The right wing wants us to believe that the riot in Harehills is down to immigrants and lawlessness, but heavy-handed policing and years of austerity are the real culprits, writes Ben Rushton

Harehills, a working-class community in East Leeds, is in the headlines following an anti-police riot. By late evening on Thursday, a double-decker bus had been set ablaze and a police car was overturned. The police were driven from the area under a rain of bricks from young people who were often cheered on by their elders.

Harehills frequently makes the news, and has been demonised in right-wing media as an inner-city ghetto and a no-go area for the police. But what is missing from the right wing’s narrative is the combination of grinding poverty and police repression that Harehills has been subjected to. 

In September 2022 the Guardian wrote a piece on Harehills. The article was headlined – ‘“I’m petrified”: Leeds faces up to winter under cost of living crisis’ – and gave a perspective from people on the sharp end of a decade of Tory austerity. It tells of people queuing in freezing conditions to access the food bank, and of others sleeping on the streets in one of the most poverty-stricken parts of the UK.

According to the 2021 census, 74.2% of households in Harehills were deprived in at least one dimension, slightly down from 76.5% in 2011.

The article ends with these prophetic words from a Harehills resident: ‘We don’t have the levers to take people out of poverty, or to stop the cost of living crisis. That solely rests on the shoulders of the government. They must act soon, otherwise we’ll be in a very dark place.’

That very dark place is now in full view. Along with poverty come the other ills that blight the lives of Britain’s forgotten working-class communities – drugs, knife and gun crime and a spiralling care crisis. Another ill that communities like Harehills are all too familiar with is heavy-handed policing that accompanies state-sanctioned neglect.

Now Harehills is back in the news. Sources report that the riot started after a Romanian child suffered a head injury after falling from a window. The police and social services turned up mob-handed to seize the other children in the family, and this provoked an angry response from their neighbours.

Footage shows the local anger against the police and solidarity with the family, as children are dragged out of their home and put in a police van. The anger spread across the community and crowds gathered to confront the police. The footage of young people turning over a police car and throwing stones suggests that confrontations between police and youth in the area are regular events.

Whilst commentators were quick to condemn the violence, the heavy-handed policing in Harehills, especially the aggressive intervention in the Romanian family’s case, exemplifies the state’s role in trying to control and discipline the working class in the area. The police presence and subsequent violence can be seen as a response to the threat posed by a restive working class that has been abandoned by the government and subjected to over a decade of austerity. The intervention of social services may have sparked the conflict, but residents in Harehills are fed up with being demonised and subjected to repression and surveillance.

Even the Daily Mail has recognised that the police are part of the problem and has acknowledged Harehills as a community that sticks together, where ‘a problem for one, is a problem for all’.

But the sight of an ethnically mixed community standing up for itself was irresistible for Reform’s Nigel Farage who tweeted an overtly racist message: ‘The politics of the subcontinent are currently playing out on the streets of Leeds. Don’t say I didn’t warn you.’

Local Labour MP Alex Sobel has rightly condemned Farage and demanded an apology. However, Keir Starmer was quick to give his blessing to the police, urging them to take ‘the strongest possible measures’ against the perpetrators. Yvette Cooper, the new Home Secretary, added her two pence worth, saying ‘disorder of this nature has no place in our society.’

But ‘our society’ is broken and dysfunctional for working-class communities like Harehills, and Cooper and Starmer would be well advised to stop preaching about ‘fiscal responsibility’ and how they intend to boost weapons spending and start thinking about how to repair our society after fourteen years of Tory cuts.

We can’t ignore the political issues at the heart of the upsurge in anger that we have witnessed. By blaming immigration and fuelling xenophobia, the right wing hopes to divide the working class, and stop them from uniting against their true oppressors. This tactic of divide and rule is a well-worn strategy to maintain control and prevent a united working-class response to our shared grievances. While there was no clear political motive for the Harehills riot, it is hard to ignore the police’s heavy-handed tactics and over-policing of the area.

The social unrest in Harehills is a symptom of the alienation experienced by its residents. The anger and frustration of Harehills’ youth, as they confronted the police, is a direct expression of this alienation and the failure of capitalist society to meet their basic needs, with poverty and unemployment being core issues for the community.

The events in Harehills underscore the need for revolutionary change to address the root causes of social unrest. The capitalist system, with its inherent inequalities and exploitation, cannot provide for the needs of the working class. The anger and resistance seen in Harehills are part of the broader class struggle that must be harnessed towards building a just and equitable society.