The trouble with England – why rioting in the UK has not spread to Scotland and Wales
The trouble with England – why rioting in the UK has not spread to Scotland and Wales
Marco Antonsich, Reader in Political Geography, Loughborough University, Michael Skey Lecturer in Media and Communications, Loughborough University The violent unrest that has caused so much damage in the UK has not in fact happened across the UK. It has almost been exclusively confined to England. ...
The violent unrest that has caused so much damage in the UK has not in fact happened across the UK. It has almost been exclusively confined to England.
True, violent riots also took place in Belfast, Northern Ireland, but, interestingly enough, even there they were largely perpetrated by British loyalists, along with a few far-right extremists from Dublin.
The counter-protestors were seemingly mostly drawn from Northern Ireland’s Catholic community.
At least up until now, Scotland and Wales have remained peaceful. When considering why this is the case, we might look at how the English are positioned within the United Kingdom.
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After all the mess has been cleared from the streets, it would be advisable for the government and society as a whole, to have a debate about what “England” and “Englishness” stand for in a Union profoundly divided by rising nationalism and in a world where Britannia no longer rules the waves.
Northern Irish Protestant loyalists are essentially Englishman cosplayers. Just look at their Orangeman parades, with their bowler hats and Masonic aprons.
Nah, they're nutters with very weird ideas about Britishness, Irishness & everything else, but they no more look to the English for ideas about their own identity & how to manifest it than the English look to NI loyalists as a guide.
If anything they tend to rather despise Englishness, seeing their own culture as the one true, loyal holdout to the Union.
The aprons do seek to emulate Masonic regalia, but the ideals of the Orange Order are entirely contrary to those of Freemasonry, which in any case is not specifically English or even British.
This is very true.
It therefore seems plausible to suggest that the anomaly of the English – a powerful majority which often perceives itself as overlooked and ignored among the British nations – might play a role in explaining the current wave of protests and riots.
Interesting
Marco Antonsich, Reader in Political Geography, Loughborough University, Michael Skey Lecturer in Media and Communications, Loughborough University
I don't know how credible this makes his opinion.
I don’t know how credible this makes his opinion.
Because Loughborough is known for it's sports?
“The riots in our country don’t count because it was just a few racist weirdos.”
I think thenpoibt was more that it had a sectarian tinge, rather than being a left/right divide like elsewhere. So, maybe for different reasons than England. However, disaffected youth is always going to be at the core. The rise in middle aged rioters is a worrying trend.
One obvious reason the author doesn't explore is that neither Wales nor Scotland has ever experienced mass immigration nor profound demographic changes in their population.
Scotland remains 92.87% white (2022), Wales 94.2% (2021), compared to England at 81% (2021).
In Scotland, 2.2% identity as Muslim, 0.4% as Hindu, 0.1% as Jewish.
In England, 6.7% identify as Muslim, 1.8% as Hindu, 0.5% as Jewish.
Scotland and Wales are therefore much more homogenous as populations. They're whiter, less religious, and from similar backgrounds. They're not as diverse as England is and therefore don't have the challenges of community cohesion and social solidarity that England does.
It therefore doesn’t have the levels of intra- and inter-communal diversity which can provoke the kinds of tensions we've seen playing out in the streets of England over recent years, whether in Hindutva-Muslim ethnoreligious violence in Leicester or these anti-Islam and racist riots in recent weeks.
Scotland's sense of its national identity has also not been challenged to the same extent as in England. Nor has a patriotic attitude towards Scottishness been derided as hateful, bigoted or xenophobic, as it has in England. (This sometimes leads to highly funny events, though, like when ScotNats try to claim they were victims of the British Empire.)
Racism is mostly unrelated to actual immigration. In Germany the east has comparable immigration percentages to Scotland but leads the nation in fascist poll numbers by a huge margin. Economic factors are orders of magnitude more important
Glasgow is only 78% white and more diverse than many of the towns that rioted.
Town/City % White Population Belfast 96.7% Tamworth 95.3% Blackpool 94.6% Plymouth 93.1% Rotherham 90.7% Hull 89.7% Liverpool 84.8% Glasgow 78.6% Bristol 78.1% Manchester 66.3% Birmingham 57.9% It also takes on more asylum seekers than any other council, and Scotland as a whole takes on more refugees per capita.
"However, across the whole of the UK, only 1,960 refugees were brought to Britain through the scheme during 2020 and 2021 – meaning Scotland’s share totalled 13 per cent, well above the population share of 8.15 per cent."
"As of 11 July 2022 a total of 21,256 visas have been issued naming a Scottish sponsor – more than 20% of the UK total, and the highest number per head of population in the UK. Scotland is currently providing sanctuary for over 7,000 people, two-thirds of whom applied under the Scottish super sponsor scheme. This exceeds the 3,000 the Scottish Government committed to welcome when the scheme launched in March."