{"id":636224,"date":"2026-06-13T06:46:12","date_gmt":"2026-06-13T06:46:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/636224\/"},"modified":"2026-06-13T06:46:12","modified_gmt":"2026-06-13T06:46:12","slug":"riots-and-racism-why-is-the-uk-burning-immigration-and-asylum","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/636224\/","title":{"rendered":"Riots and racism: why is the UK burning? | Immigration and asylum"},"content":{"rendered":"

As the people of Glengormley, on the northern edge of Belfast, tidied up and prepared for more violence in the midst of what has been described as a modern-day pogrom, a court 500 miles away in Southampton<\/a>, on the south coast of England, started to deal with its own outbreak of thuggery.<\/p>\n

The trigger for this week\u2019s riots in the Northern Irish capital had been the image of a black assailant who appeared to be stabbing and slashing his supine white victim in the face and neck while shouting in Arabic. The suspect was later revealed to be a refugee from Sudan.<\/p>\n

In Southampton, the courts were dealing with the aftermath of separate violent demonstrations. The prosecutor Siobhan Linsley told a hearing that 1,000 people had massed outside the city\u2019s central police station on 2 June.<\/p>\n

They had gathered after the release of police bodycam footage showing the last moments of Henry Nowak, a white 18-year-old student erroneously arrested and handcuffed over false racism claims while dying from stab wounds inflicted on him by Vickrum Digwa, a British Sikh. Digwa, 23, who had made the false racism allegations, had just been jailed for murder.<\/p>\n

A quarter of those who gathered outside the police station in Southampton over the Nowak case appeared to be drinking alcohol, Linsley told the court, and masks were worn. One speaker had shouted out: \u201cDo you want the house, the Digwa house?\u201d the court heard. Hundreds of protesters then moved towards an incorrect address for the Digwa family in the St Denys area.<\/p>\n

Protesters threw bricks, chairs and bins at police. People streamed through gardens and driveways. A trapped group of officers were \u201csurrounded by a baying mob throwing projectiles\u201d and a police car was attacked. The disorder lasted for about two and a half hours, with police \u201ccoming under almost constant assaults\u201d.<\/p>\n

A person attempts to calm the crowd as police officers are attacked by demonstrators in Southampton. Photograph: Justin Tallis\/AFP\/Getty Images<\/p>\n

The demonstrators were said to have come from near and far and included members of far-right groups calling themselves the Southampton Patriots, White Vanguard and the Portsmouth branch of the National Rebirth Party.<\/p>\n

\"TaylorTaylor Grundy. Photograph: Hampshire Constabulary\/PA<\/p>\n

The fancy names struck a somewhat pitiful note as the court dealt with a number of those offering guilty pleas. Taylor Grundy, 22, who had pushed a commercial bin on fire at officers and thrown a plank of wood, cried throughout the hearing. He was sentenced to two and a half years. A second defendant, Dillon Crawford, 29, a father of two with another child on the way, was given a three-year jail sentence for throwing a bin and a metal chair at officers. He told the court he had been \u201cangry in the moment\u201d and lost himself.<\/p>\n

\"DillonDillon Crawford. Photograph: Hampshire Constabulary\/PA<\/p>\n

Crawford, 29, had 19 convictions for 33 offences including battery, robbery, burglary and shoplifting. On one occasion, he had broken a partner\u2019s front teeth and punched her unconscious, after which he had bleached her hair, the court heard.<\/p>\n

Do these cases in Belfast and Southampton tell us anything about the United Kingdom today?<\/p>\n

For Nigel Farage, the leader of Reform UK, the anti-immigration party riding high in the polls, the decisions made by the police officers at the time of Nowak\u2019s murder offered evidence that \u201cthe rights and privileges of white people matter less than ethnic minorities\u201d.<\/p>\n

As for the violence in Belfast, in which homes were burned and women and children were forced to flee from masked men shouting \u201cforeigners out\u201d, Farage said it showed that while there were bad actors, the \u201cvast majority are fearful \u2026 [they] want action, they actually want something done to make their streets safer\u201d. He said: \u201cI think the worry is, over the course of the summer \u2026 unless you give people hope, this stuff will get worse.\u201d<\/p>\n

Police evacuate families from their homes in south Belfast amid the riots. Photograph: Alan Lewis\/Photopress Belfast<\/p>\n

For Farage\u2019s critics, this sounded like a threat rather than a warning; another way for he and his party to stoke division for political ends. Establishment voices echoed the claim that these disturbances were either an ugly symptom of the failures of the state to secure the country\u2019s borders or, in the case of Nowak, proof that equality policies within the UK\u2019s public institutions had gone too far and warped the priorities of public servants.<\/p>\n

double quotation markYes, we\u2019ve got a problem of racism, but it\u2019s more than that. It\u2019s the problem of racists becoming empoweredProf John Drury<\/p>\n

An editorial in the Times, headlined \u201cBurning resentment in Belfast fuelled by inaction on immigration\u201d, argued that a \u201cbemused and drifting government has done nothing to tackle the root cause\u201d of the violence. That original seed, it claimed, was illegal immigration.<\/p>\n

Yet, when these arguments are unpicked, the picture is more complex, and the facts arguably do not support the populist narratives.<\/p>\n

Migration of any kind to Northern Ireland<\/a> is low. In the 2021 census, almost 97% of people described their ethnicity as white. Just 2,248 asylum seekers, in a total population of 1.93 million people, were in receipt of government support in Northern Ireland as of 31 March 2024.<\/p>\n

Just 200 people are estimated to have been involved in this week\u2019s unrest.<\/p>\n

A burnt out house after the riots in east Belfast. Photograph: Peter Morrison\/AP<\/p>\n

There was also marvelment in some quarters at the claim that the UK has \u201ctwo-tier\u201d\u201d policing that discriminates against white people. For decades, Britain has grappled with how to deal with racism in policing. Official report after official report has demanded that forces across the UK need to do more, much more, to tackle the problem.<\/p>\n

The police officers\u2019 response to Nowak is under investigation, but that single case has been used by Farage and the even more extreme party Restore Britain to flip on its head widespread concerns about the disproportionate criminalisation of minority ethnic people.<\/p>\n

The analysis offered by Farage and others about what the recent riots say about the UK in 2026 is, then, keenly contested.<\/p>\n

Prof Tim Newburn, who was behind a landmark study into the August 2011 England<\/a> riots \u2013 at the time, the largest wave of civil unrest in a generation \u2013 said such outbreaks of mass violence were \u201cquite unusual\u201d in the UK.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt actually takes something quite special to make them go and that is maybe some combination of, on the one hand, the degree of whatever stress or anger that people feel, and on the other, a lack of control by the police,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

double quotation markIt is difficult to predict a riotHistorian Keith Flett<\/p>\n

There were signs in both riots that the police found themselves understaffed. The National Police<\/a> Chiefs\u2019 Council, which represents senior officers, has repeatedly said law enforcement in the UK is chronically underfunded.<\/p>\n

Jon Boutcher, the chief constable of the Police Service of Northern Ireland, which is well acquainted with violent outbreaks between loyalist and nationalist communities, was forced to activate a \u201cmutual aid\u201d mechanism this week, asking other forces in the UK to provide officers. Twelve of his officers were injured on Wednesday night.<\/p>\n

The police and crime commissioner for the Hampshire police force, which serves Southampton, complained recently that it was one of the lowest-funded forces in England and Wales. Eleven police officers and a police dog were injured in Southampton when they were overrun.<\/p>\n

That does not mean such riots do not say something important about the \u201czeitgeist\u201d of the country, said Newburn, a professor of criminology and social policy at the London School of Economics.<\/p>\n

People marching through Southampton. Photograph: Finnbarr Webster\/Getty Images<\/p>\n

The UK has endured a cost of living crisis, with prices rising in the shops and energy costs being some of the highest in Europe. Yet the riots of recent years have predominantly been attached to issues relating to race and migration rather than those more traditionally linked to leftwing causes.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt tells us a lot about the current preoccupations of our politics at the moment,\u201d Newburn said. \u201cNotwithstanding that a lot of people are hurting in all sorts of different ways, the most obvious kind of points of contest at the moment seem to be around nationhood, race, borders and so forth.\u201d<\/p>\n

John Drury, a professor of social psychology at the University of Sussex, was a co-author of an analysis of the 2024 riots that followed the murder of three girls in Southport, Merseyside, by a perpetrator who was falsely claimed to be an asylum seeker in the immediate aftermath.<\/p>\n

\u201cThese are collective racist attacks,\u201d Drury said of the scenes in Belfast and Southampton. \u201cWhite victimhood is a massively powerful mobilising grievance. It\u2019s an empirical question how many of those participants, you know, really believe there is this white victimhood. Some of them are using that as an excuse, but some of them honestly do believe that it\u2019s part of their ideology. It\u2019s called modern racism.\u201d<\/p>\n

Drury said there had been a normalisation of toxic anti-immigrant rhetoric in recent years, accelerated by people online who were able to initially push their ideas anonymously but now felt empowered, not just by voices on the periphery but by the established media and politicians.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf you look at what happened with Brexit, there was a well-known association of meaning associated with the Brexit vote: that it was a xenophobic referendum,\u201d Drury said. \u201cWe had an immediate spike, a spike in hate attacks around race and ethnicity immediately afterwards, because people felt they were not alone \u2013 \u2018Many people in the country think like me\u2019 \u2013 which is what these people are thinking now. So, yes, we\u2019ve got a problem of racism, but it\u2019s more than that. It\u2019s the problem of racists becoming empowered.\u201d<\/p>\n

Tommy Robinson at the Southampton protests. Photograph: Finnbarr Webster\/Getty Images<\/p>\n

The disturbances in Belfast continued for two nights, ending with a peaceful protest on Thursday evening. They did not spread elsewhere, despite the best efforts of antagonists such as the far-right activist Tommy Robinson, whose real name is Stephen Yaxley-Lennon. While on a trip to Moscow, he called for all of the UK to rise up.<\/p>\n

His posts on X were reshared and amplified by the tech trillionaire Elon Musk to his 240m followers, but to little effect. \u201cIt is difficult to predict a riot,\u201d said Keith Flett, a historian and the editor of A History of Riots.<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, in Southampton on Friday, Judge Mousley KC continued to sentence the perpetrators of the violence. It had been, he said, a \u201chate crime, born out of a hatred of the police and in some cases racist views\u201d.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe impact on the community was profound,\u201d the judge said. \u201cLocal residents were subjected to fear, distress and a genuine sense of danger.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"As the people of Glengormley, on the northern edge of Belfast, tidied up and prepared for more violence…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":636225,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[59,57,58,50,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-636224","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-united-kingdom","tag-gb","tag-great-britain","tag-greatbritain","tag-news","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/636224","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=636224"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/636224\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/636225"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=636224"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=636224"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=636224"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}