The last several days have been taken up with scenes of widespread rioting in several parts of the UK. Unleashed following brutal knife attacks on young girls in Southport, the riots were fanned by anti-immigration sentiment spread through false social media posts.
What does this tell us about the UK public’s sentiment towards immigrants – if anything?
This month’s chart comes from an analysis of the UK public’s view on immigration from an analysis of the World Values Survey done by King’s College, London. As the chart shows, the UK has considerably more positive views on immigrants’ contribution than most other countries. The full results show this to be consistent across many different questions posed about immigration.
Given the country’s history, widespread links across the globe, and long experience – irrespective of the cause – of successful immigration and integration, it is maybe unsurprising that attitudes to immigration in the UK are more positive than those found in many other countries.
So, why the riots?
Despite broad support for well-integrated immigrants, there will always be those who use immigration to fan the flames of division and to recruit the outliers to their cause. That they are outliers was perhaps best demonstrated by the size of the spontaneous counter-protests that have emerged. Arguably, it is such citizen action rather than policing activities, necessary though those are, that will be the biggest driver of restoring order.
Recently there has been much talk around the right to free speech, the right to protest, and what might be appropriate penalties for those who abuse the right to protest to cause disruption and mayhem. Irrespective of the cause, what should be unequivocally clear is that the right to protest does not extend to tolerance of hurting people, damaging property, or causing huge disruption to people’s lives. That those who engage in such activities wilfully and often repeatedly do not deserve any leniency in facing the full force of the law.
It is tempting for all of us to feel more sympathy for those who cause disruption for causes with which we empathise while demanding the harshest of punishments for those supporting causes with which we happen to disagree. Yet that is a sure route to eventual anarchy.
As the counter-protests to the riots have shown, it is also worth bearing in mind that, despite claiming to speak for ‘the people’, such disruptive protestors, loud though they might be, generally represent a minority of the population. Their grievances should not be ignored. But neither should they be taken to be representative of the views of the wider public.
Finally, it is maybe worth asking what are the real underlying causes. Were these riots really driven solely by anti-immigration sentiment? Or is that simply the gateway to mobilising people for whom broader social and economic issues continue to generate bubbling discontent that eventually spills over?
