Iain Dalton, Socialist Party Yorkshire Regional Secretary
On the night of 18July, less than a mile from my house, police cars were being overturned and a bus set on fire. Huge crowds gathered in the streets of Harehills in East Leeds.
The immediate trigger seems to have been the removal of children from a family, following injuries to a 7-month-old who had been taken to the hospital. We do not know the full details.
However, footage does show the children struggling as they are forcibly taken away by police. A large crowd gathered, seemingly to resist this, trying to stop the police van from moving, then later attacking police vehicles and riot officers.
This led to the police withdrawal from the area, and them setting up road blocks on Harehills Lane. Later in the evening, a bus trapped in the crowds after it was evacuated, was set on fire.
Local people have felt ignored by the establishment. The area is dominated by back-to-back housing, with small or no gardens, overcrowding and dodgy landlords. Low waged, and insecure work predominates. Apart from the hospital, the next biggest employer in the area, a warehouse for Arcadia group, shut down when the company went under in 2021.
There is huge accumulated anger and frustration, as well as widespread distrust of the police and other authorities.
In the aftermath, local people are expressing frustration at how the police acted, seemingly to inflame the situation, and that they later appeared to abandon the area to its fate.
Polls show trust in the police is falling, less than half of Londoners trust the Metropolitan police for example. For a section of youth and workers in Harehills, many from migrant or Black and Asian backgrounds, the police are definitely not seen as being there to serve in their interests. Likewise, underfunded and overstretched social services are seen by some as playing a repressive role.
The Socialist Party calls for fully funded public services. Under the democratic control of working-class communities, the police and other authorities could be made accountable to elected committees composed of representatives of trade unions and community groups. Services could be planned to meet need.
However, Leeds Labour council has carried out Tory austerity cuts. A new leisure centre, promised as a sweetener when the council wanted to build on the Fearnville playing fields, which the local community resisted, has still not even commenced construction. And just last month, the council voted to press on with closing Gipton North nursery, and exploring privatisation of Shepherd’s Lane, 2 of 3 council-run Little Owls Nurseries in the area.
In the local elections, after years of Labour domination, a prominent Gaza campaigner, Mothin Ali, was elected as councillor for the area, standing for the Green Party.
Far-right groups attempted to jump on situation, distorting events to describe them as ‘the start of race riots in the UK’. They tried to inflame the situation with Islamophobic comments, including claiming Mothin was the instigator of the riots! Video footage clearly shows Mothin working with locals to stop people tipping bins and other rubbish onto the bus fires, and then helping local residents to put the fire out.
The Tommy Robinson-backed protest in nearby Gipton on the following Saturday, attempting to stoke divisions in our community, only attracted a handful. The far right, like the Labour-run council, has no answers to the underlying situation facing local people.
We need a council that fights for the resources our city needs. We need free childcare, decent jobs, affordable high-quality housing and more.
Green councillors have so far played a positive role in working with campaigners to Save Little Owls nursery, for example. How will they use their elected positions going forward to demand that the Labour council, now with a Labour government in Westminster, funds the services we need?
Events in Harehills show the huge accumulated anger that exists. That anger needs an expression through working-class struggle for all the things we need: decent homes, a real pay rise, a future for young people. A key part of that is a new mass party of the working class fighting for socialist change.
Talking to residents
I went down to talk to local people in the park the weekend after the riots. Around 15-20 people had gathered at a demo organised by the far right as an attempt to build racist and anti-immigrant tension.
The protest was largely ignored by the local community with everyone just going about their day as usual. Residents were out in the park, children playing and just getting on. There was some concern about people from outside the area coming in to try and stoke up trouble.
There’s concern that the council will use this as an excuse to hold up the building of the new leisure centre yet again. There’s anger that the local council-run nursery is being closed next month. Refugees are worried they are going to be deported, despite having nothing to do with the riots.
People feel abandoned by the police, council and government. A few people repeated a local saying: “Things are done to us and not with us.”
Isabelle, Gipton resident
