Poppy Coburn is a journalist.
What do you call a Scouser at a protest? A far-Right Tory bigot. That’s the message almost everyone from mainstream journalists to Westminster hangers-on have attempted to convey in the aftermath of the Knowsley riot last Saturday, where a group of protesters gathered outside a hotel housing asylum seekers after a video of a 15-year-old schoolgirl being allegedly sexually harassed by an adult male went viral. The protesters believed he was a resident of the hotel.
Hundreds of protesters, and a smaller group of counter-protesters, were involved. The night descended into violence: 15 people were arrested, and a 19-year-old has been charged with assaulting an emergency service member. The 15 arrestees are reported as hailing mainly from the Knowsley area. If these protesters were Far Right, they were Liverpool’s own.
The Merseyside police explanation of the events of the night is straightforward: the 15 people arrested were identified as being “not part of the original protest group”, who were described as peaceful protesters. Its Chief Constable, Serena Kennedy, identified “rumours… being circulated on social media following an incident last week” as the motivation for the protest. This was a reference to the aforementioned video. Merseyside police had arrested a man in connection to the case who was subsequently released on Thursday, and assured the public that “an investigation is ongoing”.
The immediate response from some spheres of the media world was to link the events of the night to the broader political context. So for example, Nazir Afzal, a former Chief Crown Prosecutor for North West England, bizarrely attempted to shame the Government for the publication of Shawcross Review into Prevent earlier in the week, arguing that the state “downplays the threat of the far-Right”.
Lisa Nandy offered similar commentary, claiming that the Home Secretary’s language (specifically her use of the word “invasion”) had created a “toxic storm” from which the violence emerged. Ironically enough, she neglected to mention that she herself had said in 2021 that she was “appalled” that a hotel in her constituency was being used to accommodate asylum-seekers, after a separate incident involving a migrant male sexually harassing a 12-year-old schoolgirl. If Knowsley is experiencing sex attacks connected to the housing of asylum-seeking males in local hotels, it isn’t alone.
The notion that the reddest-of-red seats, in a time in which the Conservative government is facing record unpopularity, is being influenced by the ‘rhetoric’ of Suella Braverman is utterly farcical. Knowsley is one of the safest Labour seats in the country. Most newsagents in Liverpool refuse to stock the Sun, hated by many as the embodiment of the migrant-bashing Murdoch press. The area is overwhelming White British – and overwhelmingly deprived. If you wanted an example of a stereotypical left-behind community, you won’t go far wrong citing Knowsley. These facts do not justify law-breaking activity, but they can help us identify the conditions from which rioters emerged.
It takes only a cursory glance at local newspapers to see that Liverpool has experienced violent attacks carried out by asylum seekers living in the area. Take the case of Hameed Naderi, an asylum seeker who abducted and raped a teenage girl after posing as a taxi driver. Or the sex-offending Afghan refugee who slashed the throat of a 17-year-old with a knife. It’s easy to make a connection between the Knowsley riot and the ongoing unrest in Dublin, also featuring typically left-leaning working class people reacting to crimes committed by asylum seekers in their area, as examined by Peter Ryan in UnHerd.
The refusal to attribute agency to those who are increasingly angry at being expected to welcome unvetted asylum seekers into their communities is a dangerous game. Asserting that the protesters are either being duped by malevolent politicians or sinister fascist groups plays into a broader trend of sidestepping public acknowledgment of the harms that unrestrained immigration can bring. Victimhood is not exclusive to those who would cross into our country in search of a better life, as the stomach-churning case of a 15-year-old girl gangraped by Afghan asylum seekers in a Kent school shows.
Failure to take action on the migrant hotel crisis is not compassionate. It is pathological altruism. Andrew Mitchell’s exhortation that the British people have a “duty to welcome these people” must ring extremely hollow to the people of Knowsley. It’s hard not to get the impression that some commentators are more concerned that sexual offences against teenage girls might reflect poorly on the perpetrators than they are for the victims. This is the same mindset that enabled the decades-long institutional coverup of the Rotherham grooming gangs, and must be called out as such. Condemning public disorder without taking action to help relieve tensions will only lead to more violence.
The fact is that there is no mainstream anti-immigration party in Britain today. Braverman’s rhetoric means nothing if the Conservative Party is happy to accept half a million net migrants a year. Ordinary people have been left exposed to the worst consequences of lawless behaviour by a police force that can hardly control its own officers. The burden of responsibility is ultimately with the state, who must grapple with the crisis they have allowed to spiral out of control. Smearing all the attendees of the Knowsley protest as far-Right agitators won’t work. If it can happen in Merseyside, it can happen anywhere.