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We need to talk about the Harehills riot

The violent disorder in Leeds speaks to a catastrophic failure of integration.

Fraser Myers

Fraser Myers
Deputy editor

Topics Politics UK

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A double-decker bus in flames. A police car flipped on its side, as adults and kids smashed its windows in. A delivery van raided; its contents set alight. These were just some of the many disturbing scenes from the riot in Harehills in Leeds on Thursday evening.

The immediate spark seems to have been lit by a row between a Roma family and social services. Agency workers are reported to have faced ‘hostility’ while attempting to take three children into care. Around 5pm, police were called to the scene and a crowd began to gather. As tensions rose, the police were pelted with missiles. When it became clear that the officers were outnumbered, they retreated, leaving behind a police car, which was ransacked by the mob. With the police away from the scene, rioters were then free to set a double-decker bus and other vehicles ablaze. Thousands of people were out on the streets, either taking part in the unrest, observing the disturbances or, in some cases, confronting the vandals and arsonists.

These appalling scenes speak to a spectacular failure of integration. Harehills is a deprived, diverse community, with 43 per cent of residents born outside the UK, encompassing over 80 nationalities and ethnicities. It has been described as a ‘21st-century ghetto’. Places like Harehills are almost hermetically sealed off from wider British society. One of the alleged rioters, a Romanian national, who has been charged with setting a bus on fire after standing next to it with a lighter, has had to follow court proceedings through an interpreter because his English is inadequate.

When migrants are not integrated, they tend to have little trust in national or local institutions. This is likely why the state’s attempt to take one family’s children into care was greeted with such hostility. Although a Roma family were at the centre of the initial altercation, the rioting seems to have drawn in people of many ethnicities. A suspicion of the authorities is perhaps one of the few things that binds people together in such an area.

The British state’s embrace of multiculturalism has undoubtedly helped to inflame tensions and gin up a sense of grievance. A report released last year by Leeds City Council approvingly notes how ‘fiercely proud’ local residents from Roma and Romanian backgrounds are of their ethnicity. A statement released on Friday from the council praised these residents for having ‘contributed much to the diversity’ of Harehills. Meanwhile, some residents were quick to blame ‘systemic racism’ and the ‘persecution’ of Roma people for the decision of social services to intervene in one family’s affairs. Here they are precisely echoing the identitarian narrative that is promoted by state multiculturalism. It is difficult to integrate migrants into British society when the state itself is so eager to celebrate ethnic differences and to cast suspicion on national and local institutions.

The police must also shoulder a great deal of responsibility for allowing the riot to spread. Harehills residents were abandoned to the mob for several hours. No doubt the police had to leave and regroup after being pelted with missiles during the initial outbreak of the disorder. But to have not returned with reinforcements at the earliest possible opportunity, deciding effectively to let the rioters tire themselves out, represents a catastrophic abdication of responsibility. It is all too telling that on the same evening, police appear to have arrested a lone, middle-aged woman after she expressed her frustration at the rioting. The police may be nervous about policing violent unrest in a place like Harehills, but they are eager to crack down on speechcrimes.

Despite what some seem to imagine, last week’s unrest was no ‘rebellion’ against a distant, indifferent state. After all, the main target of the vandalism and arson was the community of Harehills itself. It was their own streets that the rioters were setting ablaze. Chillingly, some have since said they have ‘no regrets’ about taking to the streets on Thursday night.

Harehills is no stranger to violent disorder. Back in 2001, 26 cars were burned in six hours of rioting, following allegations of a wrongful arrest of a South Asian man. Twenty-five men were later imprisoned. Then, on Bonfire Night in 2019, pitched battles took place between police and youths armed with fireworks, bricks and axes.

While last week’s riot has been universally denounced by the political class, from the UK prime minister downwards, much of the national conversation has focussed not on the violence but on how it has been interpreted on social media. Police chiefs and politicians have consistently warned social-media users not to ‘speculate’ as to the motivations behind the unrest. West Yorkshire mayor Tracy Brabin, while condemning the scenes that were ‘awful to witness’, saved much of her ire for online commentators. ‘Dog-whistle politics from people outside of our region who do not know our community or the facts’, she said, ‘are offensive and unwelcome’. Similarly, local Labour MP Richard Burgon spoke of meeting residents ‘traumatised by Thursday, horrified by misinformation’ – as if some ill-informed tweets are somehow equivalent to the violent destruction of one’s neighbourhood.

What these politicians fear most is that the rioting in Leeds will prompt a frank and robust conversation about the causes of the disorder. That we might start to question the now-sanctified policy of multiculturalism. But they cannot evade these questions forever.

Fraser Myers is deputy editor at spiked and host of the spiked podcast. Follow him on X: @FraserMyers.

Picture by: Getty.

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