Herd Instinct ❂ Reflections On The Far Right Riots In The UK

Barry Gilheany ✍ In a reflection on the race riots which rocked the United States in the 1960s, Martin Luther King saw them as “a voice of the unheard”.

Much of the same could be said of other iterations of this phenomenon from the riots in Brixton, Toxteth and other inner city areas in England in 1981 to the recent student riots in Bangladesh which has resulted in the downfall of its authoritarian President.

Down the centuries, riots have so often been the cri de couer or cry from the belly of desperate, marginalised and even starving people of a particular socio-demographic segment. They articulated, however crudely, the voices of those ignored or not heard in the corridors of power.

Au contraire, what can be said about the waves of anti-migrant and anti-Muslim riots that have erupted in a swathe of towns and cities in the North and Midlands of England and in Belfast as well in the week of the unspeakable knife murders of three primary school girls in Southport and the lies and disinformation spread online about the identity of the killer (that he was a Muslim migrant on the terror watch list of the security services), is that they are the voices of the heard. For we have all heard arguably since 2005 and most intensely since the Brexit referendum in 2016; a hit parade of dog whistles and fog horns around immigration. From the subliminal “are you thinking what we are thinking”; to the “hostile environment”; to “breaking point” and to the moral panics about “small boats” and “invasion” of our shores by single young men of “military age”, the rioting mobs, in an inversion of the return of the repressed, have reflected back to a succession of Conservative governments, right wing think tanks and The Daily Mail and Telegraph all of these siren calls around migration. The attacks and attempted burnings of refugee centres and mosques by feral far right mobs represent the putting into practice the logic of nativist, (mostly English) nationalist discursive systems constructed by the above ruling hegemons.

Journalists and opinion makers such as Sarah Vine of the Daily Fail and Isobel Oakeshott (she of “porky pie” fame and partner of Reform MP and deposed party leader Richard “Dicky Lice” Tice) may righteously deplore the actions of mobs who in other contexts they would decry as feckless, workless underclasses who should be prevented from having progeny but they cannot distance themselves from the embodiment of these classes – Steven Yaxley Lennon aka Tommy Robinson, his Luton Town football hooligan moniker. He and his acolytes rave about the threats of Muslim migration and for years he has been a moving avatar of the far right UK and internationally. It is fair to say that Steven, courtesy of Elon Musk who magnanimously reinstated his account, has been the prime instigator of the violence with his gazetteer on his X/Twitter account of meet and greet venues for his gullible fusiliers. But this self-styled British “patriot” is sufficiently aware of his Northern Irish nationalist heritage to acquire an Irish passport to enable hassle free entry to Cyprus for his Aya Napa bolthole. He didn’t tell his pal Johnny Adair of his possession of that document. Sufficiently aware also to employ “Kevin Fulton”, Real IRA/MI5 intel asset as a security enforcer.

So it is preposterous for the media organs of Middle England to retreat to its law and order comfort zone about the convulsions post-Southport without reflecting on their part in creating the conditions for them. The slogans and catch cries of the far right around immigration; the narrative of “Illegal” migrants enjoying hotel experience at tax payer’s expense while homeless veterans languish on our streets; the “lock up your daughters” scaremongering about hordes of military age, single men crossing the Channel on small boats are the suppurating outcomes of the toxins injected into mainstream politics by past Home Secretaries Priti Patel and Suella Braverman, past Cabinet Minister and current Tory leadership candidate Robert Jenrick and arguably the former Prime Minister, Rishi Sunak. The riots are the consequences being played out on our streets of the tone of the Brexit referendum debate and the subsequent transformation of the Conservative and Unionist Party into the English Nationalist Party through its takeover by the ultra-Brexiteer European Research Group and the emergence of Popular and National Conservative factions which in sapping the Tories’ renowned will to power threatens to make it an extinction event.

But rather than continuing to focus on the brawn of Tommy the Coke Head, a arguably more sinister figure lurks as the brains behind the Alt-Right (cognitively a more difficult for far right refuseniks to refute) – Nigel Farage, the recently elected (at the eighth time of asking) MP for Clacton, MEP from 1999 to 2019, current leader of Reform UK and its past iterations, UKIP and the Brexit Party. Along with Boris Johnson who came so late to the party, Farage almost single handedly took the UK out of the EU through acting as a right wing populist nationalist bogey figure for the Tories. For every decision taken by the former Tory PM David Cameron right up to the fateful decision to hold a binary referendum on EU membership was taken to shoot the Eurosceptic (or Euroseptic) fox which were John Major’s “bastards” on the inside and Farage on the outside. He only succeeded in letting the fox into the chicken coop; it was other demons that came home to roost.

Rather than doing what he was mandated by his constituents to do; attend the House of Commons debate called to discuss the riots, he posted a video message questioning whether the full truth of the Southport massacre had been withheld by the police. It is worth picking apart this aspersion as an example of the rhetorical device so used by unscrupulous populists and conspiracist. First of all, there is the outrageous spectacle of an elected representative impugning the integrity of a police investigation in its early stages. He would be fully aware of police procedures in such cases but choose to sow doubt in the minds of the public in order to make short-term political capital out of unfounded public mistrust of the authorities. He then rows back by claiming that he was following the lead of the notorious male influencer and alleged sex trafficker Andrew Tate. Through this faux apology, he unconvincingly tries to convey the impression of a gullible fool; a character trait that the Pied Piper of Brexit will never share with his followers. The proof of that pudding lies in previous consummation of his friendships with Tate in his peon towards toxic masculinity.

This rhetorical device of casting doubt on and creating suspicion of established authorities, be they public health officials like Anthony Fauci or of the Commission on 9/11 is a key tool of conspiracists. Under the libertarian guise of questioning official narratives and received expertise, by not completely denying the efficacy of vaccines, for example, but asking for more evidence even when it is incontrovertible, they cynically exploit the fears and historical memories of communities' experiences of medical interventions. Similarly by making specious connections between coincidences such as change of insurance policies by businesses in the World Trade Centre prior to the events of 9/11, the 9/11 Truther movement embellishes its odious narrative. The “staged actor” lie accounts around the White Knights and the UN investigation into the use of chemical weapons by the Assad regime similarly use extraneous occurrences to spread their poison.

So Farage, as a cunning and articulate version of Trump UK, is a more sophisticated and therefore more dangerous face of far right mobilisation than the knuckleheads who follow Yaxley-Lennon (I will not degrade the name of that great late 70s New Wave singer Tom Robinson by using that moniker). All the evidence points to this grifter milking the people of Clacton for all his worth. He represents a constituency with record levels of social deprivation, physical and mental ill health, low levels of skills and educational attainment. It is also a constituency which is 97% White British ethnicity and which voted 70% for Leave in the EU referendum. Yet despite this demographic and paucity of migrants, anti-immigration feeling and barely disguised racism is widespread due to the “White Flight” from the East End of London. Just yesterday, there was an inferno in the Jaywick ward of Clacton, the most deprived in England, which destroyed three houses and damaged seven others. Needless to say, Fagash was conspicuously absent in plain sight. Look forward to more sightings of the Pied Piper of Brexit.

So the riots were not a demand for a greater share of the national cake; or expressions of embattled minorities like BME, LGTBTA + or protests about the environmental degradation of our planet (certain types of that type of non-violent protest can land you a five year jail sentence). They were not the cries of the genuinely unheard. Instead they were manifestations of the herd instinct of crowds whipped up by the on repeat falsehoods of “invasions”, “small boats” and “they don’t integrate” and de luxe accommodation for free money seeking migrants propounded in a dominant media and political ecosphere by those who seek the cover of plausible deniability.

One thing is sure, the grifters and demagogues who fuel this factory of discontent will not suffer the loss of liberty, employment prospects and reputations that will befall the targets of these predatory or paedophile types.

⏩Barry Gilheany is a freelance writer, qualified counsellor and aspirant artist resident in Colchester where he took his PhD at the University of Essex. He is also a lifelong Leeds United supporter.