The UK riots that spread across the country this summer were a symptom of “economic despair”, Grace Blakeley has argued in Tribune.
Far-right, anti-immigrant protests occurred in England and Northern Ireland across July and August this year following a mass stabbing in Southport in which three children were killed.
The riots were fuelled by false claims circulated by far-right groups that the perpetrator of the attack was a Muslim and an asylum seeker, in addition to broader Islamophobic, racist and anti-immigrant sentiments that had grown leading up to the protests.
The disorder included racist attacks, arson, and looting and was the largest incident of social unrest in England since 2011.
Reflecting on the disorder, economist Blakeley said the “economics of despair” played a major role in prompting the riots, noting that the UK has existed in a state of “near-permanent austerity” since 2010.
“Each government has either actively pursued cuts to investment and public services or has failed to invest the amounts necessary to reverse the damage wrought by earlier rounds of cuts.
“The end result has been the decimation of our commonwealth: the physical and social infrastructure upon which we all rely to survive.”
The riots largely took place in the poorest parts of the country.
Of the ten most deprived areas of Britain, seven saw far-right pogroms this summer.
They are, as Blakeley notes, places from which Westminster is “very far removed, where people do not trust politicians to help them solve their problems”.
The riots, she says, “were an explosion of rage from people who feel weak, scared, and helpless in a society that treats the powerless with nothing but contempt”.
“The contempt they had experienced they poured in turn on the weakest and most marginalised people they could imagine — Muslims, migrants, and refugees.”
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