It has been a year since the Southport attack that ignited a wave of violent, racist riots across the United Kingdom. Unruly mobs—fuelled by false claims that the perpetrator was Muslim—launched coordinated attacks on mosques, Muslim-owned businesses, homes, and individuals perceived to be Muslim.
As the riots raged outside, I was finalising the last chapters of my novel, The Second Coming, set in a dystopian future where a Christian militia inspired by English nationalism seizes control of London, bans Islam, and deports Muslims to refugee camps in Birmingham.
But as I wrote, I realised that this dystopia is not a distant nightmare—it is alarmingly close to today’s Britain.
Violence Recycled from the Past
The images that shaped my fictional world were drawn from real memories of the England I grew up in—a time when racist violence was rampant. White gangs hunted us down, especially after pub hours, in what they proudly called “Paki-bashing” sprees.
Knife attacks and petrol bombings weren’t rare. Far-right groups like the National Front and British National Party openly called for the forced return of all non-white “immigrants.”
Even going to school meant running through a corridor of racial slurs. In playgrounds, we were surrounded and taunted with racist chants.
As a student, I lost count of the number of times I was physically assaulted in schools, streets, pubs, and public spaces.
In East London, I stood shoulder-to-shoulder with local youth from Brick Lane, defending our communities with our fists from waves of racist attackers.
This was not an isolated experience. Across the UK, the far right organised hundreds of marches, emboldening white supremacist gangs to attack with impunity.
At one point, I was arrested along with others in what became known as the Bradford 12 case—we were charged with “conspiring to make explosives” for filling milk bottles with petrol in preparation to defend our neighbourhoods.
Our struggle—whether in Brick Lane or Bradford—was part of a broader battle against institutional racism and far-right ideologies that sought to divide and terrorise us.
Yesterday’s Fringe Has Become Today’s Power
Back then, as terrifying as street violence was, it largely came from the margins of society. The ruling political class, despite its complicity, publicly distanced itself from the far right. Even Margaret Thatcher, in a 1978 interview, hinted at agreement with racist rhetoric when she said, “People are really rather afraid that people might swamp this country with a different culture.”
Though subtle, this was still coded approval. But Thatcher, once in power, maintained a public separation from extremist movements.
Today, that separation has vanished.
Prime Minister Keir Starmer and prominent members of the Labour Party have increasingly adopted far-right talking points, regularly pledging to “crack down” on those seeking asylum.
His predecessor, Rishi Sunak, and ministers such as Suella Braverman, were no different. Braverman falsely claimed that child grooming gangs were predominantly made up of British Pakistani men with “values fundamentally at odds with British values.”
Islamophobia: The New Face of Old Racism
While overt white supremacy hasn’t disappeared, it has been superseded by a more insidious form—Islamophobia—intensified over the past two decades.
The former “Paki-bashing” gangs have evolved into institutional campaigns equating Islam with terrorism, Pakistanis with sexual exploitation, and asylum seekers with parasitic invaders.
This is the soil in which the far-right Reform Party has taken root and flourished. What was once unspeakable is now electable. With both Labour and the Tories mired in corruption and elite interests, Reform’s xenophobic populism is falsely marketed as a “clean” alternative.
As of recent polling:
- Reform commands 30% of voter support
- Labour trails at 22%
- Conservatives at 17%
Suppressing the Truth, Fueling the Hate
On the anniversary of the Southport riots, The Economist chose to publish a survey—not about economic hardship or the effects of austerity—but on race.
Findings included:
- Nearly 50% of respondents believed multiculturalism is harmful to the UK
- 73% predicted new race riots shortly
This deliberate fuelling of racist sentiment goes hand-in-hand with Britain’s imperial legacy. The modern face of racism thrives on old colonial imagery—depicting the non-Western “savage” as something to be tamed by the “civilised” colonial ruler.
These same ideologies—once used to justify empire, looting, war, and famine—are now domestically repackaged.
From Gaza to London: One System, One Violence
This racism is no longer confined to the streets. It is now visible in:
- The suppression of pro-Palestinian voices
- The unquestioning military and political support for Israel as it bombs hospitals, schools, and starves children in Gaza
Britain, a former empire built on racial violence, has simply refocused that violence inward and outward at once. It enables Israel’s genocide because it was built on the same foundations.
The empire taught Britain how to dehumanise entire peoples, strip them of dignity, and use that dehumanisation to justify colonisation, theft, and killing. Genocide is part of Britain’s national DNA—which explains its current alliance with Israel’s brutal campaign.
Hope in Resistance
Amidst this darkness, people from all faiths and none have risen up in protest. They may not have stopped the bombs, but they have exposed the lies, the hypocrisy, and the elite complicity behind this system.
Only through such grassroots solidarity and direct confrontation with racism can we prevent the nightmare world I once imagined in fiction from becoming tomorrow’s reality.
