UK riots: What are the claims about 'two tier policing'?

As far-right riots cause damage and mayhem in cities and towns across the UK, a worrying narrative has emerged among the Right about a 'two tier policing' system being enforced as hundreds of suspected rioters are arrested following attacks on police, property and citizens.

Popular right figures including Reform MP Nigel Farage, Laurence Fox, and far-right Tommy Robinson have promoted the idea, with social media hashtags like #TwoTier, #TwoTierPolicing, and #TwoTierKeir being used by their supporters.

However, experts say there is no evidence that a two-tier policing system is in place.

The New Arab takes a look at the controversy around 'two-tier policing' idea.

What is two-tier policing?

British journalist Lizzie Dearden says the emergence of the two-tier policing myth links with the false idea that "white people are more disadvantaged" than people of colour.

In an interview with BBC Radio 5 Live, Dearden said the term was first mentioned in far-right circles on the encrypted Telegram social media app as far back as 2019. Since then, she added, it has encompassed various definitions.

"For example, during the Covid-19 pandemic, anti-vaccine groups who were arrested for violating regulations used it as an allegation," she told the BBC.

"But most commonly, it's used to claim that left-wing protesters are less rigorously policed than right-wing protesters."

Far-right sympathisers have also referenced the Rochdale child sex abuse ring as alleged evidence of policing failures regarding Muslims.

However, a Home Office study in 2020 indicated that there is no evidence that certain ethnic group are overrepresented in cases of child sexual exploitation, adding that "group-based offenders are most commonly white".

Supporters have also alleged that policing of the 2020 Black Lives Matter (BLM) protests and the ongoing pro-Palestine demonstrations has been 'lighter' than the those held by the right, ignoring the extreme violence associated with the latter. 

Kulvinder Nagre, Research and Policy Coordinator of UK civil rights organisation Race on the Agenda (ROTA), told The New Arab that backlash against the BLM movement and subsequent social justice demonstrations of the 2020s consequently sparked the myth of two-tier policing.

"These protests were decried at the time by conservative commentators as 'anti-British', and these same commentators advocated for a particularly robust police response," he said.

"The perceived 'failure' of police to provide this response (which in itself is contentious, since police did use heavy-handed tactics at a number of protests) led conservative figures to accuse the police of 'going easy' on protesters."

However, Nagre highlights that this narrative extends beyond the notion of right v left.

"The narrative is broadly tied in with sinister conspiracy theories around enforced multiculturalism and the wholly racist 'Great Replacement Theory'," he told The New Arab, referring to a far-right conspiracy that alleges non-white immigrants are bring brought in to replace white Europeans in North America and Europe.

"Proponents of the idea of two-tier policing during these riots are tapping into the idea that institutions of state are somehow structured to privilege Britain’s racialised minority and oppress its white majority, which serves to further cast rioters as populist rebels, rather than racist, violent thugs."

What is the link between 'two-tier policing' and current far-right riots?

The debate over a so-called two-tier policing system has reignited following a week of unrest sparked by a mass stabbing in Southport, northwest England, where three children were killed.

In the wake of the violence, far-right instigators and their supporters have continued to perpetuate the notion of unequal policing.

Reform UK leader Nigel Farage has been at the forefront of this narrative, calling for Parliament to be reconvened from its summer recess.

He claimed that the "impression of two-tier policing" had "become widespread", which many view as promotion of the idea.

This is not protest, it is pure violence.

We will have a standing army of public duty officers.

We will ramp up criminal justice.

We will apply criminal law online as well as offline.

We will not tolerate attacks on mosques or on Muslim communities. pic.twitter.com/C1SmjJjo4R

— Keir Starmer (@Keir_Starmer) August 5, 2024

However, during an emergency COBRA meeting convened to address the pockets of unrest across the country, UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer firmly refuted the idea.

"There is no two-tier policing," he said. "There is policing without fear or favour – exactly as it should be, exactly what I would expect and require. So that is a non-issue." 

Priti Patel, former Conservative Home Secretary, echoed Starmer’s sentiments in an interview with Times Radio.

"There is a clear difference between effectively blocking streets or roads being closed and burning down libraries, hotels, food banks, and attacking places of worship," she said. "What we have seen is thuggery, violence, and racism. Those kinds of comments are simply not relevant right now. That is not correct; it is not correct."

Despite these dismissals, Elon Musk, owner of X has fed into this myth, calling Prime Minister Keir Starmer "two-tier Keir". Musk appears to be increasingly engaged with far-right accounts on X.

Musk's comments came in response to footage showing a mob, supposedly mobilised to protect their area from the far-right, hurling missiles at a pub in Birmingham. In the video, a man is seen being kicked in the head by a rioter, prompting Musk to caption the post: "Why aren’t all communities protected in Britain?"

The controversy has drawn comments from various political figures.

Conservative Party leadership contender Robert Jenrick questioned the police response to the riots, while Paul Stephenson, a former Met Police chief, called for the "full force" of the law to be applied equally to all those involved in the violence.

ROTA’s Kulvinder Nagre explained that the resurfacing of the far-right myth in recent debates is triggered by the former Conservative government’s handling of Israel’s war on Gaza and during the run-up to the UK general election.

"The pro-Gaza protests which have been ongoing since late last year drew significant criticism from Conservative figures, including Robert Jenrick and [former Home Secretary] Suella Braverman, for being supposedly inherently antisemitic," Nagre added.

"Braverman went so far as to criticise the Metropolitan Police for their response to what she termed the 'hate marches', and to accuse them of carrying out 'two-tier policing', when compared with counter-protesters from groups associated with Tommy Robinson."

The UK Metropolitan Police was also embroiled in a debacle involving the far-right theory, as Police Commissioner Sir Mark Rowley was questioned by a Sky News journalist outside the Cabinet Office in Whitehall, London on the issue.

After being asked whether two-tier policing would 'end', Rowley seemingly pushed brushed past the journalist and knocked a microphone to the ground.

While the Met chief has yet to acknowledge questions surrounding the infamous myth, a statement by Rowley via the Met Police was later issued to The New Arab to discuss the incident.

"I was part of a positive and constructive COBRA meeting with the Prime Minister about our collective response to hateful behaviour and violent disorder across the country," Rowley said.

"There’s been a story running about my exit from the meeting. This is a distraction from the critical events we are dealing with. It was agreed the Prime Minister would provide an update afterwards and it was not my place to speak publicly."

He continued: "In an effort to move a microphone out of my path I’m sorry that I knocked it to the floor. That was never my intention. We remain focused on the critical and urgent matters at hand."

Nagre said his organisation calls for "more robust" policing measures amid threats by racially aggravated attacks, as well as urgent action to tackle online misinformation "as a stark wake-up call for policymakers".

He warned that the alarming impact of "seemingly indiscriminate, racist violence on our streets" is significantly more extreme than the supposed narrative of two-tier policing.

"For decades, Black and Global Majority Britons have been subject to systematic over-policing, aggressive profiling, and brutality from a policing establishment which has been found time and time again to be institutionally racist," he said.

"The idea that the police are somehow now our biggest advocates is frankly laughable."