Article by Nisha Rikhi
In recent weeks, we have seen violence and public disorder sweep across the country. This violence has been perpetrated by far-right thugs who are racists and xenophobes. This article explores how the threat from the far-right can be tackled.
The government needs to build new prison facilities as a matter of urgency. This is because we urgently need more prison places so that we can send dangerous people to prison. The shortage of prison places may have led some far-right rioters to believe that they could commit crimes and escape prison. The government needs to build more prisons across the country so that there are ample prison places to house offenders. By creating more prisons, the government will be sending a message to those who commit crimes that they take the security and safety of the British people seriously. Additionally, they could create prison spaces in the short term by allowing the release of non-violent offenders who are deemed to be of low risk from prison. This would instantly free up hundreds, if not thousands of prison spaces for dangerous and violent criminals who need to be in prison.
The Crown Prosecution Service needs to prosecute these far-right thugs on hate crime charges and terrorism charges. The people who have been rioting are racist Islamophobes who do not want immigrants of colour or Muslims to come to this country. By targeting Muslims and people of colour, these rioters are committing hate crimes. A hate crime is a criminal act that is committed against someone because they have a special characteristic. In this case, the special characteristics are race and religion, which are being used by the far-right to identify targets for their riots. We have seen mosques attacked, hotels housing asylum seekers set on fire, Muslim graves desecrated, and immigration advice centres attacked. These are not isolated attacks. They are organised, coordinated anti-immigrant, anti-Muslim attacks that are being launched by far-right groups who believe that we should have less immigration and that we should send asylum seekers back to their countries. These are the people who believe that Britain is being Islamised and that British culture is being harmed by the presence of black and brown migrants. That is xenophobia, racism and Islamophobia in its crudest form. But we have seen that some riots have descended into terrorism.
The police need to arrest everyone who expresses xenophobic, racist, Islamophobic views in the country. It does not matter whether those views are expressed online or offline, the fact is that the expression of those political views fuels far-right extremism and violence on our streets. The police need to round up the racists and extremists who poison our national discourse with their vitriol and hatred as a matter of urgency. These people should be charged with inciting hate crimes, at the very least, as there are many rioters who were inspired to commit violence by the views these extremists were expressing.
Education is vital to tackling the far-right. The current climate of disinformation has fuelled the far-right as people have given oxygen to views that are patently untrue. This means that the government needs to mandate that children are taught to discern between facts and disinformation. Teachers now need to start teaching children facts, logic and critical thinking. Children must be taught about the benefits of immigration, how multiculturalism has benefited the country, and why Britain has a moral and legal obligation to accept refugees.
In response to demands for less immigration, the government should increase the number of refugees that we accept each year and relax immigration requirements. This is because we as a nation should be doing the exact opposite of what the far-right extremists want. If they want fewer refugees, we should accept more refugees. If they want less immigration, we should be encouraging more immigration. Multiculturalism has been a blessing and a success for this country. There are mosques, Asian restaurants, ethnic minority community centres and synagogues all over the country. Migrants are working in the NHS and in other industries, reducing the nation’s skills shortage and contributing to our economic growth. When far-right extremists want to erase the fabric of this country, the government should actively be allowing more migrants in and encouraging wider resettlement of those migrants. The government should be encouraging migrants to settle in communities where there are no migrants or where there is a very small migrant population. The more ethnically diverse we make towns and cities across the country, the less chance the far-right will have to thrive as their voices will be drowned out by the voices of the majority.
The government should launch a nationwide building project. The government should be building thousands of affordable homes across the country. We should also be building new hospitals and new schools across the country. This is because one of the complaints raised by groups opposed to immigration is that it puts pressure on the housing supply, school places, GP appointments and dentist appointments. What these people fail to realise is that the housing shortage, medical appointments and the shortage of school places exist because successive governments have failed to sensibly invest in the future. Therefore, the government needs to enact a significant building project that aims to build thousands of new homes across the country. The government should requisition waste green belt land that sits on either side of major railway lines and disused industrial sites and build thousands of affordable homes on them. The government should also steamroll through planning reforms so that local communities cannot object to the building of new homes, new schools, new dental surgeries and new GP surgeries in their communities. This is because there are too many people who object to necessary and essential development in their communities, thereby giving far-right extremists a reason to justify their barbaric crimes.
In conclusion, there are several ways the government could tackle the threat posed by the far-right. The far-right poses a growing danger in the UK, Europe and even in the USA. The government must act decisively to stamp out racism, Islamophobia and xenophobia which is at the core of the far-right ideology and severely punish those who commit hate crimes. This is the only way to stamp out far-right extremism and stop people from expressing such abhorrent views designed only to incite violent crime.
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