8 – 22nd July 2025

One year after the orchestrated far-right racist riots of summer 2024 that followed the horrific murders of Bebe King (6), Elsie Dot Stancombe (7) and Alice Dasilva Aguiar (9), at a dance class in Southport, the far Right, as we report this week in our regular calendar of racism and resistance, is attempting a Great British comeback tour. Sometimes joined by local Reform councillors, the far Right has mobilised at Dover, outside asylum accommodation in Essex and Norfolk, and also, after hearing that asylum seekers were to be transferred there, outside a hotel in Canary Wharf.

In this climate, Asylum Matters and refugee support groups are rightly demanding that the government take proactive measures to safeguard refugees from further protests. But even on the rare occasions when the government has responded, it has never openly acknowledged the source of the problem as the far Right. Depoliticising and decontextualising far-right violence entails presenting anti-migrant and racially incendiary protests outside asylum accommodation and mosques as legitimate, as long as they remain peaceful, and a public order challenge when they are not. And by so doing, the government has effectively abandoned asylum seekers to the intimidatory tactics and naked violence of the far Right.

But then, to be blunt, this comes as no surprise when the term far-right seldom slips from the tightened lips of government spokespeople. Perhaps this is because to openly name the problem would entail taking stock of the way political narratives, including those emanating from government, mainstream far-right ideas and legitimise racist crimes.

Also this week on IRR News, IRR research associate Dr Jon Burnett unpicks the consequences of the government’s decontextualisation of far-right violence for racialised communities, particularly Muslims. The government narrative that erases the far Right as instigators of the violence also sees those who mobilise against it as ‘equally culpable’ of ‘mindless thuggery’ and instigating public disorder, the IRR concludes. Having spent the last year poring over judges’ sentencing remarks, material produced by criminal legal institutions, as well as media reports, Jon Burnett has unearthed some troubling statistics from the courtroom. Examining 126 cases where people were charged in relation to the riots, he finds that, of these cases, almost one-third (41) of those brought to court were people who, in various contexts, faced charges for responding to and resisting events, with the majority being young Muslim men.

In the months to come, please help IRR continue its important research on the far Right by getting in touch with us on any reports of far-right, Islamophobic and anti-refugee mobilisations in your area. With summer 2025 already promising to be one of intense far-right activity, the IRR will continue to shine a light on the hidden cost for asylum seekers, for Muslim communities and for the anti-fascist movement as a whole of the government’s organised abandonment of communities.