In the worst episode of violent disorder in Britain since 2011, a series of racist riots occurred across numerous towns and cities that lasted for six days between 30 July and 5 August 2024. The banners carried by far-right protestors announced: ‘We are not far right, just right’. The logic was to disassociate protest from extremism and to affirm that the cause was just, moral, and legitimate. Over a decade earlier, the English Defence League (EDL) had resisted being labelled racist and far right and asserted a similar sense of civil injustice. But as we saw with the EDL, the moral basis of the message was quickly exposed. In the case of the recent riots, no event exposed this message more than when a hotel housing asylum-seekers was set alight in Rotherham. Even though there was no formal far-right organisation behind the riots, there can be little doubt that local far-right activists and sympathisers championed the protest.
Prime Minister, Keir Starmer, was quick to label the riots ‘far-right thuggery’. So let’s start with the conceptual category of the ‘far right’. In Britain, since the electoral collapse of the British National Party (BNP), the far right has become less associated with political parties than with EDL-style street hooliganism and violent disorder. But this association between far-right activism and street thuggery is problematic. First, it does not capture the ideological and organisational complexity of the far right. Second, it implies that protest was not so much driven by ideological grievances but by the buzz of mindless vandalism, looting, and violent confrontation with the police. Third, it also detracts from the growing number of extreme-right activists and sympathisers convicted under terrorism legislation. Far-right activism has multiple faces, and it should not be reduced simply to an issue of public order.
This is not the place for me to unpack its complexities. I will, instead, offer more general thoughts. The first concerns the concept of the far right. There are commentators who still insist on using the term far right interchangeably with the terms radical right and extreme right, as if there is no difference between them. A good example was the now defunct, Centre for Analysis of the Radical Right. Where there is differentiation, we then end up with the clumsy term ‘radical right extremism’.
The more compelling approach divides the far right into two primary subgroups. The first, the softer one, is radical right populism. Radical-right populists abstain from declarations of white racial supremacy, are Islamophobic, anti-elitist (‘common sense’ populism), and generally supportive of Israel. Even if illiberal, they pledge adherence to democracy. Their nationalism (or ‘patriotism’) is defined in terms of the defence of shared language, heritage, history, and culture. This form of cultural nationalism should be further distinguished from more moderate forms of civic nationalism, which recognise that all those that share the same passport belong to the same nation, regardless of ethnic origin or religious belief.
In Britain, Nick Griffin’s BNP tried dressing in far-right populist garb, but this only concealed a far uglier core, as I have previously explained. The more likely candidate for radical-right populist space in Britain was always UKIP, which through numerous iterations eventually ended up as a fully-fledged radical right-wing populist party. But in 2018 it lost its strongest asset, Nigel Farage, who ostensibly left UKIP because of its ‘fixation’ with anti-Muslim policies. However, programmatic differences between UKIP and Reform UK seem paper thin. Like UKIP, Reform UK’s platform, in pledging to defend British culture, identity, and values, is culturally nationalist. Its slogan ‘We want our Country Back!’ suggests that ‘our’ nation’s identity has been lost to ‘cancel culture’, to ‘left-wing bias’, and to a ‘politically correct’ ideology that threatens personal freedom and democracy.
The second sub-group of the far right is the traditional one, which sits at the very end of the right-wing spectrum. This is what we should understand by ‘extreme right’, and this is where (neo) fascism is located. The nationalism of the extreme right is more ethnic and racial than cultural. It is violently anti-democratic, and often, anti-Semitic. In its more traditional forms, it is old-school white supremacist. For those ‘modernisers’ on the extreme right who might disavow biological racism, there is still the belief that different ethnic groups should be kept separate (the radical right is more assimilationist).
The boundaries between these far-right nationalisms are not fixed and they can be porous. Distinctions between whether someone is radical right or extreme right frequently break down in the real world, as we saw during the riots when Islamophobes mixed with persons hostile to any people of colour. For sure, old-school right-wing extremists were present. However, aside from a swastika tattoo observed on a rioter in Sunderland and occasional Nazi salutes, the riots did not feature a widespread exhibition of fascist imagery or symbols, such as organised groups in black shirts marching behind ‘white power’ banners, wearing swastikas, or Celtic crosses.
For the fascist right in this country is weak, disorganised, and fragmented. We might recall the moment when Nick Griffin, the Holocaust-denying leader of the BNP appeared on the BBC’s Question Time; This was the high-water mark for British fascism but his performance was risible. This was in 2009, so not that long ago. Yet today, it would be a challenge to name even the most prominent fascist group. The overwhelming majority of rioters that turned out on the streets were not dyed-in-the wool Nazis.
So it would be wrong to read these riots as evidence of rising fascist sentiment. Rather than neo-Nazis, think EDL. What these riots represent is the violent return of protest by a disenfranchised section of the white working class that is giving vent to nativist grievances against asylum seekers, Muslims, and a perceived loss of an England that no longer feels ‘English’. Comparisons could be made with the support base of the National Front (NF) in the 1970s. This was a support base largely confined to England, and it was also one largely rooted in the white working class.
The vein of white resentment runs deep. If in the 1970s the NF mobilised around the call for the compulsory repatriation of black and Asian immigrants, in 2024 far-right protest is being mobilised through the same protest narratives that mobilised the EDL – the perceived threat of Islamification, illegal Muslim migration, notions of Englishness, and the need to preserve English culture. The difference in this moment is that there is no organised structure behind it. This means that protest is less subject to self-policing. As a result, the response quickly turned violent.
There can be no denying that the immediate trigger ─ the murder of three children at a dance party ─ was genuinely shocking. But the false information that took hold could have only taken hold because of more widely held beliefs and divisive messages that have dominated mainstream political and media debate in recent years, particularly in relation to scaremongering over illegal immigration and derogatory attacks on wokeism. This is an enabling factor in the same way that social media enabled false rumours to spread so rapidly.
Looking ahead, what should those opposed to the far right do? History tells us that when it comes to counter-protest, it is not an exact science. It is context dependent: it depends on how the far-right presents. Where the far right subscribed to harder forms of white racial nationalism, as the NF did in the 1970s, exposing them as a ‘front for Nazis’ was effective. Where the focus is on cultural nationalism and populism, and where the far right comes across as ostensibly non-fascist and even non-racist, it is more problematic.
In the case of the riots, far-right behaviour presented as violent, and it took place in the absence of any serious anti-fascist opposition, which meant blaming ‘left-wing extremists’ was never an option. The response, in the form of peaceful counter-protest by anti-racist majorities, was the right thing to do in this instance for it further exposed the message that ‘We are not far right, just right’ for what it was: nonsense.
Even so, let’s remember that we desperately need to engage with the root causes of this resentment in terms of addressing socio-economic deprivation – it is no coincidence that the riots occurred in areas suffering high-levels of deprivation. This gives further lie to the notion that what we are dealing with here is simply some form of cultural backlash. Limiting the spread of social media disinformation – an area that anti-fascists can engage with – is important; so too calling an end to a divisive political and media climate where culture wars only serve to set one community against another. It was certainly heartening to see an army of volunteers clearing the streets after the riots. Yet the bottom line, and one that we ignore at our peril, is that the far right cannot be simply brushed away like riot debris.