Government too slow delivering ‘get-tough’ message to racist rioters

Protests
Protests

I remember the summer of 1977 when the National Front marched through Lewisham, almost past the end of the road where I lived at the time.

We should be grateful that we have better race relations now than back when I was a child, and better than perhaps all our comparable nations.

But having less of a problem than most is nothing to be complacent about. We must never allow racist and extremist thugs to pull our society apart, whatever their race or religion.

Swastika tattoos and Nazi salutes or calls for jihad while flying Hezbollah flags have no place on the streets of our country, and are rightly condemned by all sensibly minded people.

I am pleased that perpetrators of racist violence are now being charged, prosecuted and convicted for their crimes.

The police and the Crown Prosecution Service should not let up in their hunt to ensure every perpetrator is met with swift justice.

The Government’s response to the riots was too slow, it took almost a week before Cobra met.

‘Police must act without fear or favour’

They got to the right place eventually; making clear the police had their total backing and that rioters would be met with the full force of the law.

But this should have been the message at the end of the first day of violence, not the first week.

Labour voices also made the work of the police harder by reinforcing the belief that there is two-tier policing in the UK.

Strong language rightly directed at one group of thugs, who were white, while a Home Office minister excuses the behaviour of another group of masked thugs, who were not, is unacceptable and deeply counter-productive.

The police must act without fear or favour, and they must know that political leaders expect this of them and will back them when they do so.

‘Public order policing is dangerous’

I have been involved in police governance for over 15 years from my time on the Metropolitan Police Authority in 2008 to my time as home secretary.

I have seen how dangerous, stressful and difficult public order policing is and I thank the police for the work that they have done.

Away from the heat of the riots, and the toxicity of the immediate commentary, we must have a sensible conversation about what caused them.

It is clear that dissatisfaction with the scale and pace of immigration contributed to the unrest.

We also need to look at the social contract and what we should demand of people as members of society.

In government, I consistently warned that if sensible pragmatic parties in the UK and in Europe did not deal with immigration properly, particularly illegal immigration, extremism would rise.

It is what we have seen in near neighbours and we should not be so arrogant as to believe it could never happen here.

We are at heart a tolerant nation and it is not unreasonable to expect those who live in our country and enjoy our protection to reflect that. Whether they have been here for many generations or just a few weeks.

Integration is essential but is made more difficult by the scale and pace of those arriving.

When change happens fast, people believe immigration to be the source of problems, competition for jobs, housing and public services, and inevitably animosity grows.

‘We need a better, calmer conversation’

I took action in my first weeks as home secretary which meant inward migration would fall by 300,000 this year.

This was an important part of proving to the British people that we heard their concerns and rather than amplifying the tensions, we took action to alleviate them.

We need a better, calmer and evidence-based conversation about immigration.

We should use GDP per capita as our measure for growth rather than overall GDP. A technical change, but one that will allow us to properly measure the impact of migration on the actual prosperity of our citizens, rather than masking low growth with high immigration.

We must also secure our borders from illegal immigration.

People being smuggled into our country has a corrosive effect on the attitude to all migrants.

It is deeply unfair to those who have played by the rules to come here to be tarnished by the actions of those who did not.

But that is what is happening and we must take action to address it.

Labour criticised the Conservative government about immigration but then weakened our border controls as soon as they took office.

They have emboldened smugglers and encouraged dangerous sea crossings.

They have denounced those who expressed concerns about migration levels as racists while turning a blind eye to sectarian divides for short-term political gain.

The country needs bold, serious, and credible leadership to tackle these problems head on without giving false hope that there are simple solutions.

The Conservative Party must rebuild its credibility to play this role because we know Labour won’t.

James Cleverly is the Tory shadow home secretary and previously served as home secretary and foreign secretary