It was the first week of the summer holidays in the U.K., and parents were flocking to football camps and community centers to keep their children busy. One such center, in the seaside town of Southport, was hosting a Taylor Swift-themed dance event, on July 29th, when a man with a knife barged in and started stabbing young girls. He killed three and injured many more. As news of the horrific attack spread, police cautioned that the identity and motives of the attacker were not yet known. But on social media the long-suffering far right had already found the perfect suspect: a Muslim asylum seeker, an “illegal immigrant” who had travelled to the U.K. in a small boat. Some even claimed to know his name: Ali.
Boats carrying immigrants featured prominently in the recent election that brought the Labour Party to power. Rishi Sunak, the Conservative Prime Minister, was facing near-certain defeat and declared that he would stop the boats. The opposition leader, Keir Starmer, all but sure of victory, said, We’ll create a Border Security Command to police the border. The right-wing Reform Party, led by Nigel Farage, claimed that it would not only stop the boats but kick out the immigrants who were already here; it went on to win five seats in Parliament. Everyone seemed to be on the right side of the boats debate.
After the young girls were killed, a mob went on a rampage in Southport, burning cars, attacking a mosque, seeking revenge on Muslims and immigrants. Roughly a hundred miles away, in the town of Rotherham, another mob laid siege to a hotel that was said to house asylum seekers, who, by the horde’s logic, were apparently destined to become future killers of innocent children. Across England and Northern Ireland, violent white mobs confronted police while wearing masks and using rubbish bins as shields. Petrol bombs were hurled, vehicles were lit on fire, a library was set ablaze, and in some cases officers had to run for their lives.
There was confusion among the people who are supposed to tell us what’s going on. The Prime Minister called rioters “thugs,” but a BBC reporter echoed the rioters’ claims of being “pro-British.” In the media, there was a telling debate about whether attacks on immigrants should be called “race riots” or “racist attacks.” In the middle of this mayhem, it was revealed that the alleged attacker was a British-born teen-ager, a Christian from Cardiff. His parents were Rwandan immigrants. No boats appeared to feature in his life story, and his name did not seem to be Ali. But by now the facts didn’t matter—the rumors had ignited white anger toward immigrants, and especially toward Muslims. The U.K. had already elected a government that intended to tighten the borders, and had voted five far-right M.P.s into Parliament. So why were angry Brits off their rockers and throwing petrol bombs at their own police? Why did they seem determined to dismantle their own democracy?
For fifteen years of my adult life, I have lived mostly in London. In that time, the U.K. has become more multicultural and, seemingly, more racist. British institutions talk about diversity, but turn up at an office before it opens and you see Black and brown people cleaning toilets and vacuuming corridors, getting the world ready for white people to run. Black and brown people who were born in the U.K. tell me that they grew up in fear of white rage—of bullies at school, of a brick through the window at home. Most white people seemed harmless, if sometimes grumpy, unfriendly, or entitled. Every so often, someone shouted “Paki” at a random brown or Black face. Then some nice white people would come and console you, stressing that these were not British values. Sometimes they offered to buy you a pint or a curry.
In 2005, when I was around forty, four men—three British-born sons of Pakistani immigrants, one Muslim convert who was born in Jamaica—detonated bombs in London’s subway system, killing fifty-two people and injuring hundreds more. As a journalist, I covered the aftermath, which included a wave of suspicion of Muslims in the U.K. A few weeks after the attack, I was with my work friend Masud, withdrawing cash from our neighborhood A.T.M., when a group of teens who were drinking from bottles and cans started shouting “Osama bin Laden” at us. I was surprised by their ignorance. Do I, a beardless man with curly hair, look like bin Laden? We muttered something like “Stupid fucks.” Then they were all over us. Five boys and a girl, kicking, screaming, hitting us with their cans and bottles.
I have had my share of beatings from men who were bigger, more vicious, more purposeful than me, but being attacked by half a dozen teen-agers was a first. We were outnumbered, but we had the confidence of the sober, the righteousness of the people who knew they were clearly not Osama bin Laden. At one point, we were winning. Masud tackled one of the boys, and my boot was inches from his head. I didn’t have the stomach to kick his scared face. Then another boy lunged at me, took my hand, and bit it. Those punches and curses had not hurt as much as the bite did. It was vicious. By this point, a crowd had gathered. Someone had called the police, and, as the siren rang in the distance, our assailants disappeared into side streets. The police caught the girl hiding behind the hedge of a church.
The whole thing was humiliating, getting beaten up by a bunch of teen-agers on my own street. I didn’t want my seven-year-old son to know that this kind of thing could happen in our neighborhood. To explain the bite marks on my hand, I told him that a goat bit me, which made him laugh. Then I said a white boy bit me, and he didn’t believe that, either. When I told him that not all white boys bite, he asked jokingly how I could be sure. People who found out about the assault shared their sympathy and solidarity, but I was annoyed that they expected me to know the motives of my attackers. When Brits are attacked, I have to explain. When I am attacked, I have to explain. I wasn’t sure anymore if there was such a thing as we.
The wheels of British justice turned, and Masud and I were summoned to court to identify our attackers. There was just that one white girl, now sobered up, in the dock. We were informed that the girl was of “no fixed abode,” but she had turned up to face charges. Why can’t the girl name her accomplices?, my friend wanted to know. She said that she had met them at a pub and had no idea who they were. I didn’t want to go up against a girl who didn’t have a place to live. Unlike her, we had an office to go to, playdates to keep. I decided not to pursue the case. Masud never forgave me.
This past week, anti-racist counter-protests swept the U.K., and the British justice system was again in full swing. Supporters of the riots were sentenced to up to three years in prison, some for attacking police and properties, others for inciting hatred on social media. Nigel Farage, who is not a poor white girl of no fixed abode, went on Fox News and said, of the violence, “We’ve got parts of our inner city now that have become completely Muslim-dominated, and that has led to a lot of British people saying, ‘What the hell’s going on?’ ” In a video from last year, he had his driver take him to a hotel that was housing asylum seekers, practically painting a target on the shelter’s door. Elon Musk, the boy emperor of the galaxy, was less interested in mourning the killing of three girls than in accusing the U.K. of thought policing. He retweeted memes comparing British law enforcement to Nazis.
In recent years, though British politicians have seemed united in their opposition to boats of refugees, the U.K. has welcomed more than a hundred and seventy-four thousand refugees from Ukraine. Ukrainians were met with an outpouring of white-on-white humanity. But most of the refugees who arrived in small boats came from Afghanistan, where the U.S. and U.K. waged decades of war. Many of those fleeing were abandoned by the British. Meanwhile, the U.K. government has refused emergency medical visas to children injured in the war in Gaza, which the U.S. and U.K. have helped to fund and arm. Still, we are told that racism is not a British value.
Five years ago, Gary Younge, a British journalist and author who spent several years in the U.S., wrote in the Guardian that white people were being radicalized in alarming numbers by the far right. “While the violence may come from the fringes, the encouragement comes from the centre,” he wrote. “Were we to borrow the language directed against Muslims at this point, we would be talking about a ‘death cult’ deep in the Caucasian psyche and calling on moderate, law-abiding members of the white community to step up and speak out.” We failed to heed his warnings. Nowadays, rich and powerful white men—the Musks and Farages of the world—sound almost like spokespeople for rioters. In a small survey of British views on immigration, conducted by WeThink Polling, one in three respondents said that “violence is sometimes the only means,” “attacks against refugees’ homes are sometimes necessary,” and “xenophobic acts of violence are justified.” But I can’t tell my son that there are lots of white people out there looking for people of color to bite.
Twelve days after the man with the knife killed three girls in Southport, an Israeli air strike targeted a school in Gaza City, reportedly killing eleven children. The Secretary-General of the U.N. has said that Gaza is becoming a “graveyard for children,” and Israel’s war there has filled the U.K.’s streets with peaceful pro-Palestine protesters of every color. I brought my nine-year-old son to one such march. But these demonstrations seem to have far less impact on U.K. policy than riots by angry white people. How do I explain to my son that the sign he made, which said “Stop Killing Children,” was not stopping the killing of Palestinian boys his age, and that parents in Gaza would have to look for their remains? We are learning, instead, to shield our children’s eyes. We scramble to change the channel, or turn our phones away so they don’t see the news, and hope that they can sleep without terror. ♦