Unveiling the Real Causes Behind the 2024 UK Riots: Stigma, Racism, and the Economic Injustice of Poverty

Close your eyes and empty your mind for a second, and imagine walking down a street, and it is peaceful… no sirens, no shouting, you can hear the birds tweeting.You turn to your left, children playing in the street, off-ground tIg, rialio, double dutch, skipping, headers and volleysYou turn to your right, you see smiles and echoes of laughter, neighbours sharing stories and fist pumpsFurther down the street, you smell food, Indian, Chinese, Kurdish, Polish, English, African, jerk chickenYour nose is making your mouth water as you appreciate the colours and love in the smells you are receiving Hello, how are you? What a beautiful day. You hear all humans sayHope you are blessed, take care on your wayAt the end of the street, a place where everyone meets, that the stigma-free future street we want to see

Whether or not those on either side of the political spectrum want to acknowledge it, the past few weeks have seen the UK swarmed by racist and Islamophobic violence. This violence has been thinly veiled under a supposed concern for the children and families affected by the tragic events in Southport.

As a nation, we often struggle to identify and call out racism and racist violence. But there’s another factor related to these riots that society scarcely acknowledges: stigma. This is a topic a group of consultants and I have spent the past year and a half exploring. We’ve been working to understand and untangle the complex connections between economic injustice, poverty stigma, and power, and how these factors manifest in daily life in the UK. Now, our work has reached a stage where we’ve developed principles for a stigma-free future. In this blog post, we’ll explore how these anti-stigma principles can be applied to recent events, and whether they offer a means to prevent future unrest.

Before delving deeper into our analysis, it's essential to begin by unequivocally acknowledging and condemning the recent racist violence for what it truly is—a blatant exercise of power and privilege to victimise and spread hate towards others. While this blog post aims to explore shared experiences under systemic violence and dynamics with empathy and understanding, we must first express our deep abhorrence at the events that have unfolded.

Shared Experiences of Stigma and Economic Injustice

Through our work, we've come to understand stigma as a powerful force that can be wielded to coerce, control, and limit those who experience it. It manifests not only at the institutional level but also in everyday interactions between people – including the recent riots. For those who are attuned to recognising stigma in the media or political rhetoric, it often appears in phrases like "benefit scroungers"—terms that unjustly demonise individuals for seeking the support they are entitled to, while conveniently ignoring the very systems that restricts their economic opportunities or puts them at risk of poverty in the first place.

Before we highlight how our anti-stigma principles could have dispelled this violence, we start by illustrating how stigma showed up in these recent events. The rioters, along with the communities and groups they target, share an experience of stigma and economic injustice in various ways:

• Whether an individual believes that “economic migrants” are here to take their job, or an individual has had to leave their family and home for economic opportunity, both sides have been exploited by a system that hoards opportunities and access to prosperity.

• Whether an individual feels that the NHS is under pressure due to migration, or is an asylum seeker with no recourse to public funds, they’ve experienced the consequences of a lack of investment in public services and a disregard for the health and safety of their community.

• Both communities have been the victim of stigmatising narratives that divert from the pain and suffering of the families who lost their loved ones in Southport, to pose a threat to communities coming together, to support each other through this loss, and a time where trust and unity is need most but feels at an all-time low.

While communities have been misled to believe that there's no funding for local schools, that immigrants are to blame for these shortages, or that an understaffed and crumbling hospital is simply inevitable, billions were funnelled to politically connected companies for unusable PPE. A political class that saw only their friends, their kind, and their exclusive communities as worthy of investment, while perpetuating the lie that no one else should be able to enjoy or benefit from it.

Anti-Stigma Principles

But whilst the riots threatened community cohesion, and in some places went as far as to breaking it down. A time that also saw the feelings of insecurity and vulnerability that followed the events exploited, also served to show the importance of opting for safety in community, rather than insecurity. When individuals and groups across the country, met to rebuild and repair local mosques, volunteered to clean up after the aftermath of the riots, and even showed up nationwide in shows of anti-racist solidarity, this demonstrated to us just one way, that our anti-stigma principles can be used to remedy the fabric of community that has been worn down by stigma.

Other ways that our principles could have been brought to life at this time, include interdependence, shown by how communities displayed defiance, by still celebrating International Carnival of Culture Hull and how thousands came together to raise tens of thousands for a carer in Middlesbrough who had his car burned in a racist attack.

Further, we think about how tragedies such as this could be prevented through abundant community resources, that enable adequate access to mental health care, can intercept radicalisation, and get to the root of the socio-economic challenges and political rhetoric that drive violent attacks and riots alike in the UK.

Stigmatising the Rioters and Their Targets

We’ve also seen the rioters be stigmatised themselves. Rhetoric about how they present, and even a push to frame racism and bigotry as the domain of the white working class, ignores histories of pan-class solidarity. It also overlooks the fact that the racism of doctors, politicians, lawyers, and CEOs shows up not only in the riots but in countless other ways through the power they wield.

In turn, we’ve seen rioters use stigmatising language against vulnerable communities and individuals, calling them scroungers – the very same rhetoric that is so often levelled at the working class community as a whole – and accusing them of coming to take jobs and opportunities, rather than recognising shared oppression. The exact same narrative is levelled at each of these groups Immigrants, who have rightly contributed to this country, often feel compelled to defend their worth based on their economic contributions, as if that’s what makes them deserve respect or should preclude them from racist attacks. But worth shouldn’t be tied to work—a principle that has come up repeatedly in our research. People of Colour and religious minorities shouldn’t have to parade their economic contributions to earn respect.

The Persistence of Far-Right Power and Privilege

As we close out the blog post, we think about how despite the hate and violence, these so-called “patriotic” rioters still seem to hold so much power. Why? Why, when far-right protests have historically ended in violence and destruction, are they still allowed to facilitate hate-filled gatherings? Why are community celebrations promoting love, peace, and unity cancelled while these riots are not? Why was the cultural event I was supporting in Hull moved from Victoria Square in favour of a so called “Peaceful Protests.”Why has there been a surge in support for figures like Nigel Farage and Tommy Robinson?

The answer seems rooted in the reality that white privilege has always been part of the system, by design. The facts are there, written in history. Every culture in the world has had reasons to riot—oppression, class, all the “-isms.” But the white far-right often riots to protect a privilege that our country, “Great Britain,” created through colonisation and greed.

As a white British man, hear me when I say, I DO NOT WANT THAT PRIVILEGE. If I could, I would give my “privilege ticket” to my brothers, sisters, and fellow humans every day - which applies to our final principle - freedom. But in the meantime I will continue to use it to advocate for change that makes everyone’s lives better, push for a world without stigma and equality for all. A world where we all share abundance, rather than be sold the idea of scarcity. A world where politics and society is driven by generosity, rather than hoarding, a world where communities can be interdependent and move together, rather than an independence that is fuelled by divisive racism. Where the real safety is not presented by being achieved by stopping the boats, but rather a world where domestically and internationally, no one is faced with economic, political, or class insecurity.

Now that these principles have been developed, as a group, we are currently sense-checking them to see how they could be brought to life to dispel stigma in other fora. Our next step is to expand our coalitional practice by partnering with grassroots, minoritised, and global-majority-led groups. Alongside them, we’ll not only test how stigma and poverty can be eradicated, but also how we can harness the shared experience of stigma and poverty to facilitate cross-movement solidarity.