UK Riots: Squeezing Down Rights, Well-Being & Empowering Police is Recipe for Disaster, Prof Says

Exactly 10 years ago, the England Riots shattered Albion in the wake of the death of Mark Duggan, a 29-year-old unarmed mixed-race man who was fatally shot by the Metropolitan Police in Tottenham, north London, on 4 August 2011. A British professor has explained why the UK could face 2011-style riots again.

The 2011 unrest erupted in Tottenham, quickly engulfed London, Birmingham, and Bristol, and spread across the rest of the country, being accompanied by looting, arson, and standoffs with armed police. The turmoil lasted for six days, claiming the lives of at least five people and resulting in £200 million ($277.4 million) worth of damage.

However, the England Riots are not a thing of the past, warns the British opposition Labour Party. The risk of a repeat of the 2011 violent protests is "higher than ever", since the country still remains a "tinderbox", recent report by the party claims.

"You can’t say – and shouldn’t say – there will be more riots. You can say the risk [of riots] we’re carrying today is higher than it was ten years ago", Shadow Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government of the UK Steve Reed told Sky News on Thursday.

Ten years on from the 2011 England riots, I believe that we could see a repeat in the near future.

We must restore families at the heart of social policy, tackle youth unemployment, and strengthen police-community relations.

My latest @TheCriticMag.https://t.co/PnVNTIr5yt

— Dr Rakib Ehsan (@rakibehsan) August 6, 2021

​Britain has found itself in uncharted waters in the aftermath of Brexit, COVID-related lockdowns, economic recession, soaring inflation, and fears that the Delta variant would persist into the autumn, further curtailing the long-anticipated economic recovery. At the same time, Boris Johnson's latest Beating Crime Plan granting the police new powers to stop and search people without reasonable suspicion may trigger ire and frustration among British people of colour, already disproportionately targeted by British law enforcement officers, according to The Independent. BoJo's Policing Bill appears to pour some more gasoline on the fire as it allows police to create criminal offences for demonstrators who cause "serious annoyance", the online newspaper suggests.

Nearly 10 years ago London was shocked by massive riot across every London brought madness as the police and government lost control of London for 2-3 days the riot was link to the police shooting death of Tottenham man mark duggan

Who remembers the London riot of 2011.. pic.twitter.com/NK5OgwbY3f

— London & UK Crime (@CrimeLdn) August 2, 2021

​The Labour Party's "tinderbox" analogy has certain grounds, according to Peter Squires, professor of criminology and public policy at the University of Brighton.

"Britain [is] still divided over the consequences of Brexit, frustrated at the Government’s serial mismanagement of the COVID pandemic", he notes.

However, the roots of the problem lie even deeper, originating from Tory-imposed austerity measures which are still taking a toll on Britain’s poorest communities, according to the professor.

"Some cities have lost 90 percent of their youth service budgets over a decade, children’s services and family centres, a vital resource for some of the country’s poorest children, and in the competitive educational environment where schools are fighting one another for results, school exclusions have sky-rocketed, and the consequences in crime and gangs and violence are plain for all to see", Squires highlights.

Speaking to Sky News, Reed lamented the fact that while "there were half a million families who needed support to bring up their children safely but weren’t getting it" there are now "1.6 million children in those circumstances" by "the government’s own figures."

Ahead of the ten year anniversary of Mark Duggan's killing we looked at the areas most affected by the riots, and found many are still among the poorest in the country:https://t.co/bOifIhnSqX pic.twitter.com/bQfJcLjjTu

— Niamh McIntyre (@niamh_mcintyre) July 30, 2021

According to Squires, Britain's successive conservative governments, "seeking tax cuts for the already wealthy, have increased inequality, disinvested in the fabric of society, savaged local services and thrown vulnerable people and communities to waste".

Concurrently, these governments were "using police power to clamp down upon the dissent and disturbance which inevitably follows, echoing the practices of some of the world's more repressive regimes", he points out, adding that the new legislation criminalising protests will only rub salt into old wounds.

The academic warns that "squeezing down rights, well-being and opportunities and further empowering the police is a dangerous and anti-democratic tack to follow".  

"There is a dangerous volatility – perhaps Reed’s idea of a ‘tinderbox’ – evidenced by the shameful scenes as some people took it upon themselves to storm Wembley in the Euro-Football finals, many people have had enough and justify their anger by the wanton hypocrisy", he concludes.