Moving On From the Riots - to Where?

 

The riots, which began on July 30th in Southport and spread across the country, now seem a long way back in the past, which happens with all traumatic events that we seek to forget. For those who suffered during those horrible disturbances, the people trapped in the Southport Mosque who feared for their lives, the local residents whose walls were knocked down, all the injured police officers, the families of the three murdered children of the July 29th attack who suffered added anguish, the Asian families in Middlesbrough who were targeted by rioters, etc, this is understandable. For them, healing and forgetting is needed.

But for those of us who monitor the far Right, there is much to learn and a need for assessment of the riots. Only by analysing the origins of the riots and their development can we hope to stop them from happening again. I begin by relating a personal attempt at research.

The day after the Southport disturbances, I tried to find an explanation of the riots on far Right websites. I thought that this would give me an insight into how the mobilisation had happened so quickly and why the Southport Mosque was a target. I knew vaguely that the Southport knife attacker was thought to be a Muslim, but could not understand why the mosque had been targeted. After some browsing, I found an EDL chatroom, where, among a host of semi-literate vapourings celebrating the riots, I found one posting that seemed to provide an answer. According to one EDL supporter, the knife attacks in Hart Street on July 29th had been planned in the mosque. If this was a widespread view, it explains why the rioters gathered where they did and what they did - which was to attack the mosque.

At this point, I have to own up: I did not record the link, or the EDL supporters name (which was a nom de guerre anyway). When I tried to locate the chatroom again, I could find nothing. Hopefully, that is because the security authorities took it down. Obviously, I cannot substantiate what I have said, but I think events show that I hit on the correct explanation. And, of course, many rioters went simply to attack the police, to cause criminal damage and to loot shops.

Still, the principal query in my mind was: who organised the riots? To get the best information, I turned to Searchlight, the anti-fascist magazine with an outstanding reputation for monitoring the extreme Right. Expecting to find a conspiracy described, I was surprised to learn: 

"Fascist groups... who have done their damnedest to incite such angry racism for years, are secretly whooping with delight at what has taken place since the awful Southport murders. But let’s not make the mistake of believing that they actively organised it".

The Fash group leaders have tried to distance themselves from the riots, while privately rejoicing at the disorder and violent racism. Instead, Searchlight pins the blame on a number of individuals, including Tommy Robinson, but blames the direct agitation and mobilisation on one of Robinson's associates: 

"The man who bears more responsibility than most for the dreadful events of the last few days is Tommy Robinson’s mate and right-hand man, ‘Danny Tommo’, a criminal lowlife who is more than ever Robinson’s representative in the UK since Robinson scarpered back to Spain at the weekend to avoid a court appearance and probable jail".

It was "Tommo" (Daniel Thomas) who issued the call for the gathering in Southport. In a live broadcast online from his car, he summoned the mob:

“Every city has to go up.”

“Get prepared. Be ready. We have to.”

“It has to go off in different cities.”

“We have to show them we’ve had enough.”

“I’m ready to go. I know that a lot of you are. I’m speaking to other people at the moment”.

“We’re ready to go. We are, literally, ready to go.”

“Just get ready."

Surprisingly, "Tommo" was nowhere to be seen when things did go off - like Tommy Robinson.

Now, as we know, the police cracked down hard on the rioters, and have arrested hundreds, with the aim of tracking hundreds more. Perhaps the most fitting end to these disgraceful events, which blackened the name of Britain worldwide, was the magnificent turnout by many thousands of anti-racists on August 7th to counter Fash activity. In the event, the vast majority of the racist thugs stayed away.

It might be too soon to speculate, but we need to consider what the far Right will do next. After all the sentences have been served, the released extremists might, in some cases, abandon their extremism. The unrepentant (and the unarrested) ones will be left with a number of options. They could channel their activities into small scale persecution and thuggery, rather like British Movement and the National Front in the 1970s. They could wait, in the hope of another incident like the knife attack in Southport, which will arouse anger that they can exploit and cause another bout of rioting. Or they could, at least some could, aim to infiltrate a suitable right-wing , populist political party that they could influence from within.

I am, of course, referring to Reform UK, whose leader, Nigel Farage (NF) has been accused of helping to aggravate the situation on July 30th. Some commentators, indeed, describe the riots as "The Farage Riots". NF should be concerned that Patriotic Alternative's leader, Mark Collett, has talked of putting "clean skin" infiltrators into Reform UK. Searchlight quotes Collett as saying:

“So, in a very real sense, a dedicated group of ethno-nationalists who have not been previously politically exposed could join Reform UK and do great things – effectively turning them into a vehicle for something better and more robust”.

According to the BBC, NF today, at the Reform UK conference in Brighton, has said that there is no place for the extreme Right in his party and party officials will be seeking to keep them out. As the BBC says:

"He added the party would be "vetting candidates rigorously at all levels," after dropping candidates during the general election following reports they had made offensive or racist comments. "We haven't got time, we haven't got room for a few extremists to wreck the work of a party that now has 80,000 members and rising," he added".

NF might yet eat those words. The only right-wing extremists expelled from Reform UK that I know of were all exposed in the press or by anti-fascist groups. 

All in all, apart from the splendid mass anti-racist turnout and the many arrests following the riots, the shock of the riots will remain with us for a long time. But some people might seek to turn the events to their advantage...

Tory leadership candidate Robert Jenrick has made the astounding claim that mass migration and "woke culture" (what is that?) have put England's national identity at risk. Jenrick has been heavily criticised for this , but his views bear a close resemblance to the "dog-whistle" assertions of far right speakers such as Tommy Robinson, Katie Hopkins and Laurence Fox (and many of the rioters). Sky News comment here:

"Mr Jenrick suggested a suppression of England's identity helped lead to riots this summer following the Southport stabbings".

Mr Jenrick, you see, has detected a window of opportunity created by the riots. As he sees it, he has an issue that he can exploit with the section of the electorate who have a degree of sympathy with the rioters. Like them, he blames something called the "metropolitan establishment" for this English identity suppression and, like many Tory politicians, he fears the rise of Reform UK. And this man may become Tory leader and, perhaps, prime minister one day. 

Time may heal many of this summer's traumas, but I fear that we may have more to come.

 

Problems With Democracy: One Man's View

 

As most of us would agree, Democracy worldwide is under pressure and has been a frequent topic for discussion on this blog. My old friend and musical collaborator, Mick Cooper, has kindly written on this topic for us here. Readers who have any comments are welcome to post them on the Comments section below Mick's contribution.

Here are some observations from someone with a degree in political, social and economic history. I’m not coming at this from left or right, and I’m not wishing to offend anyone; I am just making observations. I’ll start by saying that facts are facts, but opinions are only valid if based on provable facts; otherwise they are merely assertions at best, prejudice or bigotry at worst.

Satirical cartoons have a long and valid history going back to the paintings of Hieronymus Bosch, the woodcuts of Albrecht Durer, the engravings of Hogarth and the scrawlings of Gerald Scarfe. Of course they were originally designed for the illiterate; but so were pub signs and barber poles. Perhaps political cartoons are still mostly for the politically illiterate. In which case I will upset no one in that category because they won’t bother reading this.

Portraying a lettuce as a Liz Truss, or Pinocchio as a Starmer, or a Boris Johnson (whose nose wouldn’t fit on the screen), or a Trump (whose nose would circumnavigate the planet) may raise a smile, but it doesn’t raise the level of political debate. However, political debate is only apposite for those who have the intelligence and the knowledge to be able to pursue it.

So that is the first problem with democracy – the fact that the vast majority of those who have the vote are lacking in the knowledge and objectivity to use it properly, if they bother to use it at all.

The second problem is the basic nature of humanity. This one is an assertion not a fact, but evidence leads me to believe that approximately 30% of humanity is innately good, 20% is innately evil and the middle 50% will go either way depending on what they can gain from it, or what they are led to believe.

When teaching history at A-level, IB and university entrance the first thing I always stressed was that the truth does not really matter, it’s what you can make people believe that governs their actions. I’m sure I don’t need to point out all the examples of this: from the scapegoating of the Jews in Hitler’s Germany and in much of Europe long before that, to the demonisation of migrants and asylum seekers today. Joseph Goebbels’ contention was: tell big lies and tell them often, and enough people will believe them. Who is doing that today? You don’t even have to look across the Atlantic or towards Moscow to the obvious candidates to find a contemporary example. If you can turn enough of the population against a minority you can control them to your own ends. The innate selfishness of humanity makes it an easy exercise.

One of the most stupid things I have heard said in recent times is “I don’t give a sh*t about history”. History doesn’t just tell you about the past, it also predicts the future. This is because the unwisely named species, homo sapiens, has not significantly changed since it evolved about 1 million years ago. As a species we’re still driven by the same motivations of survival, greed and advantage taking. We are not more innately intelligent than we were then, we are merely able to draw on the accumulation of knowledge, theorisations and technology. Constructs, whether they be intellectual, such as religion, or physical, such as tools and weaponry, can make an impact for good but are also often used for evil.

Before I return to our parlous political status in UK I will throw out a few random historical observations to support my conclusions.

Migration has driven the whole of human history. No nation will ever be able to stop it, the best it can do is control it for its own advantage. Homo sapiens is the product of a second migration out of Africa from about 100,000 years ago. We certainly interbred with Neanderthals and then probably outcompeted them into extinction. There were no humans in what is now Great Britain during the last ice age which ended about 10,000 years ago. Everyone living in Britain is descended from a migrant. I’m sure the Beaker People sat around campfires bemoaning the arrival of the Celts; as did the Celts the arrival of the Romans; as did the Romans the arrival of Anglo-Saxons; as did Anglo-Saxons the arrival of the Vikings; as did Vikings the arrival of the Normans. None of them could stop migration, or sometimes conquest, and we are all the genetic product in some proportion of those migrants, and of others more recently – Jews, Huguenots (probably including the Farage family), slaves directly imported from Tudor times, or descendants of Afro-Caribbeans invited over to cover post war labour shortages and Central Asians to work in the cotton mills now derelict in north-west England, etc.

Although Malthus was proved wrong in his estimation of the capacity of Britain to sustain a larger population in the 1830’s it is true that there has to be a limit. We are all feeling the pressures of the fairly rapid increase in population in the past two decades. It’s possible to argue that this pressure is not the result of the larger population per se, merely the inability of the current economy of the UK to cope with it. We have chosen not to invest in extra infrastructure and in the services required to maintain the standard of living we have come to expect. Instead we have seen a massive disparity of wealth between the super rich and the working majority. Up to a point their discontent has been bought off by benefits or by cheap distracting technologies (Playstations, Netflix and cell phones). As the Romans found out with bread and circuses: that only works for so long. Then you need to channel that discontent away from those who should really be held responsible. The Argentinian junta did it by attacking the Falklands. In Britain we bought a little time by selling off the family silver (privatisations, encouraging oil sheik and Russian oligarch investment, foreign owned “British” utilities, Chinese nuclear power stations) then we did it with the great scam of Brexit. Not a scam? Well you tell me how your life is so much better after Brexit than it was before.

But we were a great nation once right? Not really – we were a pre-eminent nation once. A pre-eminence based on good fortune and, primarily, exploitation. Exploitation is not always a bad word. The early exploitation that made this nation powerful includes the mere fact that it is an island and therefore less susceptible to disruptive invasion, rather than gradual migration. When we were invaded by Romans (who exploited tin, lead and grain) and by Normans (who exploited Anglo-Saxon learning and culture) both created an infrastructure that the native population was able to exploit to its own advantage as well. During the early modern era we were able to exploit the seas around us. Fishing of course, but mostly the ability to trade: which led to the slave trade (the exploitation of other human beings) and later the opium trade (the exploitation of Chinese goods without having to pay gold and silver for them). The creation of empire enabled the exploitation of the natural resources and products of overseas territories, to the massive disruption and a long-term legacy of conflict in those areas. Not that we were morally any worse at this than other European nations.

Then we learned to exploit Britain’s own natural resources more effectively – water power, coal and iron for example. Most of those apparently great British inventions (steam engines etc) were actually adaptations and improvements of earlier developments by ancient Greek inventors, Roman engineers and Arab mathematicians. We were the first major industrial nation, thanks to the exploitation of those resources and the exploitation of slave plantations in the Caribbean, and small children working in coal mines and cotton mills. Free trade and the great “invisible hand of the economy”; but Adam Smith did not write down the first rule of capitalism: money is more important than the lives of people. John Locke did not write down the first rule of liberalism: that the ultimate freedom is the freedom to dominate and exploit those weaker than yourself.

Now Britain has run out of things to usefully exploit. We are falling back into the status of a third rate nation. Successive governments, since probably the last successful British government of Palmerston in 1865, have not been able to stop the inexorable movement of economic power around the globe – Germany, USA and now China. Not least because power and pre-eminence invites challenge. All empires ultimately fall through Imperial overstretch or complacency, revolution and dissatisfaction from within.

Starting with the unnecessary war of 1914-18 (unnecessary in the sense that it was a dynastic war of imperialism against nationalism which could possibly have been limited by common sense diplomacy) and ending with the necessary war of 1939-45 (necessary in the sense that it was a war against true evil, but possibly unnecessary had there been a greater determination to stop Hitler in the Rhineland rather than in Poland). So we should be stopping Putin in Ukraine instead of waiting until he needs stopping in Poland too. If you think Churchill’s wartime government was more successful than Palmerston I would like to suggest that firstly Britain did not stand alone against Germany after the fall of France because we had a massive, though sometimes reluctant, empire behind us; secondly it was really Russian blood and American money that won the war, with the  assistance of the fact that all leaders made mistakes but Hitler’s were the most self-destructive.

To repeat my point: Britain is a nation in relative decline and successive governments have done little to stop that decline from becoming an absolute decline. In the last 150 years the Tories have held power alone, or been in a Tory led coalition, for 94 years; the Liberals have held power or dominated the WW1 coalition for 28 years ; Labour has been in power for 31 years. By all means apportion blame appropriately, but it was the 1906 Liberal budget that created the first UK OAP and National Insurance schemes; it was the 1945 Labour government that created the Welfare State - both of which the Tories opposed. It was the Thatcher government that de-nationalised and sold off council houses without replacing them. It was the Cameron government that started hammering a few more nails in the coffin lid with the Brexit referendum.

You can follow false gods if you like, but whether they are Tommy Robinson, Nigel Farage or George Galloway, they’re not going to save us. Nothing will, short of a massive world reset – and who wants world war three, another pandemic or a water world caused by climate change?

Meanwhile I try to live by 3 E’s: Equality of opportunity, Equity of reward and Empathy (a word which should not be confused with the word “sympathy”. Empathy is about being able to understand different points of view even if you don’t agree with them, and to be able to put yourself in the position of others around you). So rather than dismissing points of view I disagree with by means of ridicule or violence, I would rather try to make a rational and reasonable argument instead.

I try to make decisions on the basis of what is morally correct rather than what is convenient for me. That’s not being sanctimonious, that’s because if the whole world was selfish, society could not exist at all.

A final thought: you cannot drive a car legally without passing the driving test. These days you cannot adopt a rescue dog without scrutiny. Yet you can have children without any qualification in parenting and you can vote without any awareness or understanding of society, economics, politics and history.

I invite those who disagree with me to do so on the basis of provable fact rather than prejudice or emotion.

Mr M.J.Cooper. http://www.educatorsabroad.org/