UK police risk assessment before riots said far-right threat probably ‘minimal’

UK police chiefs advised in the months leading up to this summer’s riots that far-right activism was not a public order priority and disruption from protests would likely be “minimal”, Liberty Investigates and the Guardian can reveal.

Internal risk assessments and meeting minutes show ‘cultural nationalism’ was ranked below environmentalism and international-inspired protest, such as pro-Palestine marches, as threats to public order and safety as late as December last year – even after more than 90 people were arrested during far right disorder in London last Armistice Day, and following violent scenes outside asylum seeker accommodation in Merseyside earlier in the year.

Anti-racism charities said the revelation demonstrates how police underestimated the far right before violent disorder engulfed towns and cities in England and Northern Ireland in the country’s worst riots in over a decade, and further debunks claims of ‘two-tier policing’ made by conservative politicians and influencers.

The risk assessments, produced by a team at the National Police Chiefs’ Council (NPCC) and released under freedom of information laws after heavy redactions, also identified football and animal rights as priority issues.

Cultural nationalism, described as a movement that “opposes any activity that is perceived to be in opposition to traditional British identity”, was included in a list of priority issues in December 2020 but was subsequently downgraded and removed from that list in late 2021, the risk assessments show.  An NPCC spokesperson denied this constituted a downgrading or that the change would have had any impact on operational policing.

A page summarising the priority issues was redacted in later documents but minutes from an NPCC meeting in December 2023, where the risk assessments were discussed, suggest cultural nationalism remained deprioritised until at least the end of that year.

Below: a page from an internal NPCC risk assessment signed off in December 2023 says there was “significant” cultural nationalism activity targeting asylum seeker accommodation 

Chief constable BJ Harrington, national policing lead for public order and public safety, warned at that meeting: “Please ensure you are on top of those other bits that may not be in the spotlight … but very quickly come up on the radar and catch us by surprise.”

The national risk assessments are designed to help UK police forces respond to events and protests that pose a risk to public order and safety.

Officers weigh up the likelihood of disorder occurring and the impact that it would have when assessing priority areas.

Last June the campaign group Hope Not Hate said it had recorded 253 instances of far-right activism at asylum accommodation sites in 2022, more than double the previous year. “The scene is becoming smaller but more extreme and potentially primed for confrontation,” the group warned. “The situation remains unstable, and any incident involving a person seeking asylum could spark another series of protests.”

The following month a report by MPs on right wing extremism warned the threat “is on an upward trajectory, populated by an increasing number of young people and driven by the internet”, though this focused on counter-terrorism rather than public order policing.

Nannette Youssef, policy manager at the Runnymede Trust race equality think tank, said the police risk assessment represented “a failure to recognise and clamp down on the growing threat of racism and far-right extremism”.

Youssef contested the notion of ‘two-tier policing’ put forward by far-right agitator Tommy Robinson, whose real name is Stephen Yaxley-Lennon, and others, that suggests the recent nationalist violence has been subject to harsher policing than other protest movements.

“The idea that far-right riots have been more policed than mainly peaceful protests is just gaslighting communities of colour,” she said.

Nick Lowles of Hope Not Hate said: “The police have under-estimated the threat from the far-right for many years. While there has been increased monitoring and arrests of far right terrorists, their coverage of street-based violence has been woefully inadequate.

“This partly stems from their failure to consider aggressive anti-Muslim hatred as a form of extremism, their poor understanding about the post-organisational nature of today’s far right and the total absence of political leadership and willingness to confront the far right at the Home Office for many years.

“The authorities need to grasp this problem before we see a repeat of the recent riots.”

As of the end of August, there had been 1,280 arrests and 796 charges relating to the riots, according to the NPCC. Those charged include individuals involved in an incident in which rioters tried to set fire to a hotel housing asylum seekers in Rotherham. Some Muslim counter protesters have also been arrested and convicted, including those who say they were acting to protect mosques from rioters.

The NPCC’s Strategic Intelligence and Briefing (SIB) unit has produced its risk assessments  on a biannual basis since December 2020, when intelligence officers noted an emerging trend of cultural nationalism protestors “arriving outside asylum seeker accommodation venues” – a trend still highlighted last December when officers said such accommodation was “the main target”.

After removing the issue from the ranking of priority areas in 2021, the risk assessment noted: “A significant trigger event would highly likely be needed to galvanise the [cultural nationalism] groups into the prominence and persistence seen in the past.”

Neil Basu, the former head of UK counter terrorism, said the move may have been premature, and the UK could have been “complacent in understanding the strength and depth of feeling in some communities about these issues”, though stressed he had not been briefed on the NPCC’s intelligence and decision making.

Officers appear to have judged that the disparate nature of the far-right reduced the risk it posed. “The lack of cohesion and fractious nature of the groups …has highly likely lessened the impact of events,” the SIB said last year.

However, experts on Britain’s far-right movement have since warned that online influencers and activist groups still pose a threat, even if formal membership has fallen. Professor Matthew Feldman of York University said groups such as Patriotic Alternative stir up trouble “without organising it or leading from the front”.

“The model that was pioneered by the English Defence League still exists. Mobilise people online, using disinformation,” he said. “It always remained a possibility that something like what we saw over the past few weeks was possible again.”

Members of Patriotic Alternative, described by Hope Not Hate as “the UK’s most active fascist organisation”, helped to promote and were present at the recent violent protests. The group was the subject of its own risk assessment by the SIB in March last year, which concluded it does “not engage in violence as part of wider protest tactics” and its “threat level has remained low”.

The month before, the group was reported to have distributed anti-refugee leaflets in Knowsley, Merseyside, days before a riot outside a hotel housing asylum seekers where a police van was set on fire.

The NPCC unit also produced a risk assessment in spring 2024, a few months before the recent riots, which has not yet been released to reporters. When pressed on whether cultural nationalism had been upgraded as a priority by this point, an NPCC spokesperson would not confirm this, but stressed that it remains a “core area”.

They added: “For the avoidance of doubt, the recent disorder has not been treated as protest. It was, and is, being treated as serious criminal activity, and therefore a review of previous protest assessments in respect of cultural nationalism should not be considered in isolation.

“Between 2021 and autumn 2023, the landscape of protest changed significantly – not just in the arena of ‘cultural nationalism’, but also, notably, in the thematic areas of ‘anti-government’, ‘internationally inspired’, and ‘environmental’ protest.”

They added that “immigration issues were identified as one of the key potential factors influencing protest activity” in spring 2024 and that “the assessment for Autumn 2024 is currently ongoing”.

A version of this article was published with The Guardian.