There is great fear among communities in the UK right now following the scenes of hate and violence witnessed in recent days. Those scenes were the product of racist agitation following the senseless deaths of three children in Southport last week, but the climate of discrimination and of scapegoating refugees and migrants in which they arose came from decades of dangerous political rhetoric, corporate practices, and governmental policies. We have seen slogans chanted by racist agitators come straight from the lectern of the former prime minister or spoken at the dispatch box by senior politicians. Misinformation and hate have been spread online due to Big Tech’s profit models, which amplify divisive posts without any thought for the consequences. Those who have created this hateful terrain bear as much responsibility as those seeking to tip the country over into an all-out battlefield.

People are scared nonetheless, and our government has a duty to keep them safe — which is one of the reasons we should be concerned about some of the new proposals made in response to these racist attacks. While there must be accountability for the violence and justice for those who have been harmed, it is incumbent on us all to keep careful watch on new measures the government may now seek to implement. Many of these proposals raise concerns and do not easily seem to be dealing with the root causes of the violence.

Governments have previously used moments of crisis like this to erode our civil liberties and human rights with policies like Prevent, which was established following the global buy-in to Countering Violent Extremism (CVE) programmes after 9/11, and brought into full action after the bombings on 7/7. Prevent has been found to violate some of our most basic and fundamental rights, including freedom of expression, association, and assembly, and crucially, the right to non-discrimination. Amnesty International, like many other civil society organisations, called for it to be scrapped in our 2023 report ‘This is the Thought Police’, which documents how a trade union organiser was referred to Prevent for posting anti-capitalist content on social media and a teenager targeted after making a flippant comment during a school fire alarm.

Schemes like Prevent, which violate our rights, will never address the root causes of the violence we have seen this week. In many ways, the recent violence is itself another indictment of the scheme’s ineffectiveness and failure to tackle its own foundational mission.

Other measures now being touted risk violating our rights further in order to allow the government to appear tough on law and order. The government has announced plans to extend the use of facial recognition, for example, despite the evidence base showing its discriminatory impact. Facial recognition is a mass-surveillance measure that amplifies racist policing and interferes with the right to protest: there has been a steep rise in its use in the policing of protest in recent years, despite the UK Court of Appeal concluding in 2020 that the legal framework in place at the time for this technology violated human rights. The same goes for calls for further police powers to supplement those far-reaching laws introduced by the last government, which have already been used to crack down on genuine protest at a time when various police forces have themselves publicly acknowledged the existence and breadth of their institutional racism.

The prime minister has spoken about making human rights foundational to work across government, and yet ministers have made statements about the need to ‘nick them [rioters] quick’ and implement ‘quick justice’. During his time as Director of Public Prosecutions, Keir Starmer oversaw ‘fast-tracked’ prosecutions in response to the 2011 uprisings that followed the killing of Mark Duggan by the Metropolitan Police. Prosecutors interviewed for ‘Reading the Riots’, an investigation by the Guardian and the London School of Economics into that period, spoke of sacrificing due process for expediency. Those who have participated in acts of violence need to be held to account, but ‘nick them quick’ is not how a government seeking to uphold the rule of law should act.

There is a solution to the combined crises which created these riots, and it can be found by ensuring that everyone, including those who have come to the UK to find safety, have their rights fulfilled; that all are able to work and move around freely, and enjoy access to employment, education, and opportunity; that all are able to voice their dissent through genuine protest and mobilisation.

Political commentators spread myths of ‘two-tier policing’, but in the context of the decades of institutional prejudice against members of racialised communities identified by the police and several investigations, these claims are baseless. Used without restriction, surveillance technologies and policing powers ultimately hurt marginalised communities the most. As shards of glass and broken bricks are swept from the streets, then, we must remain vigilant and ensure that our rights are not swept away with them.