Why did children take part in the English riots?

On Monday 29 July, a ‘Taylor Swift Yoga and Dance Workshop’, aimed at children aged between 7 and 11 years old, was held in Southport. Intended as an all-singing, all-dancing, friendship-bracelet sharing, Swiftie safe space, the class should have been a chance for children to let off some steam in the endless stretch of summer that is the six weeks holidays. But unfortunately, this wasn’t to be the case.

At approximately 11:50am, Merseyside Police were called to reports of a mass stabbing. Likening the scenes to that of “a horror movie,” eye-witnesses described seeing adults and children drenched in blood. Window cleaner, Joel Verite, who stopped to help at the scene, told Sky News that a woman injured in the attack “screamed” out to him: “He’s killing the kids over there.”

Three children – Bebe King, aged six, Elsie Dot Stancombe, aged seven, and Alice Dasilva Aguiar, aged nine – tragically lost their lives in the attack. Eight other children suffered stab wounds during the attack, five of which were left in a critical condition. Two adults, including one of the event’s organisers, were also critically injured.

Out of the ashes of such terror, but still trapped under the disorientating shadow of grief, arose the question: Who could do such a thing? Both in the absence of, and despite, official statements – a product of the perpetrator’s young age (he was just 17) – people embraced the fabricated rumours hurtling around social media: the man to blame was an asylum seeker, known to MI6, that had arrived illegally last year. The truth of such rumours didn’t matter; people wanted answers, and this one happened to fit perfectly into the jingoistic jigsaw that had long been building across England.

In Rotherham, rioters attempted to torch a hotel housing refugees.

Led by the far-right, fuelled by anti-immigrant hate, and ‘legitimised’ by social media rumours, almost 30 racially motivated riots erupted across 27 towns and cities in the UK. Violent mobs, armed with house bricks and bottles, targeted mosques, attacked police officers, and looted shops. In Rotherham, rioters attempted to torch a hotel housing refugees.

Responding to the worst civil disorder England had seen since 2011, Keir Starmer’s government promised ‘swift and robust’ action; rioters were arrested, convicted, and placed onto the conveyor belt to prison in their hundreds.

But amongst them, standing tearfully in the docks, are children who are receiving criminal records before even their GCSE results. They are not much older than the children who lost their lives in the initial attack.

One of the youngest is a 12-year-old boy. Manchester youth court was told the boy was involved in two separate incidents on 31 July and 3 August. In the first incident, the boy was part of a group targeting a Holiday Inn housing asylum seekers. Snippets of video footage show the boy slowly riding his bike in front of a bus, causing it to stop. The nearby mob then descended upon the bus, smashing its windows and assaulting the bus driver, who later had to seek hospital treatment for his injuries. The boy is shown kicking the bus and handing a rock to another person involved in the violence. In the second incident, the boy was part of a group that stormed a Sainsbury’s supermarket.

Catherine Baird, defending, told the court: “This is a child who should not have been there, who got wrapped up in the moment acting recklessly and impulsively.” The court heard how the boy, who has an ADHD diagnosis, got swept up by the influence of others, claiming that at the time he thought “it was funny,” adding: “But now it’s horrible.”

The court heard that the boy’s political views were “generally non-existent.

The boy told the court that he did not know what an asylum seeker was and that he wanted “to say sorry.” The judge, accepting that he did not fully understand the events, spared him detention, instead sentencing him with a 12-month referral order, and his mother, who had skipped her son’s sentencing to go on holiday to Ibiza, a fine of £1,200.

Another sentencing at Manchester youth court saw a 16-year-old convicted for his role in the disorder. Footage that lasted only seconds was shown in the courtroom. In it, the boy was seen hurling rocks at riot police from the steps of Bolton’s cenotaph. Around him, the crowd chanted: ‘Allah! Allah! Who the fuck is Allah!’

The court heard that the boy’s political views were “generally non-existent”, that he was not racist, and that he had a mixed-race sibling. The district judge, Joanne Hirst, quizzed the boy: “Do you know what sentencing means?” Beyond a vague “err, like where you go down”, he did not. She pushed him to describe the importance of the cenotaph. He replied: “I don’t even know what that is.”

Both children, and the countless others awaiting sentencing – 145 juveniles aged between 10 and 17 were arrested – claim not to have understood the events or the politics that precipitated them. Very few hold openly racist or anti-immigration views. So why did so many children take part in the riots?

“Being involved [in the unrest] and simply wanting to belong to something that is happening seems to have been the major motivation”, said Ellie Akghar, the 16-year-old boy’s solicitor. Put simply, the disorder was seen as a social event. With over half of those charged with offences hailing from the most deprived 20% of neighbourhoods, that children viewed the unrest as ‘exciting,’ ‘funny,’ or as a chance to socialise with friends is unsurprising.

Engulfed by a racist tidal wave that promised a sense of belonging, of something, of anything, to do, children joined the mobs.

Understanding deprivation to mean a lack in the essentials needed to live well, an area can be seen and felt to be deprived by the loss of public and private services. A closed library is so much more than a disused building. It represents the narrowing of educational horizons for children from underprivileged backgrounds. The playgrounds and youth centres that have been razed down and boarded up aren’t just tokens of impoverishment. They represent the vulnerable reality for children across England, where taking part in social disorder represents a chance to break out of the colourless tedium of their everyday lives.

“It’s no surprise that young people are getting involved in this type of criminality because we haven’t begun to address those issues,” said Nazir Azfal, the former CPS chief crown prosecutor for north-west England. “To address these issues long-term, we need to invest in youth services and mental health services. That’s the answer. But where’s the money?”

It is an important question. And one that needs answering. Without answers, we get the events of this summer, where children, without understanding the causes or consequences of the unrest, get swept up in the disorder. Engulfed by a racist tidal wave that promised a sense of belonging, of something, of anything, to do, children joined the mobs. And now, it is not homework that those children are receiving, but court sentences.