Risk of riots in UK 'higher than ever', Labour warns

The risk of a repeat of riots that scarred London and other major cities ten years ago is “higher than ever”, as the government has failed to tackle the causes of the violence, Labour party has said.

The party issued a report on Thursday, warning that the country remained a “tinderbox”, and that the amount of "forgotten families" which many of the young people involved came from could have doubled within the decade.

In 2012, the Riots, Communities and Victims Panel found 500,000 families of this type. It said they needed support. However, they did not reach the threshold for help due to a lack of funding.

The Labour party claimed that the government had implemented only 11 of the 63 recommendations made by the panel at the time.

The unrest, which erupted in the capital city of London on August 6, 2011, before spreading to 66 other areas, followed on the heels of fatal shooting of Mark Duggan by police in Tottenham.

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The party wrote in its report that “the psychological damage to the communities the riots affected is untold”.

Speaking to the Sky News on Thursday, shadow communities secretary, Steve Reed, said: “The deep social inequalities have grown wider after a decade of cuts to vital services that support struggling families and a rise in poverty.”

“You can’t say – and shouldn’t say – there will be more riots. You can say the risk [of riots] we’re carrying today is higher than it was ten years ago,” Reed said.

The Labour frontbencher was at pains to confirm that “there were half a million families who needed support to bring up their children safely but weren’t get in it. But the government’s own figures there are now 1.6 million children in those circumstances.”

The report acknowledged that funding for youth services had been reduced by 70 percent, in-work poverty and lack of access to early services had not improved, and the youth recidivism rate had not changed between 2011 and 2021.

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Depicting Labour’s report as “an alarm bell we cannot afford to ignore”, Reed accused the government of “ignoring the lessons of the riots” and that’s why the risks UK face today “seem higher than ever”.

What began as a protest against the Duggan killing in 2011, turned into a full-scale riot that involved around 15,000 people across different cities in the UK.

During five days, five people died and about half a billion pounds of damage was caused. Most shops were looted and businesses and vehicles were set on fire.

A government spokesperson said: “The events of August 2011 shocked the country, and the police and courts took commendably swift action to bring perpetrators to justice.”

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