Latest news with #socialtensions
The Independent
2 days ago
- Politics
- The Independent
UK is a ‘powder keg' of tensions and could easily ignite once again, report warns
A new report warns the UK is a "powder keg" of social tensions, risking further unrest a year after widespread riots across the country. Research reveals one in three adults rarely or never interact with people from different backgrounds, and up to seven in ten have not met local asylum seekers. The report highlights immigration concerns as the primary driver of local community tensions, exacerbated by political polarisation, declining trust in institutions, and the cost of living crisis. Sir Sajid Javid and Jon Cruddas, co-chairing a new commission, state that without urgent action, the "very basis of our democracy is at risk" due to societal fragmentation. Last summer's far-right riots, which targeted asylum seeker hotels, were fuelled by widespread misinformation regarding the identity of a knife attacker.
The Independent
2 days ago
- Politics
- The Independent
Britain is a ‘powder keg' of tensions which could easily ignite once again, report warns after summer riots
The UK is a 'powder keg' of social tensions which could easily ignite once again, a major report has warned a year after riots erupted across the country, sparked by the Southport knife attacks that killed three young girls. One in three adults, the equivalent of 15 million people, say they rarely or never meet people from different backgrounds, according to the findings of research into the nation's community strength and cohesion. It also found that up to seven in 10 have never met or interacted with local asylum seekers amid polarised debate on immigration, struggles with the cost of living and declining trust in politicians. Sir Sajid Javid and former Labour MP Jon Cruddas, who are chairing the new Independent Commission on Community and Cohesion, said the report shows 'clear evidence' that societal bonds are under growing pressure. Without action, the 'very basis of our democracy is at risk', they warned. 'This is leaving our society more fragmented, fragile, and less resilient to internal and external threats,' they said. 'At the same time, forces driving division are intensifying: political polarisation is deepening and trust in institutions is declining, while mounting economic pressures – particularly the cost of living crisis – are fuelling widespread frustration, intensified by a widespread belief that immigration policy is in chaos. 'These trends are inextricably entwined – narrowing the space for constructive dialogue and increasing the risk of further unrest and alienation.' It comes after last summer when far-right riots broke out in towns and cities across the country, with hotels housing asylum seekers targeted. The unrest was triggered after misinformation spread on social media claiming the attacker who launched a knife rampage at a Taylor Swift-themed children's dance class on 29 July, killing three girls, was a Muslim asylum seeker. The perpetrator was later revealed to be 17-year-old Axel Rudakubana, who was born in Cardiff to Rwandan parents who were Christians. The State of Us report, by independent think tank British Future and the Belong Network, described the clashes as the result of a 'tinderbox of long-term social pressures' which remain unaddressed. 'Without urgent action, unrest risks being reignited,' the report said. 'We saw what that can look like in the disorder of last summer. Attacks on visible minorities and people seeking asylum marked the UK's worst targeted violence in a generation. 'High streets, businesses and community spaces were damaged or destroyed and people fought the police in the streets.' The survey of 2,243 UK adults and eight focus groups (with a total of 71 participants) held around the UK, including in areas that faced riots, showed that concern around immigration is the top reason for tensions within local communities. Around half (49 per cent) of respondents believe that divisions between locals and those who have migrated to the UK, including refugees and asylum seekers, are negatively affecting how well people from different backgrounds can get along in their area. But the majority of people (67 per cent) say that they have never met or interacted with asylum seekers in their local area, or are unsure if they have. Divisions over migration were ranked more negatively than religious, ethnic, political and wealth-related divides. One in three adults say they rarely or never have the opportunity to meet people from different backgrounds. Financial security plays a part in this – half of people believe that they don't have enough money to go and meet people in common spaces, like cafes or pubs. During last year's riots, tensions over asylum seekers were central to fanning flames of violence, as misinformation about the identity of the killer was viewed over 420,000 times on social media at the time, an investigation by The Independent found. This resulted in attacks on asylum hotels and incitement of violence online, with subsequent arrests of people including Lucy Connolly, wife of a Tory councillor, who was jailed for 31 months over a tweet. This lack of awareness extends further, as 4 in 10 people do not even know if asylum seekers are being housed in their local area, the survey reveals. The survey also found that although eight in 10 people still believe that people from different backgrounds get along well in their area, this has gone down in the past few years. Those in the most deprived areas are least likely to say that different backgrounds get along (69 per cent), compared to 90 per cent in the most affluent areas. A map of the data in different local authorities shows that a higher perceived lack of social cohesion is recorded in areas in the north, particularly near Manchester and Leeds, in addition to areas east of London. Cohesion between people of different backgrounds is perceived to be worst in Boston, at just 59 per cent; 21 points below the national average. The town was home to racially-motivated riots over two decades ago following the 2004 Euros, a Brexit stronghold, and elected Reform MP Richard Tice.
The Guardian
2 days ago
- Politics
- The Guardian
UK a ‘powder keg' of social tensions a year on from summer riots, report warns
The UK is a 'powder keg' of social tensions, with a third of people rarely meeting anyone from different backgrounds, research has found. A report from the thinktank British Future and the social cohesion group Belong Network found that a year on from last summer's riots, there was a risk of unrest being reignited unless urgent action was taken to address issues of polarisation and division. The research found 31% of adults said they rarely or never had opportunities to meet people from different backgrounds, and a third say they did not frequently get a chance to meet other people at all in their local community. In a foreword to the report, the former Conservative chancellor Sajid Javid and the Labour politician Jon Cruddas said: 'The bonds that hold society together – civic participation and a shared sense of belonging – are under growing pressure. 'This is leaving our society more fragmented, fragile and less resilient to internal and external threats. At the same time, forces driving division are intensifying, political polarisation is deepening and trust in institutions is declining. Unless we address these forces, the very basis of our democracy is at risk.' They said last summer's riots after the Southport knife attack, the more recent racially motivated rioting in Northern Ireland and the findings of the grooming gangs inquiry had 'laid bare the fragility of social cohesion in the UK' and were part of pressures that have been 'building for decades'. The new report, The State of Us, will be a 'foundational input' to the new Independent Commission on Community and Cohesion, chaired by Javid and Cruddas. It was based on the views of 177 UK organisations working on social cohesion and community development, as well as 113 written submissions of evidence, a nationally representative survey and eight focus groups in towns and cities across the UK, including in areas affected by last year's riots. Anti-hate campaigners, meanwhile, say X is amplifying and monetising dangerous content and failing to enforce its own prohibitions against violent incitement. Research by the Centre for Countering Digital Hate found more than 4,300 posts in the past year that promoted violence against Muslims and immigrants, sent in reply to tweets by half a dozen high-profile account holders including Tommy Robinson, Andrew Tate and Laurence Fox. The CCDH chief executive, Imran Ahmed, said: 'One year on from the Southport riots, X remains the crucial hub for hate-filled lies and incitement of violence targeting migrants and Muslims.' If social media firms do not enforce their own rules, governments must confront the 'profit-driven amplification of violent and hateful content', he said, or the 'harm to targeted communities will grow and metastasise, with devastating consequences for British society'. The research follows a warning from MPs that current online safety laws contain 'major holes', as the Online Safety Act does not currently identify misinformation or disinformation as harms that need to be addressed by firms. The government said it did include an offence of false communications 'to target the spread of disinformation online when there is intent to cause harm'. The British Future report stated that successive governments had failed to take sustained, proactive measures to address social cohesion, and that 'a 'doom loop' of inaction, crisis and piecemeal response had failed to strengthen the foundations of communities across the country.' One reason behind the lack of social contact was money, the report found. Half of respondents said they did not always have enough money to go to places where they would meet other people. Jake Puddle, a senior researcher at British Future who led the report, said: 'We are facing a long, hot summer, with a powder keg of tensions left largely unaddressed from last year that could easily ignite once again. People are unhappy about their standard of living and the state of their local area, and don't trust politicians to sort it out. 'Public concerns about immigration and asylum can also be a flashpoint. That's only made worse when people have little contact with new arrivals, where public voices exacerbate division, and where governments fail to support or consult communities in their plans for asylum accommodation.' Kelly Fowler, chief executive of the Belong Network, said: 'Good work is happening across the UK on cohesion and community strength, but it is patchy and often confined to areas of high diversity or where tensions have spilled over into unrest. 'A lack of sustained funding limits its impact. It's time this issue was treated with the urgency it merits, in every part of Britain. We must not wait for more riots to happen.' The research found there was widespread concern about declining public services, inequality, the cost of living and the impact of social media, along with a lack of trust in politicians and institutions to help put things right. It also identified immigration and asylum as key issues raised by research participants, who were often focused on integration and pressures on housing and public services. But it found cause for optimism, with 69% of people feeling their local area was a place where people from different backgrounds got on well together, and many participants recalled moments of togetherness and community strength in adversity during the Covid-19 lockdowns.
Telegraph
05-06-2025
- Business
- Telegraph
We still have time to avoid this looming dystopia
Rayner College, Oxford, June 2044 ' The characteristic blindness of the 20th century … concerns something about which there is untroubled agreement between Hitler and President Roosevelt or H G Wells and Karl Barth.' (CS Lewis, 1944) Those of us who came relatively unscathed through the Great Catastrophe of the early years of this decade can now – unlike so many of our countrymen – look back and ask ourselves what went so badly wrong. Some of it is obvious. Mass immigration transformed our major cities and gradually suffocated our public services. Our casual, unfunded, ill-thought-through defence commitments led to the destruction of most of our Armed Forces and kit in Ukraine a decade ago. Our failure to enforce the criminal law properly meant the fractious social environment of the 2020s degenerated into flight from the cities, no-go zones, and violence not seen since Northern Ireland in the 1970s. But these are symptoms. The real cause was our gradually accelerating economic decline and the social tensions that followed, turbo-driven by the psychological Bantustans created by the Equality Act. The middle classes in the private sector saw a future of struggle and genteel poverty, while public 'servants' behaved like pre-Revolutionary French aristocrats defending their privileges. The rich got out, and so did the young – if they could. The productive part of the economy was overwhelmed by the hangers-on. Conflict became inevitable when those with something to lose said to themselves 'we need a strong man: crack a few heads if you have to, I don't care anymore', and when those who didn't decided to try overthrowing the system as a whole. What went wrong? Why did we condemn ourselves to economic decline and worse? It's not that we lacked lessons. The Americans avoided it. The Argentines dug themselves out of it. The Eastern Europeans were doing well enough until the 2033-4 war. Of course we can see the answer clearly now. The economy didn't grow because we didn't want it to grow. On that, our leaders were united. If I had said, in the days when classical music was still a thing, that I wanted to be a concert pianist, but didn't learn to read music and didn't practice, eventually people would have concluded I might say it, but I didn't really want it. Similarly both Left and Right said they wanted growth. In practice they put other objectives first. Left and Right may have had different objectives, but they still had one big thing in common: they thought they knew best. No one would trust the market or trust the people. Our characteristic blindness, as C S Lewis put it, was to statism. And if the 20th century should have taught us anything, it was that statism led to economic decline and war. The big problem areas were obvious. In 2025 Britain was about three to four million houses short. A massive building programme was needed. The Left's solution was new towns and social housing. The Right wanted building in cities and mansion blocks. No one wanted the one thing that might have made a difference: scrap the 1947 Planning Act, protect national parks, and let the market work. That's why young London professionals now live two to a room in south east Esher – and why so many have left for South East Asia. Similarly, Left and Right blamed different things for the NHS's failure, but no one would let the market in to solve them. They had slightly varying views of the ideal tax burden, but both believed in regulating business. They had slightly different views about how quickly we should decarbonise but neither disputed the goal. That's why – until the government banned them – we all had a private generator in the 2030s. Both Left and Right wanted growth. Just not as much as other things: electoral success, political convenience, avoiding reality. To be charitable, maybe most of them didn't really understand what was needed. Certainly very few in the 2020s, let alone later, spoke of the power of the market, the prosperity created by free individuals, the new ideas that came from government getting out of the way. All the talk was of regulation and of social engineering. No one spoke of incentives and of profit. We can see now that this meant Britain couldn't benefit from the skills and enterprise of all its citizens, only from the dubious skills of its policymakers. AI, which might genuinely have helped every person change their life, in fact only reinforced our leaders' belief that ever more cleverly worked-out policy could solve our problems. That is, after all, why Baroness Rayner founded the college where I now sit, as she said at the time, 'to use my experience to inspire very ordinary people to believe they can run the country'. How strange it all seems now. If there is one silver lining to these past horrific few months, it is that we can now face reality. Like Adenauer's Germany in the 1950s, we don't have the luxury of deceiving ourselves. Scrap the controls, free up the markets, get people rebuilding: that has to be the way out of our problems. We have had no end of a lesson. And now we must turn it to use.
