There has been a  concerted attempt by politicians to erase the fact that last Summer’s  far-right orchestrated riots were marked by extreme racist violence. But are the courts guilty of similar erasures as they treat those who  perpetrated the violence and those who responded as  two sides of the same coin?

An edited and updated version of a speech, given by IRR research associate Dr Jon Burnett  on 11 June 2025, at a Symposium on state racism and the CJS organised by Race & Class/Institute of Race Relations

There’s no need to recap exactly what happened last year in great detail: enough to know that following the horrific murder of Bebe King (6), Elsie Dot Stancombe (7) and Alice Dasilva Aguiar (9), and the serious injury of ten others at a dance class in Southport, Merseyside, some 29 mobilisations took place across at least 27 towns and cities in England and Northern Ireland. The racist violence perpetrated then included cars torched and people and attacked; National Front stickers posted with razor blades underneath; mosques and hotels ‘accommodating’ those seeking asylum being targeted by groups of people numbering anywhere between the tens and hundreds. They (among other things) ripped up paving slabs to throw through the windows, poured flammable gases and liquids into corridors, and threw petrol bombs inside – seemingly to burn the occupants alive. Meanwhile, this was cheered on both by people present and people watching online, including calls to turn out in greater numbers mixed with claims that this was ‘war’.

At the same time, the dominant explanations for the events have in some cases served to depoliticise and decontextualise their meaning. According to the police, the events were a public order challenge – the largest since 2011. For a range of commentators, ‘misinformation’ was the central factor driving the riots: amplified through an algorithmic ecosystem which enabled inaccurate information (such as that about the attacker in Southport) to be circulated at rapid pace. According to the prime minster the riots were an example of ‘thuggery’: a ‘violent mob who do not represent our country’, and all of those taking part in the ‘disorder’, he stated, would ‘regret it’.

Criminalising solidarity and resistance

What the cases I have examined so far indicate is something representative of the country historically: the criminalisation of anti-racist solidarity as well as denying specific groups of people the right to mobilise against far-right linked incursions into their local communities. Of the 126 cases examined where people were charged in relation to the riots 41 (i.e., almost one third) were people who, in various contexts faced charges for resisting the events. These include, for example, the asylum seeker in his 30s who went to protect a mosque after it was targeted, and received a 12- month prison sentence for violent disorder for throwing objects (including cans) at the people trying to attack it. In another case from Bolton, a 20-year-old South Asian man, who was stopped and searched and issued with a dispersal notice when he attempted to join others confronting ‘anti immigration protesters’, received a 20-month prison sentence, for violent disorder (he was found to have breached this dispersal notice and kicked a police barrier). Others sentenced include the man who was part of a group who linked arms and made a cordon outside a building used to accommodate asylum seekers in the South West of England. After being recorded throwing two objects at those attempting to attack the building, he received an 18-month prison sentence, again for the same offence.

The analysis, from which these cases come, draws on a range of sources: judges sentencing remarks, material by criminal legal institutions, media reporting and so on. This sample does not claim to be fully representative. But what it does do is provide a way to look at how events and cases were interpreted over time as they travelled through the courts. It indicates for example how the majority of those prosecuted for resisting the riots were Muslim men in their 20s and 30s; how most were convicted of violent disorder; and it shows not just that the court room criminalises anti-racism, but how it does so.

Equal culpability

Central to the criminalisation of anti-racism is the idea – seemingly integrated within the work of criminal legal institutions – that the events relating to the riots embodied two opposing sides, equally culpable for the ‘violent disorder’’. There’s been a lot made about the way the riots gave impetus to the Right’s notion of two-tier justice, i.e., of the state supposedly privileging racialised communities. And of course – as anything from the so called ‘war on terror’, to stop and search, to the systemic spying on and attempts to disrupt anti-racist solidarities demonstrates -this is an inversion of reality. But much less has been made about the extent to which criminal legal institutions – in this context at least – have seemingly adopted the centrist idea of ‘cumulative extremism’, emerging, as the IRR noted over a decade ago, in large part from liberal think tanks and academics, and interpreting racism and anti-racism as mirrors of one another. And the cases here indicate ways this can unfold.

 

Take the example of the Muslim man in his 30s who was imprisoned for 20 months as part of a group of men who fought against rioters. When he was sentenced, the judge said ‘You say you were racially abused, and I accept that may be so’. But, he went on, ‘the law applies to everyone, no matter what … political persuasion they are. There is no distinction.’ Or take, as another example, the man attending a counter-rally in solidarity with those being attacked, who was imprisoned for throwing four objects at those involved in and instigating the riots. Like the above example, the fact that he was racially abused, and that his actions were in response and the fact that objects had been thrown at him were made clear in court. But while the Judge was ‘more than satisfied’ that what took place was ‘as a result of provocation’, what the defendant should have done, he said, was ‘simply rise above their obnoxious racism’. What he did was ‘too serious for anything other than immediate custody’, he continued, sentencing him for 20 months for violent disorder. And this is not just about judges, it is about criminal legal institutions more broadly. Responding to this particular prosecution, the relevant Assistant Chief Constable stated that ‘We welcome the sentences today, as you can see, swift justice has been served. I think what’s really important is people have received custodial sentences from the protest and counter protest side – both sides so to speak.’

This ‘two sides’ argument co-exists with the reductive claim that the riots can be understood as ‘mindless violence’ or ‘thuggery’, with both these claims working to erase any structural context for what happened and their deeper meaning. And the dominant state response and narrative not only masks the state’s culpability in creating the material and ideological conditions for far-right violence, it then asserts the state as a benevolent entity which must intervene against those depicted as ‘thugs’ or ‘mobs’ when this unfolds.

Enacting the violence the politicians promised

As Nadine El-Enany has stated, for example, ‘the political establishment had turbocharged its racism in the runup to the general election [preceding the events]’, with ‘Rishi Sunak tirelessly reiterat[ing] his pledge to “stop the boats” and “control our borders” by imprisoning asylum seekers and banishing them to Rwanda. Keir Starmer [trying] to outdo him by demanding the accelerated deportation of Bangladeshis. [And] one of Yvette Cooper’s first moves as Home Secretary … to draw a direct link between immigration and rising crime, launching a new Border Security Command and ramping up “illegal working raids”’.

As such, ‘When the rioters took to the streets’, she suggests, it should not be forgotten that ‘they were not merely repeating the slogans of these politicians. They were taking matters into their own hands, enacting the violent policies they had been promised.’ But the establishment denies any culpability for what happened, preferring instead to selectively condemn its consequences.

Communities of resistance

As the dominant response has been to disappear the establishment racism underpinning the events, what these cases indicate is the continuation of Britain’s long history and tradition of criminalising anti-racist action emerging organically from communities. The court room has been reconfigured as a site of state racism through the guise of neutrality.

And such things, I think, are important when thinking about anti-racist responses to the riots. I would argue the answers do not and cannot ever reside in criminal legal institutions;  nor do they reside in the resurgence of community cohesion policies – first developed in response to the uprisings in northern England against the far Right and the police in 2001, and now reinvigorated two and a half decades later. Such policies initially tacitly blamed communities for leading ‘parallel lives’ and implied that Muslims in particular would somehow face less racism if they integrated into a supposed ideal of Britishness; in their new version they cast Muslims as a parallel side to establishment-led racist violence, when engaging in self-defence against it.

Just like in the early 2000s, these government frameworks offer few genuine solidarities now; and, more to the point, some might argue nor are they meant to. As Sivanandan recognised many years ago, we need to forge material community-based anti-racist solidarities rooted in shared visions of economic and social justice; what we need are communities of resistance.