Claims of two-tier policing at far-right riots ‘racist gaslighting’, equality campaigners say
Claims riots policed differently to other disorder dismissed as ‘deliberate racist and Islamophobic dog-whistle’
Get Nadine White's Race Report newsletter for a fresh perspective on the week's news
Get our free newsletter from The Independent's Race Correspondent
Get our free newsletter from The Independent's Race Correspondent
Complaints that far-right riots over the last week have been dealt with more harshly than other recent unrest amount to “racist gaslighting”, equality campaigners have said.
Metropolitan Police chief Sir Mark Rowley has rejected accusations of two-tier policing as “complete nonsense”, and said those making the claims were putting officers at risk.
The government has also dismissed suggestions the riots have been dealt with more stringently than other recent disorder and protests.
Prime minister Sir Keir Starmer, who has been dubbed “two-tier Keir” by US Twitter/X boss Elon Musk, has called the accusations a “non-issue”.
The prime minister has also been accused by Tory leadership contender Robert Jenrick of not being “as clear as he could be” that some of the disorder emanated from “sectarian gangs”.
The traction that the phrase “two-tier policing” has gained is “yet another example of mainstream media complicit in racist gaslighting”, the UK’s leading racial justice think tank Runnymede Trust said.
Dr Shabna Begum, the charity’s CEO, told The Independent: “It is insulting to allege that communities of colour face ‘more favourable’ policing.
“The traction that the phrase ‘two-tier policing’ has gained is yet another example of mainstream media complicit in racist gaslighting.
“It implies that there was an equivalent level of violence at largely peaceful BLM [Black Lives Matter] protests, and that the BLM protests were softly policed; neither are true.
“The idea that policing has ever favoured communities of colour is a direct insult, given everything we know about the disproportionality of the use of force against them.”
Statistics show many racial disparities in everyday policing. Official data states police forces across England and Wales disproportionately stop and search people from ethnic minority communities.
Black people accounted for 46 per cent of all stop and searches in the year ending March 2023, compared with their 4 per cent proportion of the population, while Asian people account for 39 per cent, compared with their 9 per cent of the population.
Runnymede argues that the evidence of racialised two-tiered policing bears out in the nature of charges applied to those involved in the ongoing racist riots.
“If anything, there should be a question mark about why charges thus far have been for violent disorder rather than the more serious riot charges which were used against Kill the Bill protestors in 2021,” Ms Begum added.
Pointing to the London uprisings of 2011, sparked in response to Mark Duggan’s fatal shooting, barrister Abimbola Johnson told The Independent that the current two-tier claims are “ahistorical”.
“In 2011, we saw a lot of custodial sentences being handed down to those convicted of participating in the riots,” Ms Johnson, also the chair of a police race action plan, said.
“Many of them were young, people of colour and first-time offenders. We saw a significant number of people arrested and then charged off the basis of police-led identification evidence from often rather grainy CCTV images – and a significant expansion in the use of controversial suspicionless stop and search powers.
“A lot of first-time offenders were also given custodial sentences due to the context of public unrest. The idea that using similar approaches now signifies ‘two-tiered’ policing is therefore ahistorical and frankly untrue.”
Earlier this year, a study by the Network for Policing Monitoring (Netpol) detailed a “confused”, “racist” and “threatening” police response to pro-Palestine marches with “unusually high” levels of surveillance and harassment
In 2021, Netpol published another report about how Black Lives Matter protests were policed, which uncovered excessive use of force including baton charges, horse charges, pepper spray and violent arrest.
Kevin Blowe, campaigns coordinator at Netpol, described claims of “two-tier” policing as “a deliberate racist and Islamophobic dog-whistle”, as well as a ”distraction”.
“They are intended to pretend the far right and its deliberate violence are just “legitimate opinions” that are unfairly policed,” he told The Independent.
“I can understand why people might want to prove this is untrue by analysing arrest and sentencing statistics, but this is exactly what the far right wants too: a distraction from its own violent behaviour.
“The more important question is what a politician like Farage is siding with and embracing, at the worst possible moment, the language of rioters terrorising communities.”
Violent unrest has broken out in parts of the UK after false speculation about the identity of the teenager suspected of killing three young girls in a knife attack in Southport last month.
More than 400 arrests have been made at far-right marches, while more than 100 people have now been charged.
Midlands-based bishop Desmond Jaddoo, founder of the Windrush National Organisation, said the two-tier discourse is “an ongoing tit-for-tat diversion”.
“There is a lot of political rhetoric being used here; we must not forget our three little girls who have lost their lives and we must not forget that this unrest is sheer racism,” he told The Independent.
“These comments are unhelpful in terms of creating a better Britain whose post-war wealth is based upon people of colour and the Windrush generation and the wider commonwealth playing their part.
“The only tough talk we need as a nation right now is to tackle the root causes of this once and for all – as we have a periodic cycle of racial unrest, which only sparks comment with no tangible outcome or progression towards us living together as a nation of people from diverse backgrounds.”