Following the brutal murder of three young girls in the city of Southport in the northeast of England, riots erupted in the city and spread to over a dozen cities in the northwest, midlands, London and the south of the country.
The killing of the three young girls, each of them not up to 10 years in age was first attributed to an immigrant, which was seized upon by far-right groups who called for action against non-white people and their properties. Heeding the call, groups of far-right activists came out on rampage chanting racial epithets against non-white citizens and destroying their homes and properties for days in cities and towns across England.
In a swift counter-reaction, anti-racist groups also mobilised and came out across several cities in their thousands in demonstration of their anger at the action of the far-right groups. So serious were the unrests that many high commissions and embassies including Nigeria’s, from where many of the British non-caucasian citizens originated, had to issue travel and movement advisories, among other measures.
Commentators described the events as the worst in decades, bringing to the fore the barely concealed cracks between those who want to keep England as a white-only country and those who believe that the country should take pride in its multicultural makeup.
The newly elected Prime Minister, Sir Keir Starmer, showed his displeasure in a stern statement, promising that those involved will “feel the full force of the law’’. In accordance with the prime minister’s statement, hundreds of people were arrested and charged to court.
In many ways, the events in England are a test to both Sir Starmer, who became Prime Minister just last month following the landslide electoral victory of his Labour Party, and Britain itself, on the social divisions in the country. Due to England’s, and by extension, Britain’s pivotal position in the world as a pacesetter for many things, the riots and their underlying issues were bound to attract comments from many parts of the world.
In a report published in the New York Times titled: ‘Britain’s Anti-Immigrant Riots Pose Critical Test for Starmer’, it stated that ‘Even after restoring order, the prime minister faces a bigger challenge defusing the issues of fraying public services and a cost-of-living crisis that underlie the unrest’.
The report continues that ‘The shocking scenes of disorder have underscored the scale of the task facing the government which includes defusing the tensions stoked by the far-right groups over immigration and fraying public services, particularly in areas of Britain that have long been in economic decline’.
For quite some time now, the world has been watching keenly as Britain has been grappling unsuccessfully with the issue of immigration. It was not lost on the world that the issue of immigration was the main factor that brought about Brexit, which Britain is still reeling from. Several years after Brexit, it is clear from the recent riots that Britain has still not gotten over it.
It is ironic that the country that has long been regarded as a model of multicultural co-existence is now seemingly at the grips of forces that are antithetical to those much-cherished values. The irony is underlined much further by the fact that as a country that has sent millions of its citizens over the centuries to work and live in the near and far-flung reaches of the world, Britain is now slowly and inexorably falling into the hands of elements that do not appeal to reason but to base sentiments of racial superiority and hostility to foreigners.
We cannot fail to notice the disturbing trend of these elements growing along with their brazen actions of xenophobia, and resort to blaming immigrants through various platforms of propaganda for the economic setback Britain is undergoing.
We at Daily Trust do not believe that Britain is oblivious to the responsibility it owes resulting from the shared history and impact on the world in many ways from which it had and is still benefitting. In this regard, we note particularly that in the past few decades there have been noticeable, growing commendable trends whereby people whose forebears were not of British or white Caucasian origin have come to occupy prominent positions in the British government, most prominent of which was the last Prime Minister, Rishi Sunak.
If Britain succumbs to the far-right, anti-immigrant forces that were behind the recent unrests that took place, it risks losing its respect and prestige as the leader of the Commonwealth of Nations and as global leader, among other insalubrious consequences.
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