The first person to be sentenced for rioting was sent down this week. All previous convictions were for lesser offences.
The recent anti-imigrant riots were born out of frustration, blended with on-line disinformation, inflammatory rhetoric, Islmaphobia, far right activism. One of the most incendiary, yet widespread, claims was that immigrants, particularly asylum seekers, pose a threat to children.
Last week the BBC broadcast “Small Town, Big Riot” by Mobeen Azhar, about riots in Kirby, that preceded this summers violence:
https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m0021k3x
It’s a great if troubling programme, but the story goes back much further than that.
In September 2016 a women called Chelsey from Sunderland reported to the Police that she woke up after a night out in a house full of Syrian migrants. She claimed she had been raped and beaten.
Her allegations led to six men who were believed to have been of Middle Eastern origin being arrested. However, following inquiries which included examination of CCTV, extensive forensic examination and witness statements, no charges were brought.
The case caused lots of anger locally. Some people believed the allegations and launched a campaign called Justice4Chelsey. On the other side there were suggestions that the story had been made up, and stories circulated on social media that Chelsey had links to local far right activists, including the Sunderland Defence League.
The case was taken up by Tommy Robinson, and local people including a high profile right winger William “Billy” Charlton. Billy was nicknamed Billy Capslock for his on-line rants. They presented a petition to Sunderland police with more than 100,000 names on it, and erected a billboard in the centre of the city: Justice for Chelsey.
Robinson’s employer, the rightwing Canadian broadcaster Rebel Media, funded a solicitor to challenge the CPS decision – unsuccessfully.
A series of increasingly ugly protests began, fuelled by unfounded conspiracy theories of a cover-up. A group calling itself Justice for Women and Children was established, organising rallies that traded on anti-immigrant sentiment. The biggest one attracted 1000 demonstrators, mostly from the Football Lads Alliance. Paul Golding and Jayda Frandsen from Britain First took part in the protests, Frandsen earning herself a couple of nights in the cells.
At the time there were only 400 asylum seekers in the City.
The police, CPS and local newspapers were restricted in what they could say about the case given the woman’s legal rights however on-line commentators, agitators and Rebel Media had no such restrictions. They claimed that women in the city were at risk from non-white men.
These claims were widely circulated on line and let to assaults on Asian men in the City, in particular taxi drivers, alongside familiar claims of foreign looking men in white vans trying to kidnap young white girls. Local youth and community workers received threats.
In May 2018, tensions erupted again when four rapes were reported in the city within days. One of the attacks resulted in the conviction of two men for raping a woman at their asylum seekers’ accommodation; the other allegations were unproven.
The words “rape street” were sprayed on one row of houses where asylum seekers had been housed, “Muslims out!!!” was sprayed on a mosque
The situation in the City was covered by Government extremism advisor, Sarah Khan, in her report on extremism.
Khan’s report was unusual as it tried to define the far right: “political groups and actors sharing a narrative of racial and/or cultural threat to a ‘native’ group arising from perceived ‘alien’ groups within a society which relies on a perceived threat to a defined in-group”.
A prominent speaker at the first Sunderland marches, Billy Charlton, was jailed for inciting racial hatred, creating what the Judge described as the “toxic atmosphere” in the city. Charlton, who was 55 and lived with his Mother, shouted to jurors, “I hope your daughters don’t get raped”, after he was jailed.
This is him on the right.
A judge sentenced him to 21 months behind bars for five counts of inciting racial hatred in speeches between November 2016 and July 2017.
In a twist to the case that surprised no-one Charlton was also jailed for three years for distributing an indecent image of a young boy aged between 10 and 14. He had previously admitted to possessing extreme pornography involving an animal. Charlton was ordered to sign the sex offenders register for life.
This case has all of the features of the recent round of riots; a community feeling ignored and frustrated, on-line disinformation spreading rapidly through social media, inflammatory rhetoric and a hard core of far right activists pulling the strings. This time the rioters didn’t feel empowered to attack the Police they way they did this year. The difference between then and now were years of anti-immigrant Islamaphobic rhetoric amplified by politicians and parts of the press. Social media sites like Telegram and X/Twitter actively promote far right voices, and spread disinformation.
But not everyone who attended the protests or shared material on social media was a hardcore far right winger. Lots of people thought that they were doing the right thing to protect women and children. They thought they were doing a good thing.
Being loyal to your group and protecting them is a very visceral instinct for lots of people. It is a defining value for lots of conservatives, even if they don’t think of themselves in those terms. In war time it leads people to make tremendous sacrifices to protect their group.
But we are not at war now, and the group doesn’t need protecting. This desire to protect and sacrifice has curdled into fear and anger towards foreigners, directed towards a minority who have been demonised by the press as child abusers. What was once a noble cause has become reduced to angry men, full of Stella and cheap gack beating up innocent people while posting Spitfire memes on Facebook. Too often protecting women and children means controlling them, keeping them in line.
Faced with riots Maggie Thatcher once said “we should understand less, and condemn more”.
This is probably true. But she forgot to add; check their hard drives.
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