Racist Britain: Channel 4 Dispatches

Channel 4 Dispatches will tonight (Monday 11th July) reveal the reality of the impact of the EU Referendum on xenophobia in the UK. For the past six months Dispatches have been tracking a rising tide of hate – online and on our streets, and can reveal the true scale of racism in Britain.

Racist Britain, fronted by Seyi Rhodes, reveals:

• There were more than thirteen thousand tweets that used terms that could be seen as Xenophobic and racist in the week immediately after the EU referendum.
• There were 2413 original accounts of hateful incidents, which were shared over fourteen thousand times.
• After the Brussels attacks there was a tripling the number of Islamophobia messages that were being sent in the UK, from around 216 tweets per day before the Brussels attacks to on average 680 a day after the attacks. In the week following the attacks, Demos identified and captured almost 60,000 tweets from people in Britain using words that could be seen as Islamophobic.
• Almost five thousand of these were angry, severely derogatory and explicitly anti-Islamic.

The National Police Chiefs Council recorded a 400% rise in hate crime in the week that followed the referendum.

Terrorism, ISIS, the Rotherham child grooming scandal, and now Brexit, have all resulted in sharp increases in Islamophobia.

DEMOS – study of xenophobia post-Brexit:

Demos have developed software that recognizes abusive language on social media, they have created a study, with Dispatches, to monitor racist and Islamophobic tweets.

Immigration was a leading topic of conversation in the referendum, and in just one week there were more than two hundred and fifty thousand tweets discussing the subject matter.

After the decision was announced Demos saw a very large increase in discussion about migration and immigration on social media.

• There were more than thireteen thousand tweets that used terms that could be seen as Xenophobic and racist in the week immediately after the vote.

Carl Miller Research Director at Demos, "So one of the most fascinating things is two really key hashtags that we couldn’t have anticipated beforehand sprung up in the wake of the Brexit vote. Hashtag safety pin which was broadly being used to show solidarity with migrants and you had hashtag post ref racism which was being used to raise awareness of xenophobia and racism including on the streets, those two hashtags together we’ve almost got 100,000 tweets going from June 25th through to July 4th."

• There were 2413 original accounts of hateful incidents, which were shared over fourteen thousand times.

So when you compare what happened in terms of Islamophobia after the referendum how does that compare to other incidents?

Demos have been looking at Islamophobia on social media for a longer period than the post-Brexit aftermath. Data shows spikes occurring especially after terrorist attacks, with clear spikes in the aftermath of the Brussels attacks and following the Orlando attacks.

• The Brussels attacks themselves tripled the number of Islamophobia messages that were being sent, from around 216 tweets per day before the Brussels attacks to on average 680 a day after the attacks.

• In the week following the attacks, they are able to identify and capture almost 60,000 tweets from people in Britain using words that could be seen as Islamophobic.

• Almost five thousand of these were angry, severely derogatory and explicitly anti-Islamic.

Tell Mama:

Tell Mama are a national project who measure and monitor anti-Muslim hatred and sentiment in the UK. Tell Mama was established in 2012 to support victims of anti-Muslim hatred. Since then, more than five and half thousand people have come to them for help. Because of their work with victims, police forces and the government, they too have become a target.

Islamophobia has been on the rise in Britain since the 9/11 terror attacks, more than half of all mosques and Muslim centres in Britain have been targeted since.

According to the monitoring group Tell Mama, last year incidents of anti-Muslim abuse and attacks rose by more than three hundred percent, with women wearing the headscarf or hijab being particularly vulnerable, because they stand out.

In the three days that followed Brexit they received more than 35 calls reporting anti-Muslim abuse.

Example phone call - a recording that took place following the Brussels terror attack:

Caller:  Hello um

TM:      Okay.

Caller:  I'm an Englishman without any religious persuasions really.

TM:    Yeah

Caller:  But I just wanted to tell you to your face I absolutely hate Muslims that I hope, with all my heart that fucking Muslims just die as soon as they fucking can.

TM:      Okay excellent

Caller:  I hate them

TM:     Are you finished now?

Humza Yousaf, Transport Minister in the Scottish Parliament:

Humza Yousaf is a proud Muslim with Pakistani parents, after the Scottish elections in May he was appointed Transport Minister, he swore his oath of allegiance in Urdu as well as in English. The video of him taking the oath went viral with lots commenting on social media that they were appalled.

Humza Yousaf, "There's no doubt in mind at all that when an incident like Paris happens then there's a sudden spike, it's always a link that somehow I have something to do with it just by the very virtue of being a Muslim that I must be implicated in what has happened that we’re all the same."

Government plans to tackle hate crime:

Since the referendum, the government has said it’s going to publish an action plan to tackle hate crime.

Dispatches understands it has plans for measures to prevent racism on public transport and to tackle attacks, particularly against Muslim women.

Karen Bradley is the minister responsible.

SR:  So Karen as far as the home office is aware has there been a rise in Islamophobic and racist increase in attacks after the referendum…

 KB: There have been more reports than we’d perhaps seen previously. But I want to be clear it’s a snapshot. We need to understand whether those reports are because of the increase in the prevalence of the crime or because more people are reporting the crime.

SR: There have been suggestions that the rhetoric used by pro-Brexit campaigners can be attributed to what's happened afterwards, what do you think about that?

KB: I think it’s really important that anybody in public life and anybody who has a platform that the public listen to is very careful and considers what they're saying and how that might be interpreted. But there can be no excuse for hate crime, for abuse being hurled at people, innocent people, who do not deserve it. And so the very suggestion that the EU referendum and the comments that were made during it are in any way excuses for abuse and for crime is simply not acceptable.

But how easy it is to prosecute Islamophobia?

Nazir Afzal was until recently, chief prosecutor for the Crown Prosecution Service, he has worked on more than a hundred cases involving Islamophobia.

He examines a selection of racist tweets to see how prosecutable they are, most of the messages Nazir Afzal classifies as, "Nasty, absolutely horrible, but not criminal. It's insulting, it's abusive, it's critical but it doesn't threaten anybody.  It would not pass over the threshold for incitement to religious hatred."

Explaining why the prosecution is so complicated, “Because you have to carry out further investigation.

It’s not just the words, if I said 'I'm going to hurt somebody 10,000 miles away and I've never got, there's no possibility of me even getting close to that person it's just words and there was never any intent behind it."

This means that a lot of tweets aren’t prosecutable, "It has to be violent or threats of violence for it to meet the threshold for religious hate crime"

The question remains whether this is just a blip - the result of the Brexit vote, terrorism, Rotherham, or the new face of Britain.

RACIST BRITAIN: CHANNEL 4 DISPATCHES Monday 11th July, Channel 4, 8pm

Reporter: Seyi Rhodes

Producer: Bushra Siddiq

Director: Ben Ryder

Executive Producer: Lucie Kon