of Nigel Farage and Reform UK.