L
ondres. Complaints that last week’s far-right riots have been met with more harshness than other recent unrest amount to ” gaslighting “racist,” say equality activists.
Mark Rowley, head of London’s Metropolitan Police, has described complete nonsense the accusations of a police double standardsand argued that those who make such statements put officers at risk.
The country’s government has also dismissed suggestions that these unrest has been met with more severity than other recent protests and unrest. Prime Minister Keir Starmer, who Twitter/X owner Elon Musk has dubbed Keir Double Standardsaid that the accusations are not a topic.
The Prime Minister has also been accused by Robert Jenrick, a contender for the leadership of the Toriesif not as clear as it could be as to some of the riots starting from sectarian bands.
The popularity that the phrase has gained police double standards constitutes “one more example of the complicity of the major media with the gaslighting “racist,” said the leading British social justice think tank Runnymede Trust.
Dr. Shabna Begum, president of that organization, told The Independent: “It is insulting to claim that communities of color face ‘more favorable’ police treatment. The popularity that the phrase ‘police double standard’ has gained is yet another example of the complicity of the mainstream media with the gaslighting racist.
The phrase implies that there was an equivalent level of violence at the Black Lives Matter protests, which were largely peaceful, and that the police went soft on those protests; neither of which is true. The idea that police have ever favored communities of color is a direct insult, given all we know about the disproportionate use of force against them.
Statistics show many racial disparities in everyday police treatment. Official data show that police forces in England and Wales disproportionately stop and search people from minority ethnic communities. Black people accounted for 46 per cent of all stops for searches in the year ending March 2023, compared with their share of 4 per cent of the population, while Asian people made up 39 per cent, compared with their share of 9 per cent of the population.
The Runnymede charity says evidence of double standards by police is borne out by the nature of the charges being levied against those involved in the current racist riots. If anything, a question should be asked as to why the charges so far have been for violent disorder, and not the more serious charges used against Kill the Bill protesters in 2021 (against proposed police and criminal law legislation).added Dr Begum.
Pointing to the uprisings in London in 2011, in response to the shooting of Mark Duggan, lawyer Abimbola Johnson said current claims of unequal treatment are ignorant of history. In 2001 We saw many custodial sentences issued against those convicted of participating in the riots.said Johnson, also a former chair of a police racial action plan.
“Many were young, people of colour and first-time offenders. We saw significant numbers of people arrested and then booked on the basis of police identifications from grainy CCTV footage, as well as a significant expansion of the use of controversial suspicionless stop and search powers. Many first-time offenders received custodial sentences largely because of the context of public unrest. The idea that the use of such methods today represents a ‘police double standard’ is therefore ignorant of history and frankly false.”
In previous months, a study by the Police Monitoring Network (Netpol) detailed a police response confusing, racist and threatening to the marches in favor of Palestine, with levels unusually high of surveillance and harassment.
In 2021, Netpol published another report regarding police actions at Black Lives Matter protests, which revealed excessive use of force, including baton charges, horse charges, use of pepper spray, and violent arrest.
Kevin Blowe, campaigns coordinator at Netpol, said the allegations of police double standards constitute a deliberate and Islamophobic coded messageas well as a distractor. Its purpose is to “pretend that the far right and its deliberate violence are just ‘legitimate opinions’ treated unfairly by the police,” he warned.
I can understand why people would want to prove this false by looking at arrest and sentencing statistics, but that is exactly what the far right want: a distraction from their own violent behaviour. The bigger question is what a politician like Nigel Farage is aligning himself with and endorsing at the worst possible time: the language of rioters terrorising communities..
Violent riots have erupted in parts of Britain following false speculation about the identity of a teenager suspected of murdering three young women in a stabbing attack in Southport last month. More than 400 arrests have been made at far-right marches, while more than 100 people have been charged.
Midlands-based Bishop Desmond Jaddoo, founder of the National Windrush Organisation, argued that double standards are an eye for an eye distraction. They are using a lot of political rhetoric; we must not forget our three young girls who lost their lives, and that these riots are vile racism.
These comments do nothing to create a better Britain, whose post-war prosperity is based on people of colour, the Windrush generation and the British Commonwealth doing their part. The only strong talk we need right now as a nation is to once and for all address the root causes of this, because we have a periodic cycle of race riots, which only elicit commentary without any tangible results of progress towards living together as a nation of people from diverse backgrounds.
© The Independent
Translation: Jorge Anaya
