What can we say about the "far right" riots?

There’s an obvious reason the authorities probably won’t reduce immigration.

Written by Noah Carl.

What can we say about the protests and riots that took place across Britain over the last few days? Many on the right have taken them as evidence that “the English” have finally “had enough” of mass immigration and multi-culturalism. It is said that after years of having their concerns ignored, dismissed or pilloried, they were at “breaking point”. And as a result, the situation “boiled over”.

The protests/riots clearly were motivated by opposition to mass immigration and asymmetric multi-culturalism. But to claim they provide strong evidence regarding what “the English”, white people, or any large segment of the population wants is mistaken.

There have been incidents in about two dozen towns and cities across Britain. Video footage suggests the number of people involved varied from a few hundred to a few thousand (not counting the left-wing and Muslim “counter-protestors”). Let’s generously assume that 3,000 people were involved in each demonstration. This means the total number of people involved was around 70,000, which is less than half the number who turned out for the biggest pro-Palestine march in London. Five years ago, several hundred thousand people marched in favour of a second EU referendum. Should we conclude that British people have “had enough” of national sovereignty?

Generally speaking, it is erroneous to draw inferences about what the public wants from protests/riots, especially when they aren’t particularly large. This is an error left-wing commentators make all the time. For example, they will post photos of an anti-Tory rally, and write something like “Britain rejects austerity”. Or they will point to a mob of BLM activists, and insist that “the people stand against police racism”. It’s a fallacy when the left does it, and it’s no less a fallacy when the right does it.¹

Riots often erupt spontaneously and then burgeon out of control. In 1999, more than 5,000 students left a trail of destruction through the town of East Lansing – smashing windows, torching cars and looting stores – after Michigan State University lost a basketball game. Public disorder is not a reliable indicator of the level or strength of public feeling.

A much better (though still imperfect) indicator is a national election. Britain held one just a few weeks ago, and the results provide little basis for saying “the English” have “had enough” of mass immigration. 56% of white people voted for left-wing or progressive parties, and another 26% voted for the Conservatives (a de-facto pro-migration party). Only 16% supported Reform.² In fact, the share of white people supporting left-wing or progressive parties increased from 2019. I say this as someone with broadly restrictionist views.

Now, you might claim the situation has changed since the election, owing to the rioting in Leeds, the stabbing in Southport and other incidents. But it hasn’t really changed. Before the most recent election, white British people had already been subjected to Islamist terrorism, grooming gangs, BLM riots, the “decolonization” movement, accusations of “white privilege” et cetera. Yet they still chose to vote overwhelmingly for pro-migration parties. Although polling suggests most Britons do want immigration reduced, they apparently care more about issues like the cost of living, housing and the NHS.³

I must admit I’m rather surprised that so few white Britons opted for Reform, the only party that might have actually done something to slow the pace of demographic change. But the fact is: few did. Yes, the media and the political establishment are biased against Nigel Farage, but there’s nothing to stop someone backing his party in the privacy of the voting booth.

Further evidence that the riots do not represent a groundswell of popular dissent can be found in a YouGov poll taken yesterday and today. Britons were given a list of terms and asked to say which are “appropriate descriptions of those carrying out the unrest”. Only 16% said “people with legitimate concerns”. Even among Reform voters, the number was only 49%. Meanwhile, 67% said “thugs”, including two thirds of Conservatives and 41% of Reform voters. Respondents were also asked whether the unrest at protests was justified, and only 12% said it was.

A separate but related issue is whether the protests/riots were an inevitable consequence of mass immigration; here the right-wing commentariat is on much firmer ground. Once you have a sufficiently diverse and fragmented population, there will always be some level of ethnic conflict. British protestants began settling in Northern Ireland in the 17th century, and three hundred years later the country is still divided along sectarian lines. Ethnic conflict is not a constant across all societies. Some have less of it; some have more. If you bring in large numbers of people from wildly different cultures, as Britain has done over the last three decades, you’re likely to get more.

Left-wing pundits are fond of highlighting far-right violence, often as a way to try to “even the score” between natives and immigrants. “See, there’s violence on both sides”, they’ll point out. But this actually works against their own argument, since far-right violence has the same root cause as violence committed by immigrants, namely mass immigration. Both are manifestations of ethnic conflict. This isn’t to condone or excuse either type of violence. It’s simply saying: if you do one thing, another thing tends to follow. When we’re assessing the costs and benefits of a policy like mass immigration, the risk of additional far-right violence has to be included on the costs side.

Right-wing commentators are therefore entirely correct to say that reckless politicians, who foisted mass immigration on the country with little or no consideration of the long-term consequences, must bear indirect blame for the riots.

What will the political repercussions of the riots be? In the short-to-medium term, almost certainly negative. (It goes without saying that rioting is unacceptable regardless of the consequences.)

While the academic literature concerning the impact of far-right violence on support for right-wing policies is mixed, a recent British study found that it makes people less likely to support those policies.⁴ Harry Pickard and colleagues examined the impact of two incidents of far-right terrorism (the murder of Jo Cox and the Finsbury Park van attack) on right-wing identification in Britain. Because these incidents happened to occur while the British Election Survey was being fielded, they were able to compare respondents interviewed just before and just after the incidents took place. They found that those interviewed just after were several percentage points less likely to identify as right-wing – most likely because they sought to dissociate themselves from the perpetrators’ ideology.

That’s terrorism, not rioting per se. What about demonstrations? Teresa Monteiro and Christopher Prömel used a similar methodology to Pickard and colleagues, and found that Germans interviewed shortly after far-right demonstrations were more likely to express concern about hostility toward foreigners but were no more likely to express concern about immigration.

Likewise, Enzo Brox and Tommy Krieger examined the impact of the 2014–15 Dresden protests, and found they were associated with a sharp decline in the number of Germans moving to that region – presumably because they made it less attractive as a place to live. The researchers also conducted a survey experiment, in which respondents were given information about pairs of cities, and asked which of the two they would prefer to live in. Among the information given was the frequency of “asylum- and migration-critical rallies” in each city. Brox and Krieger found that respondents consistently preferred to live in cities where such rallies were less frequent. This was true even for those who supported the AfD (although the effect was much larger for supporters of left-wing parties). It seems that Germans do not like anti-immigrant protests, even if they tend to favour less migration themselves.

Notwithstanding any impact on support for right-wing policies among the general public, the protests/riots may well provoke a government crackdown on free speech. Labour have already torpedoed the Conservatives’ higher education free speech bill, so the prospect of the riots being used to justify new restrictions doesn’t seem at all implausible. Any such restrictions will almost certainly be focussed on speech that is deemed “far-right”, with that term being defined as broadly as possible.

Will the authorities learn their lesson this time, and finally put an end to mass migration – or at the very least reduce the scale of the influx? I wouldn’t count on it. Numerous deadly Islamist terror attacks don’t appear to have put a dent in Muslim immigration, with 83,000 Pakistanis arriving last year (the fourth largest immigrant group by nationality). And there’s an obvious reason the authorities probably won’t reduce immigration in response to the latest riots: they don’t want to be seen as “rewarding” violence. From their point of view, this would set a dangerous precedent and would embolden the far-right.

The protests/riots that took place over the last few days do not show “the English” have “had enough” of mass immigration, as evidenced by the small number of people involved, as well as the recent election in which 82% of white people voted for pro-migration parties. What they do show is that, far from being a source of strength, mass immigration is a source of conflict. In the short term, the unrest is likely to reduce support for right-wing policies (although there may be a countervailing effect from the concurrent Muslim riots). And it could lead to a crackdown on free speech from the censorship-friendly Labour government.

Noah Carl is Editor at Aporia.

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1. Some commentary bordered on a right-wing version of “rioting is the language of the unheard”, a dubious claim originally made by Martin Luther King.

2. Back in the 2010 election, the BNP (an ethnonationalist party) stood over 300 candidates. But they ended up getting less than 2% of the vote.

3. The polling data are more complicated than many conservatives realise. When you ask about specific categories of immigration (such as “students” or “family migration”), most people want them to increase or stay the same.

4. One German study found that Germans became slightly more likely to identify with the AfD following incidents of far-right violence. Another found no effect in either direction. Another found that people with anti-immigration attitudes become more likely to identify with the Afd or NPD, while people with pro-immigration attitudes become less likely to do so. And yet another found that Germans became less likely to identify with the AfD following the Hanau shootings.