Permission to Hate: Political Rhetoric and the United Kingdom Riots 2024

Abstract

The Southport stabbings that took place on 29 July 2024, resulted in widespread rioting across the United Kingdom throughout the summer of the same year. This civil unrest served as a platform for copious expressions of Islamophobic and anti-migrant sentiment. Following the LIAS-funded ‘Reading the Riots’ workshop, this paper is dedicated to outlining the events that unfolded in Southport and subsequently across the United Kingdom in 2024, along with highlighting the irresponsible rhetoric uttered by politicians that, it is argued, engendered manifestations of hate directed towards the nation’s migrant and Muslim populations. Whilst doing so, this paper also references examples of irresponsible political rhetoric triggering expressions of hate against said populations both before and after the riots, thus highlighting that that which took place across the summer of 2024 was not an anomaly but rather an example of the spectre that haunts British society, namely, that of political rhetoric granting the citizenry the permission to hate and target the nation’s most vulnerable. Looking to the future, this paper concludes that this spectre is likely to continue to endure.