(Photo by Joshua Hayes via Flickr/CC BY-SA 2.0)
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In 1919, a year after the First World War came to an end, racial tensions sparked a series of riots across Scotland, Wales, and England. Immigrants from former British colonies in Africa, Asia, and the Caribbean who had served Britain during the war were blamed for unemployment and a lack of available housing. Over a century later, what can the 1919 riots teach us about the UK’s far-right riots in 2024?
2024 Anti-Immigration Riots in the United Kingdom
At the end of July and the start of August 2024, multiple towns and cities in England and Northern Ireland grappled with far-right riots motivated by racism. Angry mobs carried out acts of extreme violence. Misinformation shared on social media after the fatal stabbing of three girls at a dance class in Southport, England, triggered the riots in the UK. The suspect was a seventeen-year-old minor, so his name was withheld from the press to protect his identity, as people under eighteen years old have automatic anonymity. At this time, a rumor began circulating online that the attacker was a Muslim asylum seeker, all of which was found to be false. The rioting arises as people in the UK express anger over political polarization, high living costs, and inadequate infrastructure investment. Scapegoating marginalized communities distracts from the failings of consecutive governments.
The far-right riots began only weeks after the UK general election in July 2024, which brought a new Labour government to power following 14 years of Conservative governments. Critics have accused the Conservative Party of stoking racism on more than one occasion. The previous government under Rishi Sunak came under fire from human rights groups for “demonizing refugees” in reference to their contested Rwanda bill. The bill that was passed in 2024, since scrapped by Labour, would have seen asylum seekers sent to Rwanda to have their asylum claims processed. Critics have also accused the Conservatives of Islamophobia. Aljazeera reported that the former prime minister Boris Johnson infamously likened Muslim women in niqabs to “letterboxes” and “bank robbers,” and former home secretary Suella Braverman wrote in the Telegraph that “Islamists” had taken over the country. However, Sunak denied that the party was Islamophobic.
The new Labour government under Keir Starmer has condemned the extreme acts of racism and “thuggery.” However, they have refused to acknowledge the role that governments and the media have played in stoking racist tensions, which demonstrates a serious lack of accountability. Writing on X (formally Twitter) on 12th August, Zarah Sultana, the Member of Parliament for Coventry South, stated that “These racist, Islamophobic far-right riots […] are the culmination of decades of politicians and the press peddling racism and sowing division,” adding to an earlier post from 9th August which read that , “They stoke division because they don’t want us to remember this truth: the enemy of the working class travels by private jet, not migrant dinghy.”
1919 Racist Riots in the United Kingdom
The division of the working class to distract from the failings of the political elite is reminiscent of the background to the 1919 riots in port cities in the UK, namely Glasgow (Scotland), South Shields, Salford and Hull (England), Cardiff, Newport, and Barry (Wales). Against the backdrop of post-war hardship combined with widespread job insecurity and the threat of the Russian revolution inspiring socialist uprisings, the ruling elite needed somewhere to point the finger as a convenient distraction to prevent possible resistance among the working class. Observers suggested that the noticeable increase in the number of people of color in port cities caused the high levels of unemployment, along with arguing that recruiting people of color as cheaper labor devalued jobs in the area.
Violent riots started in Glasgow before they erupted and quickly spread to other port cities with high working-class populations that had been let down by failures in government policy. Charles Wotten was one of five people killed during the rioting of 1919. His murder is representative not only of the extreme violence and dehumanization of immigrants at the time but also of the role of the justice system in enabling the attacks. Wotten was a Bermudan man who lived in Liverpool. One day, the police pursued him during a spate of arrests of people of color in the area. In his attempts to escape, a mob joined the police and chased him into the water at the Liverpool Docks, where he was pelted with rocks until he could no longer stay afloat. The result of the police enquiry was inconclusive, and nobody was held accountable.
Drawing Parallels
The rioting in 1919 eventually died down, yet the rhetoric of the time has endured and is still recognisable today: people of color continue to be unfairly treated by the justice system and are more likely to be subjected to police violence. Muslim people, refugees and asylum seekers, according to this rhetoric, threaten British values. The negative outlook towards immigrants witnessed during the riots of 1919 still informs government policy in the 21st century. The current and previous UK governments have focussed on reducing immigration as a key issue in order to blame the collapse of public services like the National Health Service (NHS) on high demand rather than budget cuts.
The Hostile Environment policy introduced by Theresa May as Home Secretary in 2012 is a clear example of the dehumanization of immigrants. This was a set of policies designed to make life in the UK very difficult for immigrants and encourage them not to stay in the country. Victims of the hostile environment policy include members of the Windrush generation, those who arrived from Caribbean countries following the Second World War. In her book, The Windrush Betrayal, journalist Amelia Gentleman exposed some of the devastating outcomes of this time, including the unlawful detention of 164 people and the deportation of 83. The UK Home Office began to send letters asking members of the Windrush generation to prove the legality of their immigration status, although many had traveled as British subjects as children without a passport or had lost their documents from that time. Thousands had had their landing cards destroyed by the authorities.
Despite the 105 years separating the anti-immigration riots of 1919 and 2024, there are notable parallels that can be drawn between the two. Deanna Lyncook is a researcher and teaching assistant at Queen Mary University and host of the Black British and Caribbean history podcast, The History Hotline. In an interview for this article, she highlighted some of the main similarities. One parallel she describes is the demographic of the rioters: “It’s working-class white people… [It] was British people who see these newly arrived or not even so newly arrived populations of people being the cause or the root of their problems […] There is a lack of housing; there is a lack of jobs. These are political choices that those in power have made and in 1919 it was a similar situation.”
Deanna Lyncook compares the status of immigrants in the years following the First World War to the current post-pandemic period. She pointed out the hypocrisy of those demonizing immigrants. In 1919, many people in the UK did not acknowledge that immigrants had come to mainland Britain to help with the war effort. Similarly, some people view immigration negatively today despite many immigrant workers “[propping] up the NHS that was heavily relied on during the pandemic.” She concluded that since 1919, “The kind of tools of the upper classes and the elite haven’t changed. It’s the same story, different day. It just shows that the media, politicians, those in power, have a hand in this.”
Where Can the UK Go from Here?
A key difference between the riots of 1919 and 2024 has been the vast mobilization of anti-racist demonstrators in recent weeks. Thousands of people have participated in marches and demonstrations across the UK, largely stalling the rioting and far-right demonstrations. It indicates a positive shift in British society and heightened awareness of the discrimination faced by marginalized communities.
Yet, many events such as the 1919 racist riots, and the larger extent of the brutality of the British empire, are not widely known. Lyncook argues that a more globalized education that acknowledges the extent to which British colonization has sown “chaos, violence, war, poverty and famine” can help to address systemic racism by raising awareness of the history of immigration to the UK. However, she believes that racism is still firmly “deep-rooted” in British society, a byproduct from the days of the British Empire, where racial scientists and eugenicists categorized people by race to try to empirically demonstrate white supremacy. In describing people of color as inferior to white people, they believed they could justify slavery to be able to cover the labor shortage in the lands Britain had colonized.
In sum, there are clear lessons to be learned from the riots of 1919 and 2024. The stark similarities between the attitudes of then and now show the consequences of not holding elected representatives and the media accountable for inciting racial hatred. We must be proactive in systemically calling out racist rhetoric and institutional racism, or history is doomed to keep repeating itself. In her 2017 book, “Why I’m no longer talking to white people about race,” author Renni Eddo-Lodge writes that white people, in particular, often view racism as personal prejudice. However, we need to view racial inequality as a structural issue and the impact of “collective bias.” Protests in the face of racist riots and government policy are incredibly important, but so too is education and acknowledgement of white privilege. As Lodge argues, “We must see who benefits from their race, who is affected by negative stereotyping of theirs, and on whom power and privilege is bestowed.” Only then can we even begin to address racial inequality.
Edited by Lubaba Mahmud
