After riots, community leaders urge Starmer to build a united Britain

• SARWAR ALAM
• 13 September, 2024

By: SARWAR ALAM

COMMUNITY leaders have urged prime minister Sir Keir Starmer to set out a long-term vision for greater social cohesion to stop violent disorder that was seen over the summer from ever happening again.

In a report titled After the riots, published on Thursday (12) by thinktank British Future, Belong and the Together Coalition, a group of leading experts have set out a 12-point plan of policy proposals to address what it calls a “vacuum on communities policy”.

Jamie Scudamore, CEO of Belong and co-author of the paper, told Eastern Eye there was a critical need for a national strategy on building stronger links between communities.

“It’s a complex challenge that needs a range of responses, that all have to be underpinned by a national strategy, resourced properly and has actions for government, but also local authorities as well as wider communities in society,” said Scudamore.

“For example, resourcing spaces and institutions where people come together across different communities. It needs to involve community organisations that do it already, but probably with a bit of support, do it more.”

Scudamore said previous governments had failed to learn from incidents of race riots that had taken place in the UK before.

“This isn’t something that is going to necessarily be fixed overnight. But the problem is, what’s happened on previous occasions is that short-term events have not led to changes in policy,” he said.

“A really good example of that is back in 2001 (when there were riots in northern England), there were a whole set of proposals that were developed as a result.

“But 9/11 happened shortly after and the policy landscape changed entirely.

“You need to have a long-term plan that is destined to work, because cohesion is like trust – it is very hard won and easily lost.”

Professor Ted Cantle, author of the report into the 2001 race riots in Oldham, Burnley, Leeds and Bradford, echoed the calls for a national strategy.

“It is very disappointing that after 23 years since my report and several others in between, we still do not have either a cohesion or integration strategy,” he said.

“The irony is that the cost of this work is really quite modest, where the cost of inaction is so much greater.

“These proposals would put us back on track and we must not miss another opportunity to bring the country together and defeat the extremists.”

The report said that trying to move on from the violent disorder without addressing its causes or putting in place the foundations to address them, could “risk recurring episodes of the kind of disturbances we have seen, and increased polarisation and social conflict in future”.

Instead, “central government needs to provide leadership and a policy strategy, empowering local stakeholders to take action,” the authors said.

It will require a national social cohesion strategy with funding to implement it, supporting and empowering local strategies from councils.

Sunder Katwala, co-author of the paper and director of thinktank British Future, said: “There’s been a vacuum on communities policy for too long and this summer we saw what that can lead to.

“Starmer’s initial response to the riots was strong, but he shouldn’t leave the job half done – now he needs to set out what we will do together to stop them happening again. The prime minister should set out at party conference his vision for the Britain we want to be, where communities live together well – and a plan to make that a reality.”

A mass stabbing in Southport was the spark for the riots. The violence, blamed on the far right, came after misinformation spread about the alleged perpetrator of the attack on July 29 at a Taylor Swiftthemed dance class.

Three girls – Alice da Silva Aguiar, nine; Bebe King, six; and Elsie Dot Stancombe, seven – died in the attack. Ten others were injured, including eight children.

The assault sparked a riot in Southport the next evening, on July 30, and violence spread to more than a dozen English towns and cities as well as in Northern Ireland over the following week.

Rumours initially blamed the stabbing on a Muslim asylum-seeker, but police said the suspect was born in Wales to Rwandan parents.

Officials blamed the violence on farright agitators and opportunist “thugs”, who were accused of using the tragedy to further their anti-immigration, anti-Muslim agenda that led to attacks on mosques and hotels housing asylum seekers.

Imam Qari Asim, chair of the Mosques and Imams National Advisory Board, said the Muslim community was left “terrified” after being targeted by far-right protests.

“People in my community were terrified by the violence and hatred seen on our streets this summer,” he said.

“The swift response to protect those targeted and punish those involved in causing violence and disorder was welcome. But we can’t be complacent and hope it doesn’t happen again. This summer should be a wake-up call to government and other stakeholders to be more proactive on community cohesion.

“There are many of us working on the ground to build connection and trust between communities. But we need more support, coordination and resources from national and local government.”

The report said more pressure needed to be put on social media companies to tackle hate speech and mis/disinformation on their platforms, with schools also helping children to identify misinformation when they saw it online.

“The government needs to ensure that social media companies follow their own policies at the very least,” said Scudamore. “In the paper, we have called for Ofcom to investigate what happened.”

He added: “I think Leicester (which also saw sectarian riots in 2022) is an example of where tension-monitoring systems that have been in place for a long time, haven’t necessarily kept pace with the changes in technology.

“Social media now plays a massive role in disturbances and riots like we’ve seen over the summer. And I don’t think that our attention-monitoring system, whether that be nationally or locally, have kept pace with that change.”

The After the Riots report called greater efforts to be made to increase social contact between people from different backgrounds in communities, with schools and colleges required to increase contact between students from different ethnic, faith and class backgrounds.

It also suggested that the power of sport should be used to bring communities together, with local football and rugby league clubs highlighted as having the potential to increase levels of social contact across divides and develop shared local identities. The UK’s hosting of Euro 2028 in four years’ time could form the centrepiece for this work, experts added.

Akeela Ahmed, who co-chaired the Cross-Government Working Group on Anti-Muslim Hatred, said: “I welcome this policy paper on cohesion priorities, with its focus on both immediate and long-term strategies to address the root causes of the riots that took place in the UK over the summer.

“This is a good first step to prompt the government into action, with a clear set of robust recommendations which can be easily picked up.

“It is crucial that the country comes together to prioritise building trust, promote social cohesion, address anti-Muslim hatred and all forms of racism, and hold social media companies to account, to ensure that the most pressing underlying issues are addressed.”

The government should also act to ensure that asylum accommodation does not become a focus for community grievances, the paper said. This should include requiring private accommodation contractors to inform local councils in advance before placing asylum seekers in their area; increasing local consultation and engagement; and using ‘welcoming hubs’ to increase positive contact between asylum seekers and local people, for example through conversation clubs to improve migrants’ English.

Professor John Denham, former Labour communities secretary, said: “UK governments progressively abandoned support for multi-culturalism about 20 years ago, leaving the country with no clear or consistent policy to make an increasingly diverse and rapidly changing country work successfully.

“A new strategy for social cohesion that can foster shared and inclusive English and British identities is long overdue. The practical steps set out here are a very good start.”

Across the country, more than 1,000 people were arrested as a result of the riots with 575 charged, leading to a scramble to create more prison places.

The authors recommend the piloting of restorative justice programmes, bringing those convicted after the riots together with mosques and community organisations, to help break down stereotypes.

Scudamore blamed the Tory government (in power for 14 years from 2010) for creating division among communities, but he conceded the issues had been festering under the surface for decades.

“The previous government, you can point to a range of issues where division was escalated, as opposed to division being resolved,” he said. “It was, often, in their political interest to do so and a symptom of short termism, as opposed to seeing the long-term challenge that is community cohesion in the UK.”

Scudamore said Starmer’s swift response to the riots showed he is capable of tackling issues of social cohesion.

“This government has talked repeatedly about putting in the hard yards to rebuild the foundations of the country, which includes the NHS, housing, other social – this issue of social cohesion should absolutely be part of that.”