Violence is horrific, but we must understand the conditions under which it arose
AAs political protests against mass immigration turned violent across the UK, Prime Minister Starmer was quick to label them as nothing more than “right-wing extremist violence“organized and populated by a small number of organized and possibly financed from abroad right-wing extremist racists.
The government announced that more prisoners would be released early from prison (including murderers) To Free up storage space for the immediate arrest not only of those who participated in the violent protests, but also of those who allegedly encouraged, supported or even shared videos of the violence on social media. Even the social media platforms were blamed and threatened, with the Prime Minister warning them (or maybe just Elon Musk and X?) that the incitement “clearly spread on the Internet” was also a crime – and one that took place on their “property”.
Even if this elitist narrative began to fall apart (Analysis of court documents shows that seven out of ten of the defendants lived within five miles of the scene of violent unrest and were not itinerant far-right activists), the government persisted and announced that the courts would operate around the clock and that bail would be refused to all but minors. Home Secretary Yvette Cooper promised that people who wanted to go on holiday next week would instead be in prison without pre-trial detention before the weekend. The Attorney General announced that the prosecution under Terrorist crimes were also taken into consideration.
While the government and the wider political and media elite have sought to emphasise that there is no reason for anger and discontent and therefore no need for action or reflection beyond the arrest of the perpetrators, others have equally insisted that the risk of further violence remains until the government addresses the Root causesIn particular, there is public discontent over decades of large-scale legal immigration and rapidly increasing illegal (or ‘irregular’) immigration, as the government now calls it.
Although the government and the elite deny this, Opinion poll suggests that it is the ‘others’ who are right in this case. Polls by YouGov show that while Britons generally condemn these violent protests (and rightly so) (only 8 percent sympathize with the rioters), seven in ten Britons see immigration policies of recent years as the main cause of the violence, and six in ten express sympathy for the peaceful anti-immigration protests.
And this is not an outlier either. Opinion poll regularly shows that a large majority of Britons want much less immigration. Analysis by the think tank Further Based on an MRP poll published in January this year, it was found that almost 8 in 10 Britons want significantly less immigration to the UK, meaning that in 9 out of 10 UK parliamentary constituencies a majority are in favour of reduced immigration.
And this clear majority support for lower immigration comes from respondents who (on average) believe that the total number of migrants who came to the UK last year was only 70,000, when the real number was over 1 million. In fact, in the two years to June 2023, almost 2.3 million new people have arrived in the UK.
In short, if the public knew the full extent of immigration to the UK in recent years, there would probably be much greater support for lower immigration, sympathy for the peaceful protests, and blame for the violence on “the government’s immigration policies in recent years”.
There is ample evidence to show that not only do a large majority of Britons want significantly less immigration, but that immigration is seen as one of the most important issues currently facing the country. According to YouGov’s August 5-6 poll on the “most important issues facing the country”, immigration is the most important issue for 76 per cent of Tory voters, 90 per cent of Reform voters and 51 per cent of all voters. Even in the midst of economic turmoil and with the health service in tatters, immigration appears to be the most important issue facing the country today for all voters.
Although there has been a jump in the numbers since last survey on 17-18.th In July (perhaps reflecting the recent protests), previous figures were not much different, showing that immigration was the most important issue for 67 percent of Tory voters in 2019, 66 percent of Leave voters and 41 percent of all voters.
But, say immigration advocates and members of the elite, if Britons are really so worried about immigration, why don’t they just vote for a party that promises to cut immigration? The fact that they don’t proves that the issue isn’t that important to them after all.
But that’s where the problem lies. For three decades, Britons have consistently voted for political parties that promised to reduce legal immigration, strengthen borders and introduce stricter asylum rules to exclude illegal immigration. The problem is that they have all misled their voters.
It is these lies and broken promises that have fuelled the public anger and violent protests we are now seeing on our streets. The reality is that every Labour and Tory manifesto for decades has promised all of the above (with the honourable exception of the Corbyn manifestos of 2017 and 2019, which told the truth and were smacked down at the polls for it), presumably because both parties believe this is what the public wanted to hear/see.
The Labour manifesto of 2015 stated:
Despite the Conservatives’ promise to reduce net migration to tens of thousands, it is higher today than when David Cameron took office in Downing Street. Broken promises undermine trust.
The Labour manifesto of 2015 was right. Broken promises undermine trust. And decades of lies and broken promises, particularly on immigration, are precisely why public trust in political parties has fallen to just 12% in Great Britain
That is also why there is so much anger and despair among the population, why there are anti-immigration protests and, yes, why there is violence in those protests. And that is also why no matter how many people the Starmer government locks up, this problem will not be solved unless the root cause – mass immigration that the population does not support – is addressed.
