Published: August 2, 2024
Over the course of the last few days, we have witnessed violent disturbances break out in Southport, and then in Hartlepool, Manchester and London. These disturbances followed the horrific stabbing of children in Southport, adding further to the grief and stress of a community that had already suffered unimaginable violence. Southport’s grief was used as a spark for disorders that in reality had little or no connection with it.
The reports and images of these disturbances are deeply troubling. If we are to successfully fight back against this kind of disorder, we need to learn important lessons from this; lessons that similar events have taught us time and time again.
It is vitally important that we see what is going on in these incidents, that we understand how we can most effectively respond to them, and how we can proactively strengthen the cohesion and resilience of our communities, so that we are able to withstand whatever tensions are stirred by those with the desire to peddle hatred and division.
What we have seen play out in Southport and other places follows a pattern. Dis/misinformation is spread via social media by both deliberate agitators and the unwitting. It is preyed upon by those whose objective is to sow hatred and division. The lead actors in this typically come from outside the communities they seek to destabilise (as we have seen in Southport) through violence and disorder.
The impact these instigators can have on communities, how successful they are in sowing division, typically depends on the strength of existing relationships within and between local communities and on the response of local leadership. Underlying social challenges like poverty and housing can also mean that some places are more vulnerable than others to the language of division and hate.
In Southport, we have seen the whole community and different faith groups come together to support one another, in rejecting the perpetrators of violence and helping to clear up after them. Local MPs in Southend and Hartlepool have been prominent in calling for calm and the rejection of division and hate.
The far right represent an especially malevolent threat to the well-being and stability of communities across Britain. But there are other axes of division and tension in our society as well. And we have seen other examples in recent years of the same patterns of online dis/misinformation, spread and utilised by divisive actors to organise unrest in quite different contexts, both in the UK and other countries.
These incidents demand a serious response. They require an effective police response and political response. And we have seen some of that this week, including the announcement of a new violent disorder unit.
But crucially, they also require taking a strategic long-term approach to the underlying causes of social division and threats to cohesion in our society. This is something different successive governments have largely failed to do, choosing instead to respond reactively to each individual crisis.
In order to break this cycle, we are calling on the new Labour government to:
- Set out its approach to social cohesion and put in place a long-term national cohesion strategy.
- Empower and support local leadership and that work undertaken by councils, civil society and faith organisations which we know is most effective in building strong, resilient communities.
- Rebuild capacity at national and local level to monitor, and effectively respond to, de-escalate and avert community tensions.
- Put in place a national cohesion measurement framework to enable us to fully understand and track risks, threats to cohesion and areas of potential vulnerability.
Belong will work tirelessly with national and local government partners, with our members and all civil society partners, to help put in place and implement such a vision.
But this work must begin now, building on examples of positive practice which do exist, resourcing their extension and development, and supporting the good sense and commitment to healthy social relations which so many civic leaders and ordinary community members have expressed in the last few days.
If you would like to contact us regarding this please email hello@belongnetwork.co.uk