Despite what the BBC says, these are not 'UK riots'

The sight of marauding gangs of Cro-Magnon morons laying waste to swathes of our cities, besieging mosques and residences housing terrified asylum seekers, looting, and setting fire to properties, and firing volleys of rocks, faeces, and urine at riot police, is hardly one to set the heart racing with national pride.

The concurrency of the two events is instructive in addressing the vexed question of what it means to be British.

That is because, despite repeated references to “UK riots” in certain newspapers, and even by the Prime Minister, what is happening strikes me as very much an English problem.

A man is detained as far-right activists hold a demonstration in Middlesbrough (Image: Getty Images)

The riots, to date, have taken place predominantly in English cities – with one in Northern Ireland – and, while it would be foolish to predict that such events could never happen north of the border, there is little evidence of any groundswell of racist disorder taking place here anytime soon.

If any Scottish reader thinks that I am exploiting the current situation to make a narrow, sectarian point, I would ask them to consider the following questions.

When the rioters describe themselves as British nationalists, do you believe they speak for, or represent, you or your interests?

When governments of other nations – including Australia, Malaysia, and the United Arab Emirates – advise their citizens not to travel to the UK, because it is not safe to do so, do you recognise that as an accurate characterisation of where you live?

Do you feel that Scotland is a country on the brink of a “civil war”, where it may soon be necessary to deploy troops on the streets to maintain order, and where courts may be obliged to sit on evenings and at weekends to deal with an expected flood of people charged with civil disorder offences?

Do you – or does anyone you know – think it is right that the murder of children should be used as a pretext for an insurrectionist backlash against innocent Muslims living in Scotland?

Are you more likely to take your lead on this issue from the police and the criminal justice system, or from the likes of right-wing agitators such as Tommy Robinson, Andrew Tate, and Laurence Fox?

There are, of course, many people in England who would, like their Scottish counterparts, answer “no” to all of those questions, and it is true that the low-intelligence knuckleheads rampaging through parts of their cities do not speak for the majority of English people.

But neither do they represent a tiny minority, as leaders like Nigel Farage would have us believe. For every person on the streets, lobbing a scaffolding pole at police or looting a sportswear shop, there are thousands more who will tacitly agree with the sentiment of what they are doing.

Read more

• The violence in England is about more than just racism
• Far-right must be smashed, enablers shamed, and social media broken

Are they the “silent majority” for whom Farage claims to speak when he surreptitiously stokes disorder by “asking legitimate questions” about whether the police are telling the whole truth about the 17 year-old charged with the Southport killings.

Another of Farage’s hardy perennials is that it is no longer possible in this country – by which he means England – to have a sensible conversation about immigration, without being accused of racism.

But when members of his natural constituency take to the streets to conduct the conversation with boulders and Molotov cocktails, he is curiously quiet.

Scotland is not immune to extremist views, but they tend to find expression away from politics, among football crowds and on sectarian demonstrations.

Groups like the Scottish Defence League (SDL) struggle to gain traction. In 2018, when the SDL organised a protest in Glasgow, touted as a "mass rally", it attracted a small group easily outnumbered by police and counter-protesters.

The group’s explanation for the low turnout – fear of violence from "left-wing extremists" – highlighted its weakness and inability to mobilise significant support.

Scotland has generally rejected far-right parties like the BNP, who achieved some electoral success in England.

UK parties accuse the Scottish nationalist movement of stoking division, but it is precisely because Scotland has embraced small “n” nationalism as a mainstream, inclusive, civic ideology that we have given extremists nowhere to turn.

There was a brief flurry of ultra-nationalist activity in the 1990s, through groups like Settler Watch and Scottish Watch, populated by cranks, which targeted outsiders, particularly those from England, who settled in mainly rural areas of Scotland.

In 1993, self-styled “tartan terrorist” Andrew McIntosh was jailed for 12 years for his involvement in a hoax letter bomb campaign on behalf of the so-called Scottish National Liberation Army. After his release, he went on to establish another nationalist organisation, the Scottish Patriots.

McIntosh hanged himself in his prison cell in 2004 while awaiting firearms charges. He had been arrested, along with his brother, in connection with an alleged security threat related to the opening of the Scottish Parliament.

The movement reached its apotheosis in 2017 when Sonja Cameron, a former member of Settler Watch and a friend of McIntosh, passed the SNP’s vetting process for council candidates.

A car is toppled over and set alight during scenes of disorder in Sunderland, which follows on from rioting in Hartlepool (Image: North News & Pictures Ltd northnews.co.uk)

Tommy Robinson – who is orchestrating much of the violence in English cities from Spain and Cyprus, where he has been on holiday – has posted online about a so-called “pro-UK” rally earmarked for Glasgow in September, adding “the British are rising”.

Scottish Labour leader Anas Sarwar and Glasgow Council leader Susan Aitken are among those who have said publicly that he is not welcome here, and there are legitimate questions about whether it would be legal for him to attend.

If he does decide to come to Scotland, he may find the welcome is not what he expects or is used to receiving in other parts of the UK.

The last time Nigel Farage ventured north, as the leader of UKIP in 2013, he cowered in the back of a locked pub on Edinburgh’s Royal Mile, surrounded by burly minders, to escape an angry demonstration, of mainly students, shouting “racist” and “Nazi scum” and “homophobe”. He was later escorted from the city centre in the back of a police van.

Farage accused the protestors of racism, adding: “I must say I have heard before that there are some parts of Scottish nationalism that are akin to fascism, but yesterday I saw that face-to-face.”

I would say that represents a degree of hypocrisy of Olympian proportions.