According to their records, the police have arrested more than 1,000 people across Britain for rioting following the tragic murders of three young girls in Southport on 29 July 2024. The Labour government responded rapidly with a crackdown involving multiple arrests. Many rioters are now facing jail.

The generally accepted explanation for these unprecedented riots is that right-wing extremists, spurred on by others online, are the root cause. This simplistic analysis implies that locking up a few hundred people will solve the problem. Indeed, the fact that the riots subsided following the crackdown reinforces the idea that arrests and prison sentences are all that are needed to restore order.

Weaknesses in the current narrative

There are significant weaknesses in this explanation. Firstly, Britain has experienced violent demonstrations in the past. In August 2011, looting, arson and violent conflict – some fatal – broke out in towns and cities across the country. The unrest was triggered by the shooting in London of a Black man, Mark Duggan, by the Metropolitan Police. At the time, David Lammy, the current Foreign Secretary and MP for the London constituency of Tottenham, strongly condemned the police for their heavy-handed approach. It would be a stretch to argue that right-wing extremists were responsible for this violence.

Similar unrest occurred in the St Pauls district of Bristol in 1986, which has a high concentration of ethnic minorities. Riots erupted after a raid by Avon and Somerset Police looking for illegal drugs and contraband. But the rioting, which took place in a relatively deprived community, was a backlash against heavy-handed policing rather than an expression of right-wing extremism.

Internet algorithms are often blamed for disseminating fake news and reinforcing extremism, but recent research challenges this narrative

Another problem with current assumptions is that recent research challenges the narrative that the internet incites violence. Online algorithms are often blamed for disseminating fake news and reinforcing extremism. In a recent book reviewing the literature on this topic, Ken Newton argues; 'widely publicised false information about Covid did not result in a widely misinformed population. On the contrary, social media seem to inform people and have little effect on their political attitudes'.

Alternative explanations for the violence

If the current narrative about the riots has weaknesses, what, then, explains the outbreak? Data from the UK Census of 2021 at the parliamentary constituency level reveals four alternative explanations for the sudden upsurge.

One possibility, which fits with the radical-right narrative, is that rioting in the streets – which has also occurred in other European countries – is the product of opposition to immigration. If this is true, it would follow that constituencies with many immigrants would be more likely to experience violence than those with few.

A second explanation, linked to the first, is that Islamophobia in the wider population causes riots. Indeed, rioters did target some mosques. But once again, this theory implies that we should see the most rioting in constituencies with the highest percentage of Muslims.

A third possibility is that violence would be most likely in constituencies in which the Reform party performed well in the recent general election. Reform is a radical-right party descending from the United Kingdom Independence party (UKIP), which campaigned for Britain to leave the European Union. Its leader Nigel Farage was a former Member of the European Parliament and is a right-wing populist. Labour MP Andy Macdonald has criticised Farage for stirring up the riots with his rhetoric.

The broadest explanation for the riots is that they are a response to underlying poverty and deprivation

Finally, the fourth and broadest explanation for the riots is that they are a response to underlying poverty and deprivation. This is a theory that has gained credibility over time. Deprivation creates resentment and discontent: what the social psychologist William Runciman called ‘relative deprivation'. In some circumstances, such deprivation can foment violence. According to this theory, riots would be most likely to occur in the left-behind areas of Britain.

Correlations with census and voting data

To test these hypotheses, we can identify communities at the constituency level which recently experienced rioting. Some, such as Tamworth in Staffordshire, are single parliamentary constituencies. Others, including the cities of Nottingham and Manchester, involve more than one constituency. We exclude London from this exercise because, as the capital city, it is the scene of many protests and demonstrations. London-based events often focus on Parliament, and attract not just locals, but people from all over the country.

The chart below shows the correlations between four indicators of the alternative explanations and the incidence of rioting. Potential explanations are the percentage of ethnic minorities, the percentage of Muslims, Reform party vote share in the 2024 general election, and a constituency's incidence of child poverty.

Riots in Britain: four potential explanations

As always, a perfect correlation between the variables would score 1.0, and no correlation at all would score zero. The chart shows that rioting was unrelated to the Reform vote across the 632 constituencies in Britain. It also shows weak correlations between the percentage of ethnic minorities and the percentage of Muslims in constituencies. The correlation between rioting and poverty, however, is significantly stronger.

The radical-right explanation for the riots has some support, but the evidence for it is weak

This means that the radical-right explanation for the riots has some support, but the evidence for it is weak. No doubt racists and political extremists were involved in the riots, but the data does not support the idea that such people caused them. Indeed, the data suggests that the riots are a symptom rather than a cause. Deprivation in communities which feel left behind appears to be much more of a contributory factor in outbreaks of violent unrest. A similar exercise in other European countries would very likely reinforce this conclusion.

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