“I could be targeted at any point”: people of colour reflect on the UK race riots

The lingering smell of fire. Streets strewn with debris. Attempts to use gravestones as missiles. The violence unfolding across the country is far removed from the three young girls – Bebe King, Elsie Stancombe and Alice Aguiar – who were killed at a Taylor Swift-themed dance class in Southport last week. Opportunistic far-right leaders simply used the tragedy as an excuse to fan the flames of fascism in the UK.

“For me, there was an underlying tension waiting to come out, and the far-right have decided this is the perfect opportunity,” says Hira Aftab, 33, who lives in Nottingham. ​“It was never about those three little girls. It was never about making Britain safer for everyone, because looting shops and phone providers doesn’t make Britain any safer.”

The current wave of riots was triggered by misinformation about the accused attacker Axel Rudakubana – a Black 17-year-old, who was born and raised in Cardiff – which rapidly spread across social media, with far-right figureheads claiming the assailant was a Muslim asylum seeker who arrived on a small boat. Far-right supporters turned up to a vigil for the victims the next day, quickly turning what was supposed to be a peaceful tribute into a night of violence and chaos.

But as Hira points out, racial tensions have been simmering for much longer – on 18^th July, for instance, violence broke out in Leeds after four Romani children were taken into care by social services and police, and Tommy Robinson claimed the local Green party councillor Mothin Ali was involved in the disorder. Since then, galvanised by the misinformation around Southport attack, the subsequent riot and further encouragement from figureheads such as Robinson and Nigel Farage, the far-right has gathered at pace, targeting immigration advice centres, charities and residential homes. In Liverpool, on Saturday 3^rd August, Spellow Library – a place of community, education and hope – was set on fire. The same day, a Citizens Advice Bureau in Sunderland was set alight.

The racism people of colour are currently experiencing in the UK is explicit, intentional and often violent. Lila Tamea, 26, attended the counter-demonstration in Liverpool on 3^rd August and witnessed the brutality firsthand. ​“They were violent, kicking in the doors of shops they believed people of colour owned and throwing bottles,” she says. According to hate crime monitoring group Tell Mama, the recent escalation in far-right activity has been linked to a fivefold increase in threats to Muslims, and threefold increase in hate-crime incidents. On social media, videos of people of colour being viciously attacked in the street continue to circulate.

All of this comes with a heavy emotional toll for the communities that are being targeted. ​“I’ve been concerned about [the rise of the far-right] for a long time, but not to this degree, not to a level of worry, fear and concern that [it means] I’m not going into work today,” says Lila. Some companies closed their offices early on Wednesday ahead of planned riots across the country, and allowed employees who feel vulnerable to work from home this week.

Paisley, a 21-year-old mixed-race student from Birmingham, says she felt quite ​“sheltered” from conflict as a child. ​“But now I’m an adult, there’s no safety net,” she says. ​“I could be targeted at any point. A lot of the violence surrounding these riots is unprovoked – and has been targeted at people who ​‘appear’ Muslim.” Ashok, a 26-year-old engineer living in Birmingham, shares her concerns: ​“I’m Indian, but I know that doesn’t make a difference. It just takes one thing – one wrong turn, one person, one brick – and that’s it.”

Hasaan Amin, a 25-year-old who works in Bristol city centre, is equally worried about his safety. ​“I don’t want to run into these people, because the prospect terrifies me,” he says. ​“Even going out to Tesco, or to my local takeaway – I’m on guard for everything. It’s genuinely terrifying to be a visibly brown person in Bristol right now. There’s so much visible anger.” One of Hasaan’s friends, who was near Sunderland at the time of Friday’s riot, had to have a police escort to safely leave the area. ​“It scares me that this sort of thing is happening now, and this is the environment we’re in.”

But while the scale of the riots is shocking, for many people of colour, they’re not entirely surprising. ​“This hasn’t just arisen because of the attack in Southport – far-right extremism has been on the rise globally,” says Huda Ahmad, a 24 year-old Muslim student from Manchester. Her point is exemplified by the recent victories of far-right leaders in Italy and the Netherlands, along with the resurgence of Donald Trump. In Britain, the threat has consistently lurked beneath the surface. ​“In 2019, counter-terror police warned that extreme-right wing ideologies were the fastest-growing terrorist threat in the UK,” says Huda. ​“That’s how serious it is”.

Hasaan has also been worried about the advance of the far-right for some time now. ​“I’m not concerned in the sense that there could be a revolution or a serious policy change within the government,” he says, referencing Trump’s ban on individuals from six predominantly Muslim countries entering the US in 2017. ​“But I am concerned about the effects of it on communities and individuals, because it’s very significant. You’ve got communities who are scared, who are questioning whether they should leave the house.”

In response to the threat posed by the far-right, the government has announced emergency measures resembling those put in place during the 2011 riots. Courts may open 24 hours a day to help get rioters off the street quickly – despite criminal defence lawyers’ lack of capacity – and, as places of worship have become targets, extra security has been put in place for mosques.

Both the current and previous governments’ pandering to the far-right in the run-up to the election has had consequences. Keen to court Conservative voters while campaigning, Keir Starmer singled out Bangladesh as a country where more migrants could be deported, while ​“stop the boats” became the Conservative’s most well-known slogan. There’s a clear correlation between this rhetoric and some of the more horrific scenes that have unfolded over the past week – specifically, arson attacks on hotels housing asylum seekers. The name of a targeted hotel in Tamworth was even revealed by local Labour MP Sophie Edwards who, a mere days before the attack, spoke in Parliament about locals ​“wanting their hotel back”.

Along with rampant online disinformation, the violence we’re seeing now has been fuelled by the normalisation of anti-migrant debates and Islamophobia in the political sphere. ​“It’s the rhetoric,” says Hira. ​“Politicians often say immigrants aren’t compatible with British values, they don’t integrate. But immigrants aren’t responsible for the economic crisis. They’re not responsible for lack of jobs and they’re not responsible for communities losing access to basic services.”

Despite this, politicians have consistently positioned migrants as the root of the UK’s societal failings, providing ammunition to a far-right that’s searching for scapegoats for our crumbling public services, declining living standards and the housing crisis. ​“The entire Leave campaign,” Hira points out, ​“was based on immigration; that we have to take control of our borders.” In the aftermath of the Brexit referendum, race and religious hate crimes increased by 41 per cent. Hasaan, who attended a march after the vote, remembers there being ​“so much hate” among the crowd, where people were ​“rejoicing at the fact that they’ve taken back control of their country. I think [racism has] always been omnipresent. But Brexit was Pandora’s box.”

This anti-immigration rhetoric has gone hand-in-hand with other worrying forms of racism, including Islamophobia. ​“Islamophobia isn’t a new phenomenon,” says Lila. ​“We’ve seen it since the rise of the global war on terror [which gave police greater powers and placed Muslims under heightened suspicion]. That’s normalised the anti-Muslim rhetoric, the idea that Muslims should be feared and are a threat”.

What’s more, many news outlets and politicians have notably avoided describing the motivations for the riots as racist. ​“I think [politicians and the media] have a huge role to play in shaping public perception,” says Hira. ​“Even now with these riots, [some news outlets are] not calling them race riots, they’re calling them protesters.”

Language, Hira points out, ​“is so important when constructing or deconstructing the level of threat, and they have purposely gone out of their way to not say that Muslims are being attacked – and not even say that Muslims are being targeted”. This purposeful obfuscation was particularly blatant than when, in an interview on Good Morning Britain, Labour MP Zarah Sultana was forced to explain why it’s important for the current riots to be highlighted as Islamophobic, to the obvious condescension of the hosts.

“They are allowing it to happen. If they really wanted to, they have the power to say to anyone looting shops, anyone setting things on fire, that you do not stand for us, you will be held accountable. Instead, the media and the government have escalated it all,” says Huda. The BBC, for example, referred to the riots as a ​“pro-British march”, while ministers have claimed they’re an opportunity for people to express their ​“legitimate concerns” about immigration. Meanwhile, the Labour MP for Birmingham Edbgaston, Preet Gill, offered a weak condemnation of ​“alleged” far-right riots.

Understandably, people are angry and many are running out of hope. ​“I’m not optimistic about the future,” says Paisley. ​“Far-right hatred never completely goes away – it simply dies for a while until it’s stoked up again.”

But Hira is slightly more positive. ​“Governments are always going to find a way to turn people against each other. That’s how they roll – that’s their divide and conquer thing,” she says. ​“I want people to start talking to each other. We have more in common than we have differences, and if we try to focus on our commonalities, it would be much harder to drive people apart.”

And as Wednesday night showed – when thousands of people flooded streets to fight against racism and consequently deterred many planned riots – unity, not division, is the way forward.