Sadiq Khan ‘proud’ of London reaction to far-right protestors

We spoke to the Mayor of London Sadiq Khan, who was taking part in an anti racism workshop organised by Chelsea football club.

We began by asking him what he thinks the lesson is from the last week of unrest.

Sadiq Khan: It’s really important to explain to citizens what’s really happening and why you have difficulty getting decent health care, why you can’t get your kids decent education in the local school, why there’s a problem with affordable housing, why things suddenly gone up. Now some politicians across the country, MPs indeed, people aspiring to be leaders of political parties, like to blame the other – easiest thing to do, when you’ve got a horrific tragedy of three young girls, beautiful kids, being murdered. To see that being used to propagate these messages of hatred, I find astonishing. But you see people actually buying into that, and I’m afraid we’ve got to make sure we say no to that and stand up to that and challenge those sorts of views.

Krishnan Guru-Murthy: And do you think the government has described what’s going on correctly? There are lots of people who are saying you need to have said more clearly that this was racist and Islamophobic rather than just thuggery, because thuggery doesn’t quite cover what’s going on.

Sadiq Khan: I’m quite clear, and I think both Keir {Starmer} and Yvette {Cooper} have been quite clear. I’m quite clear, this is racist. There’s been violence. There has been hatred being spread. Also, I think some people have been sold the misinformation and disinformation. You can tell a lie on social media, forget minutes, it takes seconds to just… and the way the algorithms work, the clickbait, if they’re negative messages sent by certain people, they just fly. And we know the consequence of this. What was the consequence?

A hostel being set on fire. What was the consequence? A police car being set on fire. What was the consequence? Police officers have been injured. In London yesterday I spoke to Muslims, lawyers, people who work in health practices. Petrified and scared. I spoke to my nephews and nieces and said please don’t go out in the evening because I worry about your safety. This is London in 2024, for goodness sake.

Krishnan Guru-Murthy: So practically, what can you do to reach the kinds of kids who end up being the thugs on the street?

Sadiq Khan: What we’re funding from City Hall. We invest in projects to work at an early stage with young people to give them the resilience to reject later on, when social media or a charismatic leader or somebody else may try and send them on a certain path, they can reject it because they know that actually multiculturalism isn’t all evil. But what I find a source of interest, but also pride, is in those parts of our country where there’s the greatest diversity and there’s the most mixing and mingling between white people and those who are diverse, there’s the least trouble.

Because they know people like me, people like you, aren’t the bogeyman. They know we’re not a drain on public services. They’ve mixed and mingled with refugees. Many are teachers, doctors and so forth may be former refugees, that these problems are happening in those parts of the country where there may be less diversity, but there are problems with lack of public services, not decent facilities, not decent schools, not decent investment over 14, 15 years. That’s why it’s really important to understand those concerns and address them and don’t leave a vacuum for the far right to occupy.

Krishnan Guru-Murthy: Do you think we need to be looking at the whole question of toxic masculinity, Andrew Tate, all those sorts of messages and how this plays into that? Because there seems to be like a new ecosystem now where you’ve got that going on online. It’s amplified by people like Nigel Farage, the right-wing media, and it’s kind of growing as a result.

Sadiq Khan: I spend a lot of time with young people, and I think one of the biggest fears I have and the biggest issues that are not being addressed, is the sources of information young people now get is unchecked. It can be on their phone, they can be TikTok. It can be, you mentioned Andrew Tate, and the way the algorithms work is, you get similar sorts of messages from similar sorts of views and there’s no challenge. And you’re going down this Alice in Wonderland hole where it’s just one-dimensional and one view. And we’ve got to recognise that’s one of the reasons why, you’ll see in the numbers you’ve seen across the country, because whether it’s Stephen Yaxley-Lennon, or whether it’s Andrew Tate, or whether it’s somebody else spreading misinformation, they get more of this sort of stuff, which means they rock up at these sort of protests.

Krishnan Guru-Murthy: Just finally, what we saw last night was lots of people coming out to defend their communities. What as the mayor do you want people to do when you hear about this? Should you go out onto the streets?

Sadiq Khan: I lived through the NF, the National Front, and the BNP. A source of pride for me was my white friends coming to my support and going to marches with me to stand up against the NF and the BNP. We thought they were gone. There’s a new generation called the EDL. So these iterations that are around, that’s why we can’t ever be complacent. We’ve always got to be vigilant.

My daughters, for the first time in their lives, are scared because of the colour of their skin, right? They’re scared because they look like Muslims. We thought that was behind us with our generation. And that’s why we can’t be complacent, and that’s why it’s really important we aren’t smug about, listen, this wouldn’t happen in London, London is perfect, because it could happen in London. And that’s why we’ve got to carry on engaging with communities in London to make sure they understand there’s a reason why diversity in our cities is a strength, not a weakness.