Middlesbrough MP Says "Rampant Inequality" Opened The Way For Violent Riots
Violent riots erupted across Middlesbrough last week (Alamy)
4 min read
The Labour MP for Middlesbrough has said that a legacy of “rampant inequality” opened the way for “terrible behaviours and abuse” to take hold in Teesside.
In the past week, hundreds of rioters have violently clashed with the police, shouted racist and threatening slurs, and damaged vehicles and property across the UK. Middlesbrough in North Yorkshire was one of the worst affected towns, where dozens of people were arrested and one video showed rioters blocking traffic to check if drivers were white or English before letting them pass through.
Andy McDonald, Labour MP for Middlesbrough since 2012, told PoliticsHome that the government and police would first have to “deal with what’s in front of them” and make those who engaged in criminal behaviour face the “full force of the law”.
However, going forward, McDonald said it was an “urgent” task to “turn around” the country and address deep inequalities, otherwise “manifestations” of violence in areas like Teesside could multiply.
“Over these years of rampant inequality, our public services have been so appallingly resourced that it leaves the way open to terrible behaviours and abuse,” he said.
“And this was such an opportunity, an excuse for those who know about just how weakened we've been over these years to really indulge themselves.”
He argued that the way frontline emergency services of fire and police are funded across the country is “grossly unfair”.
“We have a police and fire service that is stretched to the limit in one of the most dangerous environments, and yet we're the most poorly resourced, as well as Tyneside and Merseyside – now that tells you everything you need to know,” he said.
“These things do not happen in a vacuum, and if you do not resource your public services in the correct way, if you don't address issues of inequality fundamentally, then it will manifest itself in these terrible, prejudicial behaviours, this criminality.”
Cleveland Police, which covers Middlesbrough and the rest of Teesside, lost 500 police officers between 2010 and 2019, while tens of thousands of police force cuts were made elsewhere across the UK.
“We're still below par in terms of recruitment and with the best will in the world, if you have to then recruit at pace to make up the gap that has been caused, you're going to have to rely upon new recruits and probationers… but you've lost a resource of 500 officers who were expert and experienced,” McDonald said.
While he said he was “eternally grateful” and “in awe” of both the Cleveland police and other forces from North Yorkshire, Northumbria and Durham who came to assist, he added that it would be looking in more detail over the next few weeks to see whether the resourcing behind the response was sufficient.
In McDonald’s view, the new Labour government should make it a priority to address poverty and inequality, which he described as an “enormous task”.
“All of the pieces of the jigsaw have to be put in place to make that happen,” the MP said, which he believed should include an industrial policy and an employment rights protection policy that would aim to provide people with “good, secure, well-paid, unionised employment”.
“14 years of neo-liberalism writ large, running down our public services and continuing with the Thatcherite obsession with trying to derive private profit from other elements of our public services has its consequences, and there it was written in the streets across our country.
“We've got to turn the country around for the benefit of the working people. The task is urgent, so it's an immense challenge, but we're up for it and we've got to turn it around, because otherwise these sorts of manifestations will just increase or multiply if we don't solve the fundamental problems of our country.”
McDonald, however, hopes that his community and the wider UK have seen the worst of this bout of violence. On Wednesday night, counter-protesters across the UK vastly outnumbered those from far-right groups taking to the streets to cause disturbance, and on Monday, many Middlesbrough residents showed up to the clean up operation after the riots.
“I am just so uplifted and overwhelmed by the response of the community to express their true character and their nature,” he said.
“The focus on social cohesion is actually razor sharp… We now need to celebrate that wonderful expression of community, we've now got to really embed it and build upon it. And there's a determination to focus on that, which is really heartening.”
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