England Riots Against Mass Migration

• Mass protests across the UK and Northern Ireland were spurred by the vicious murder of children at the hands of a second-generation Rwandan man

• Many protests devolved into violent riots, with attacks on police, homes, and stores

• Decades of mass migration policy and insufficient assimilation contributed to protester anger

The story

From Southern England to Northern Ireland, thousands of protesters erupted into the streets to vent their anger at recent heinous crimes committed by migrants. The crime that broke the camel’s back involved a 17-year-old male, born in the UK to Rwandan parents, who went on a stabbing spree at a children’s dance class, killing three young girls and injuring eleven — five critically.

Many UK protests spiraled into riots as protesters clashed with police officers; some burned cars, broke windows, and looted stores. A veritable race war seemingly began, pitting the nation’s sizable Muslim population against the self-described white working class.

Videos show crowds of Muslim men shouting “Allahu Akbar” and taking to the streets to fight back against protesters — while groups of white Britons patrol streets and break windows of suspected Muslim homes in a show of intimidation. South Yorkshire protesters were seen breaking into hotels used to house migrants.

Immediately following the riots, the media came out in near-unanimity to denounce the far-right and “misinformation” that sparked their outrage. Following the attack on the dance school, rumors circulated online that the attacker was Muslim. In fact, he was not Muslim but a second-generation Rwandan and a natural-born UK citizen.

While the media concentrates on the riots, protester anger stems from decades of migration policy implemented by both state and non-state actors, which fostered a society resistant to unified British culture — instead promoting multiple distinct cultures that inevitably clash.

The politics

In response to the disorder sweeping the nation, UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer denounced “right-wing thuggery,” Nazi salutes in the streets, attacks on the police, and “wanton violence alongside racist rhetoric.”

Home Secretary Yvette Cooper used the word Islamophobia to describe the riots, following calls of various Labour Party members of Parliament (MPs) to condemn the prime minister for not quickly labeling them as such.

MPs and other critics of the protests point to an attack on a mosque in the town where the murders occurred as evidence that the movement harbors more sinister motives beyond expressing outrage at the gruesome murders.

Conservative Party member and Former Chancellor of the Exchequer, Nadhim Zadhawi, expressed that warning signs leading up to the protests have been present for years. “Too many from outside these shores refuse to integrate upon arrival, to learn the language, and to learn the ways of this place.”

Zadhawi, who was born in Iraq and migrated to the UK at age nine, voices the concerns of many in the UK — and in the West more broadly — that multiculturalism cannot be a mechanism by which a country integrates its newcomers. He suggests that migrants’ failure to conform to British culture “led to ghettoization and resentment between natives and recent arrivals.”

What the media ignores

Although a gruesome crime sparked the protests, anger has been building for years over the UK’s liberal migration policies. In 2023 alone, 1.2 million people migrated and, recently, thousands of migrants arrived by boat on the island’s southern shores.

In less than a month, since the new Labour government took power, an additional 3,000 migrants entered Britain illegally on small boats, bringing total small-boat crossings to 120,000 since 2018. These migrants are predominantly young males from Afghanistan, Sudan, Syria, and Eritrea.

In 2016, British voters opted to leave the European Union in the famous “Brexit” vote — largely because they wanted greater sovereignty over their borders. During Prime Minister Tony Blair's 1997-2007 reign, legal migration into the UK increased fivefold. By the time Blair left office, annual migration totaled around 273,000 but, in recent years, the number skyrocketed to unprecedented levels.

Advocates of drastically increasing UK migration argue — in similar fashion to advocates in the US — that because the natural-born population isn’t having enough children, migrants must be imported to prevent the economy from collapsing, by filling jobs openings which would otherwise remain vacant.

In addition to uncontrolled migration fueling native unrest, much disorder in the UK is incited by policy that turns a blind eye to vicious crimes committed by Muslim migrants in particular. One such case was the “grooming gangs” scandal which involved UK police ignoring Pakistani men coercing young white working-class English girls into sex slavery because they didn't want to be labeled racist.

While a majority of Brits want reduced migration — but cannot freely speak about the problems associated with it — many agree that pent up frustration and anger had to boil over into violent riots.

Why it matters

Chaos unfolding in Great Britain is the result of years of frustration with governance which allowed large-scale migration without sufficient assimilation, compounded by a media too fearful to openly address the issue.

Around 150 protesters were arrested to date, and dozens of police were injured. While the protests signal immense public discontent, particularly with Muslim migration, the accompanying violence and widespread chaos hinder the movement's chances of achieving any political success.

As already demonstrated, the issue has become suppressing white working-class violence rather than addressing mass migration. And with the left-wing Labour Party controlling government, the likelihood of reaching a political compromise with protesters appears out of the question.