Neither mindless nor legitimate: the racist politics of the 2024 UK riots and the limitations of the carceral response

In early August 2024, the UK experienced a wave of fascist violence of the kind not witnessed since the 1980s. In this intervention piece written soon after these events, we seek to understand what led to this violence and to scrutinise the tough criminal justice response, aiming to contribute to a fresh conception of the riots that holds the state to account while locating possible solutions in policy and political change. We do this by analysing historical and recent immigration policy, political statements and media reports, as well as engaging with the literature on migration, racism and carceral policies. Rather than emerging from either ‘mindless thuggery’ or ‘legitimate concerns’ about immigration, as the 2024 riots have been framed in public discourse, we argue that they were possible only through the active legitimisation of hostility to migration by successive Labour and Conservative governments, through which racism has become entwined with ideas about belonging in Britian. Furthermore, these framings are used instrumentally to deflect responsibility for the violence away from those in power and to enact a criminal justice crackdown that is both inadequate to prevent future racist violence and potentially counterproductive. We reflect on what must be done to prevent racist violence on Britain’s streets – a fundamental political shift from hostility to welcome and from austerity to investment.