A view from the bridge on Britain’s race riots

I recently had the pleasure of watching the uniquely talented actor Dominic West in Arthur Miller’s 1955 masterpiece “A View From The Bridge” at the Theatre Royal Haymarket in London’s West End.

However, it was not only West’s captivating and extraordinarily convincing portrayal of Italian American working-class Brooklyn longshoreman Eddie Carbone that stayed with me long after the play had ended.

As an avid consumer of news, I always find it fascinating how history repeats itself and how some topics remain relevant no matter how much time has passed.

Among those topics are the linked issues of immigration, the quest for economic opportunity, and xenophobia — three pillars of Miller’s play that even today are still the subject of intense debate and sometimes violent protests and hate crimes, as we are currently seeing in the UK. 

In the play, impoverished Italians who illegally migrated to the US with a dream of earning $50 a week to feed their families back home are subjected to harassment and discrimination because of their habits and appearance, and accused of wanting to marry an American only to obtain a US passport.

In today’s Britain, far right groups accuse even legal immigrants — and mainly Muslims, adding racism and religion to an already toxic brew — of not only reaping the benefits of the economic system, but of taking the jobs of the “native English” and refusing to integrate culturally.

For every Abu Hamza there is a surgeon, a doctor, a nurse, a lawyer, a banker, an investor, all of migrant origin, contributing to the British economy

Faisal J. Abbas

Now, as a former London resident myself, and indeed the author of a book on what it’s like to be an Arab in the UK capital, I am the first to raise my hand and say, yes, there are many immigrant groups who have failed to integrate, who deliberately abuse the system, and who cause mayhem: among the most notorious is the Egyptian cleric Abu Hamza, who arrived in the UK on a temporary student visa in 1979, preached hate for decades while sponging off state benefits, and proved almost impossible to throw out of the country until he was finally deported to the US in 2012.

But we need to remember that for every Abu Hamza there is a surgeon, a doctor, a nurse, a lawyer, a banker, an investor, all of migrant origin, contributing to the British economy with the income tax they pay, and to their local communities with the money they spend. They can even become mayors and prime minister, as demonstrated by Sadiq Khan (of Pakistani origin) and Rishi Sunak, whose Indian parents migrated to Britain from East Africa in the 1960s.

Sunak became prime minister in October 2022 in part to restore the Conservative Party’s reputation for economic competence after years of chaos under four successive Tory prime ministers since Britain voted to leave the EU in 2016.

Among those primarily responsible for that Brexit vote was Nigel Farage, the populist far-right agitator whose entire political career has been devoted to extracting the UK from Europe. Throughout his campaign, economy with the truth was Farage’s speciality. For example, he constantly claimed that the EU was an unelected dictatorship (in fact, the European Council consists of elected member state representatives and the European Parliament is wholly elected); that 70 percent of British laws were made by the EU (the actual figure was just over 13 percent); and that EU membership cost Britain £55 million a day (the real cost was half that, and even that took no account of EU funds flowing the other way).

Whether Britain was right to leave the EU, as it eventually did in 2019, is an argument for another day. However, most analysts estimate that the British economy is at least 3 percent smaller as a result, that Brexit has sliced 5 percent off UK economic growth, and that every family in the country is £1,000 worse off.

It is beyond surreal that Farage, having been largely responsible for this debacle, is now stoking xenophobia and trying to blame the downturn on an influx of migrants. Someone needs to tell him and his supporters, the problem is not immigration: “It’s the economy, stupid.”

Unsurprisingly, Farage was among the first to fan the flames when three young children were stabbed to death and 10 people were injured in an attack during a dance and yoga workshop on July 29 in the northern English seaside town of Southport. Within minutes, posts on social media stated confidently that the attacker was a Muslim asylum seeker who had arrived illegally on a small boat crossing the English Channel. Those posts were lies: police swiftly confirmed that the young man accused of the attack was a 17-year-old British citizen, born in Wales to parents from Rwanda — ironically the country to where Rishi Sunak’s government planned to deport asylum seekers, because it is a “safe country.” But the damage had been done, leading to the appalling scenes of mayhem we have witnessed on Britain’s streets for the past week.

Meta, TikTok and X can claim they are merely platforms, but technically they are publishers on steroids , and without filters: As such, they too must be held accountable

Faisal J. Abbas

Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s firm and decisive response to the riots is to be applauded, and his reassurances in defense of the UK’s Muslim minority must be respected. Home Secretary Yvette Cooper should also be commended for immediately authorizing a full range of prosecutions and penalties for convicted rioters, and police have quicky brought offenders to justice: three men were jailed on Wednesday for violent disorder, the first of what will be a procession through the courts.

This is exactly the kind of deterrent that is needed. After all, no matter how noble one might think a cause is, it doesn’t give anyone the right to take the law into their own hands. Quite frankly, I believe observers — both at home and abroad — have had enough with thugs destroying public property, disfiguring national monuments or attacking others in the name of their “cause,” whether it is religious, environmental or political.

This applies equally to all races and religions alike. Certainly, the UK’s minority Muslim community have an added responsibility to now curb any members from violating the law, no matter how angry or intimidated they feel. They would also be well advised to champion successful and inspirational stories of integration. Apart from Sadiq Khan, another impressive example would be Nadhim Zahawi, an Iraqi Kurd whose family fled Saddam’s regime in 1978 when he was 11: Zahawi became an MP, and eventually Chancellor of the Exchequer, and is a hugely successful businessman. Last week in The Times he wrote a deep and thoughtful column entitled “How the British dream of integration can survive.” In it, he argues that Britain remains the most tolerant country on Earth, but urges the quick punishment of wrongdoers while addressing the real concerns on all sides.

Speaking of all sides, we must not miss the elephant in the room: the massive reach of social media, now with the added perils of Artificial Intelligence and its deep fake abilities. This is why it was reassuring that senior UK executives from the tech giants were summoned to a meeting of Britain’s emergency COBRA committee this week to be reminded of their responsibilities. That is as it should be. Meta, TikTok and X can claim they are merely platforms, but technically they are publishers on steroids, and without filters: as such, they should not be immune, and they too must be held accountable.

• Faisal J. Abbas is the author of 'Anecdotes of an Arab Anglophile,' published by Nomad Publishing. X: @FaisalJAbbas