Commentary: Is The UK Staring At Civil Unrest?

I went to the United Kingdom as a student in 2016 and spent the lesser part of two years there. I did my best to land a respectable job in the media industry but was unsuccessful and so, returned to India with a heavy heart and quite unwillingly.

During my stay in the UK, a large part of it in troubled areas, I could not help but notice that there was a palpable undercurrent of hostility that the Asian-origin community and white Christians harboured towards each other.

This was borne out by several incidents. To start with, I would encounter unpleasant, sideways glances at supermarkets if my grocery shopping bag was too ‘loaded’, pointing to the fact that my purchasing power was higher than that of the white ‘natives’. This was later confirmed to me on reading reports of a ‘cost of living crisis’ faced by mainly white households in the UK.

Then there would be poorly-disguised rude behaviour from white cashiers, baristas, waiters and others in the services sector. All of them seemed acutely aware of how quickly and how decisively things had changed, since now they had to ‘serve’ those whose ancestors they once ruled over, commanded and ordered around.

However, this is just one side of the story.

The other side is that ‘assimilation’, ‘multiculturalism’ and ‘diversity’, which the UK once prided itself on, have now been reduced to little more than hollow, politically-correct words. The fact is that there is zero assimilation into mainstream society from the largest minority community in the UK, multiculturalism has become a bit of a shaggy-dog story and diversity is rapidly vanishing into rarefied air.

Add to this, incidents such as random stabbings of infants and teenagers in parks and other public places, and carefully-executed grooming of young British girls by gangs of Pakistani-origin men in Rochdale in northeastern England (just one such example), and we have a Molotov cocktail of unprecedented incendiary potency, particularly one that could light the spark of a prospective civil war in one of the world’s most developed countries.

The question is: how did things get so bad?

There are two parts to the answer of this question.

Before answering it, though, a distinction must be made between the British people and the British establishment.

The average British person is like an average middle class Indian or Sri Lankan or Japanese – too busy going about the business of living, taking care of their family and working tirelessly to pay taxes to spend too much time worrying about ‘multiculturalism’ and ‘assimilation’.

To the common British bloke, asylum seekers and refugees become a problem when they are faced with the cold, hard fact that the former are being housed in star hotels at the expense of the British taxpayer while actual British citizens sleep rough on the streets.

To make matters worse, these asylum seekers are then found accused of rape and stabbings in the very country they are seeking protection in.

The British establishment, on the other hand, is a different behemoth, comprising of privileged, aristocratic figures with little or no idea of the struggles of the common person. This is reflected in their approach towards policy-making, conflict-resolution and lack of empathy for the travails of the average British citizen.

The ubiquitous greed, myopia and lust for power that plagues the British establishment is identical to political, military and civil establishments across much of the modern world; in the process, it causes the common person to suffer largely silently, face a ‘cost of living crisis’ and generally lead a miserable existence.

In the event, if right-wing figures like Tommy Robinson become ‘popular’, the establishment ends up being alarmed. The turnout at the recent Unite the Kingdom rally headed by Robinson has left many in the government shocked at the scale of popular support for the once ‘fringe’ right-wing leader. Meanwhile, avid Brexit campaigner Nigel Farage, once so lampooned for his support for Britain leaving the EU, is now not half as unfavourable. Other, so-called ‘extreme’ voices are also now finding greater resonance among the average, taxpaying British public.

On the other end of the spectrum is the refusal or the inability – this interpretation depends on your political orientation – of certain ethnic groups and communities to become part of British society and engage with its culture.

When there is so much dissonance between people living in the same country, the pertinent question is can large-scale, long-term conflict be really that far away? When two groups of people are at such divergence with each other, how long can the social fabric hold?

To anyone who has lived in the UK for a reasonable amount of time, it is plain that there are certain areas you go to and others you stay away from.

In short, Us vs. Them. Our values vs. their beliefs. Our history vs. their usurpation. The list of grievances is long and each side feels emphatically about its own. If things don’t take a decisive, resolute turn soon, these grouses are set to implode. When that happens, there’s only so much the authorities can do to keep vitriol and violence in check.

Impending civil unrest? That might be in the offing too, since it’s only a logical progression from unaddressed atrocities and an unchecked rise of entitled extremism.