IT IS important to correctly characterise the recent racist riots.

As is usually the case after a major upheaval in politics, all sorts of explanations are offered. Many of them will be from people or forces with a political agenda, not an objective assessment.

We should not be surprised now when politicians and others who want to downplay the issue of racism as the driving force behind
the riots who themselves have been unwilling to challenge racism over several years or have even fostered it.

It is in the vital interests of the labour movement to challenge false explanations of the riots. The stakes are too high to get it wrong.

This is not an academic or debating point. A correct assessment is needed if we are to successfully combat and push back the far right and its supporters.

Recently there has been developed an analysis, which first appeared in the Financial Times, which suggests that the violence was the product of deprivation.

This claim has reached a broader audience and has even been regurgitated on the left. It is wrong, both factually and politically.

The FT article used narrow data to construct an entirely false argument. It is factually correct that rioting took place in in seven of the 10 most deprived local authorities in England. The argument is that therefore deprivation is the cause of the riots.

This becomes further distorted to claim that they have “legitimate
grievances.” The implication is that they are rioting against deprivation. But there are a number of false steps in this argument. They are worth pointing out, not least because this is a movement that is not going away any time soon.

It is true that even among Reform UK voters only a minority believes that the rioters have legitimate grievances. But overall, 7 per cent of the population either supports or strongly supports them, according to YouGov. That is well over 2.5 million people.

This is a minority, but a dangerously significant one. No-one in the labour movement should pander to them.

The first false step is in identifying deprivation at all as a cause of the riots. In general, riots do not happen in millionaire rows or leafy suburbs. It is quite likely that all major historical bouts of rioting occurred in deprived areas.

Fundamentally, area-wide deprivation does not occur overnight. It takes place over decades. Deprivation cannot explain why, or why now?

Middlesborough and Blackpool did not suddenly become deprived areas and Tower Hamlets is also desperately deprived. But no riots took place there.

There is also the point that there were 23 local authorities where riots took place, some of them, extraordinarily, are areas of below-average deprivation.

Aldershot and Weymouth are no-one’s idea of living on the front line. Neither is Westminster, but that locale provides a real clue as to the character of the riots.

The explanation for the riots is political, not economic. Contrary to deprivation, what had happened just weeks before the riots was the election of a Labour government.

This was the immediate catalyst of the violence and the factor which explains the timing of the violence.

This was a revolt by the far right against what they believe is an alien, hostile government, solely because it is a product of the labour movement.

All fascist movements are intensely hostile to the labour movement. That includes the Labour Party, no matter whether it is left or right wing.

To illustrate this political character of the riots, listen for the dog that didn’t bark.

Four of the five Reform UK MPs were elected in areas of pronounced deprivation (the other, in South Basildon, is classic Thatcherite territory and their candidate stereotypically was a banker). But none of them experienced any rioting at all.

The rioters approve of Reform UK. The far right and the fascists see at least the right wing of the Tory Party as partial allies and even co-thinkers. They see no need to riot against the Tories, and they are even friendlier to Reform UK.

This visceral hostility to the Labour Party and the labour movement more generally holds key consequences for Labour. It has nothing to do with appeasing the far right and fascists. They cannot be placated.

It is possible that there may be one or two examples to the contrary, but government ministers have been assiduous in avoiding this issue.

The words “xenophobia,” “Islamophobia” and “racism” have not been part of the government’s response to the rioting. There has been no attempt to examine the movement that suddenly seemed to emerge, but it was clearly a long time in the making.

Beyond tough sentencing for the rioters (which the public strongly
supports) there has been no thorough analysis.

There has also been almost no effort in mainstream media to provide a platform for victims to draw conclusions from their experiences or contribute their own thoughts about the character of their attackers.

Each of these omissions represent a serious mistake.

The far right’s self-description is that they are “patriots.” But there is nothing patriotic about burning down buildings in your own area (or travelling to burn down buildings in another area), or in attacking ambulances or firefighters.

Their own description of themselves is easily dismissed. Instead, we should recognise how they act and what their demands are. They attacked mosques, or people they thought were Muslim, and black people.

They attacked hostels holding asylum-seekers and even tried to burn them down.

They lied about the perpetrator of the lethal Southport attacks being a Muslim, they demand an end to immigration, they turn reality on its head by claiming they are the victims of two-tier policing. They want their country back.

A violent, lying, racism that demonises a religious community and interlaced with reactionary, mythologising nostalgia is the classic hallmark of the far-right and fascist movements.

We know that many of the convicted rioters have previous form as violent far-right and fascist thugs. They are the sergeants of the
street-fighting gangs.

Aping them by surrounding yourself with Union flags does not work either. We got a lower vote in 2024 than in 2019 while normalising their nonsense.

They should not be appeased in any area of policy either, especially related to migrants and asylum-seekers. Increasing deportations and building new detention centres did not work under the Tories.

There is no reason to expect they will work for Labour. We should be establishing safe and legal routes for asylum-seekers, not demonising people who work in the grey economy.

And we must reverse austerity, not deepen it. Not because the fascists have “legitimate grievances.”

Austerity must be ended because it is an attack on all workers and the poor. Who are also the targets of the fascists.

Diane Abbott is Labour MP for Hackney North and Stoke Newington.