Understanding the 2024 summer riots in the UK: three case studies

The wave of riots in England in summer 2024 constituted the biggest wave of disorder in the country for more than a decade. These were followed by swift policy responses, based on assumptions about the events and the participants, before any detailed empirical investigation had been carried out. There is a need for detailed description of events as a solid basis for both social psychological theory and policy . This paper therefore presents case studies of the disorders in Bristol, Hanley, and Tamworth, using interviews and multiple secondary sources, to understand what happened and who was involved. Our analysis suggests that it is inaccurate to see the events as ‘protests’, since they consisted of collective attacks (on asylum seekers’ accommodation and on mosques). Protagonists were ethnically white but not homogeneous. At least four different parties were involved – anti-immigrant participants, police, counter-protesters, the targets of the actions (asylum seekers and Muslims), and on one occasion ‘community defenders’. We compare these events to the 2011 English riots, and we specify remaining ‘unknowns’ that future research should address.