Long Term Effects of Recent Rioting in the UK

Over the past few days, we have seen numerous videos of widespread protests and rioting, in addition to artificial ‘counter-protests’, throughout UK. While mainstream media outlets would like to pretend that these protests and riots were entirely due to a bunch of uneducated white working-class people deciding to unleash their inner racist in response to a knife attack by a 17-year teenager of Rwandan descent, the reality is much more complicated. While public reaction to this attack, which killed 3 children and seriously injured about 10 more, in Southport was the proverbial spark which lit these protests and riots- a lot of dry tinder has been gathering for many years, if not decades. It also does not help that the current government in that country is handling the situation rather poorly, in addition to pretending (like many of its predecessors) that there are no serious underlying problems.

While the official narrative put forth by current government in UK promotes the idea that all of this unpleasantness is the consequence of racism among the white working class, a closer examination of the situation reveals a pile of unresolved socio-economic grievances topped with a sprinkling of racism. To understand how things reached this point we have look at the history of similar events in post-WW2 British history- more specifically, how those previous instances of protests and rioting were precipitated. The very short version is that almost every single instances of such disturbances in the past occurred when the following conditions were met; high rates of unemployment, large reduction in social services under guise of austerity and dumping immigrants into already poor and decaying neighborhoods. My point is that incidents involving non-white immigrants are merely the sparks which lit these fires, not the fuel. That part comes from somewhere else in the system.

To better understand the source of this fuel and why such incidents are now almost inevitable and will ultimately destroy the legitimacy of any government elected via the current system, we have to go back in history to when the conditions for creating them began- specifically to the first two decades after WW2.

1] While history books record UK as being on the “winning” side in WW2 (and WW1), these victories were pyrrhic. Both world wars required that country to take on huge amounts of foreign debt, lose a lot of young men and come out in a far worse shape than when it entered them. The end of WW2 also saw the beginning of decolonization with UK losing most of its empire within the next 10-15 years. To add insult to injury, it became a vassal of USA after the mid-1950s. However what distinguished UK from other nations such as Germany, Japan and even France after WW2 was the path it took for economic development. While many other nations decided to support their own industries and manufacturing sectors, successive governments in UK were unable or unwilling to do so- which is especially ironic since the industrial revolution started in that country. To make another long story short, by the 1970s it was obvious that the country had lost the ability to compete in many areas- especially technology and manufacturing- leading to a lot of job losses, economic problems and social unrest.

This is when the voters elected Thatcher and supported her neoliberal revolution which led to the government supporting banking and finance above everything else. To be fair, this change mirrors what we saw in USA under Reagan- though the resulting deindustrialization in USA took two decades to reach levels comparable to UK in the early 1980s. To summarize, Thatcher’s policies destroyed any hope for a recovery in the technology and manufacturing sector of UK. Privileging the financial and service sector above everything else also accelerated the slow-motion destruction of every city, town and village in UK which was not Londonor a handful of other cities- mostly in the south. In other words, places in UK which were not London, had a well-known university or major tourist attraction were out of luck. The resultant situation is similar to what we see in the ‘Rust Belt’ of the Midwest or many parts of the Deep South- with similar outcomes.

2] While this profound economic downturn was devastating to many parts of UK, many successive governments had the brilliant idea of importing even more people- in the form of immigrants to make it look like the economy was growing. While some of these immigrants did pretty well and contributed to their new country, an equally large number could not and ended up in poor ethnic enclaves. While there is some correlation between their country of origin and eventual success or failure, the much bigger issue is how most successive governments mishandled the immigration issue. The most charitable version is that governments had no real idea or plan on how to handle the non-white immigrant issue, especially when it came to those who could not succeed and ended up in ethnic enclaves. While there always has been vague talk of eventual assimilation and formation of a new British identity, the reality is that UK has become a nation of closed ethnic enclaves- outside London and a few other cities.

The poor assimilation of certain racial and ethic minorities has also resulted in those people being often employed in the informal and criminal sectors. In combination with living in ethnic enclaves and having strong religious or cultural identities, this creates a lot of fuel for discontent among the majority- especially in areas which are already poor and deindustrialized. This issue is especially problematic during periods of economic contraction and cuts to government services and, historically, rioting or violence against racial minorities is strongly correlated with prolonged negative economic conditions. And this brings us to how the economic trajectory of UK changed after Thatcher’s revolution. While there was a lot of initial resistance to her policies, significant economic growth caused by North Sea oil extraction and the banking sector in London did cause a noticeable improvement in the living standard for a significant minority of the population. It also helped that immigration to UK was not especially high during the 1980s. Things stated to go off track for a few years in the early 1990s, but returned to some semblance of growth by the mid 1990s all the way up to the global financial crisis of 2008- and things have never really recovered since then.

3] The financial crisis of late 2008 can be considered as the proximate starting point of the current situation since it started a few trends which would combine into what is effectively a death spiral. For starters the conservative party, which came to power in aftermath of the 2008 crisis, had the brilliant idea of implementing severe and long-lasting cuts to many social programs in the name of economic austerity. Alongside this ridiculously dumb idea, they decided to greatly increase legal immigration (first from Eastern Europe and then other parts of the world) and not doing anything to stop the vast increase in number of illegal immigrants. And remember.. all of this in an medium sized island country which had undergone severe deindustrialization and was already full of poor British people. The conservative party also had other equally brilliant ideas such as further weakening worker protections and spending most of their time on political intrigue than govern an already floundering country.

Over the past decade, this combination of negative trends have reached levels where there is entire genre of YouTube videos and TV reports that depict (and profit from) urban decay in UK. When you combine this with successive governments (mostly conservative but also liberal) unwilling to do anything which actually improves the lives of voters, it is not surprising that trust in government and institutions has gone down a lot, even since 2010. The COVID response was another nail in the coffin for public trust in government and institutions. Everything from ineffectual but heavy-handed policies, horrendously bad epidemiology modelling, euthanizing old people in nursing homes to general ineptitude and further cutbacks and delays for everything from healthcare to building affordable housing have rightfully made many people in that country why they have a government or institutions of any sort since they clearly cannot deliver on their most basic functions. This is why the conservative party lost so many voters in most recent election, and labor “won” by simply not losing as many voters as conservatives.

4] This state of affairs is clearly not sustainable over the long term. While I am not making outrageous claims about the eventual outcome such as a revolution, it is clear that UK is firmly down the path taken by east European countries in the 1980s where people lost so much faith in the government over 10-15 years that they had no further interest in the continued survival of their system. No amount of repression, threats or manipulation can make people support a system if they can clearly see it unable to deliver on basic promises and services. Once people starting mentally tuning out of a ideology or system at this level, there is no way to bring it back. For example- it is very clear that there is two tier policing in UK based on whether you are from the white working class white or one of the ethnic minorities. It is also clear that the police in UK are largely ineffectual at doing much about the sort of criminal activity which most people care about and has become an employment agency for fat butch women and effeminate men who love to prosecute people with impolite opinions.

It does not help that the political class, in all three major parties, live in their carefully curated social, political and opinion bubbles. To say that these parasites lack the ability or competence to govern is an understatement. It does not help that the civil service of UK is now also full of self-serving and incompetent people whose chief skills include mouthing empty platitudes and coming up with increasingly dumb ideas to address non-existent problem such as “man-made climate change” or the threat of a Russian invasion. Anybody with half-a-brain can see that these sinecured morons don’t care about things which matter to people such as inflation, cost of energy, road and rail infrastructure maintenance, cost of housing, finding for public healthcare, removing administrative bloat and paralysis in everything from healthcare to local government. Instead the political class and bureaucrats are busy coming up with more ways to worsen the lives of the general population.

In summary, the recent riots in UK are just another milestone in the loss of public trust and slow motion implosion of the current political and administrative setup of that country. No amount of social media censoring, ineffectual ‘nudge’ committees and pretense of reform can alter what people experience constantly in their lives- each and every day. Tone deaf political leaders such as Keir Starmer are just a small sideshow in the much larger arc of a slow motion system implosion.

What do you think? Comments?