Response to 2024 summer riots failed to address root causes and links to racism, report says

Institute of Race Relations says violence in Southport and elsewhere often reduced to ‘mindless’ thuggery

The response to the 2024 riots in England and Northern Ireland failed to address its root causes and delinked the violence from racism, a thinktank has claimed.

A paper by the Institute of Race Relations (IRR) says an obfuscation of the causes and consequences of the riots risks legitimising further far-right mobilisation and vigilante violence. It says that what happened has often been reduced to “mindless” thuggery or violence.