Letter to Kirklees Council re: their promotion of a non-existent "riot"

Dear Councillors,

I am writing to you in relation to the "warning" you issued to residents of Kirklees yesterday declaring, amongst other things, that we are all experiencing "fear deep down" due to the alleged presence of a "far-right group" planning a riot in Huddersfield's town centre.

You then proceeded to issue vehement cautions against venturing into the town centre, or even leaving home at all, as well as advising we should all construct "safety plans" to protect ourselves from these alleged "far-right extremists".

At the time I received it, I considered your message to be wholly inappropriate fear-mongering and race-baiting, seeking to exploit recent tragedies and tensions to serve your own political agendas.

When you wrote that people may be "targeted as a result of [their] race or religion", you were obviously not aiming this warning at the 80% of Huddersfield's population that is white. Rather, you were seeking to impose the idea upon the town's minority communities that they are in danger from this majority, because we all know that "far-right extremist" is a thinly veiled euphemism for "white working class" - Huddersfield's majority demographic.

Your missive was designed therefore to do nothing but create fear and foster hostility and division by pitting communities - communities which are well integrated and co-exist together perfectly peacefully - against each other.

You ensured, by your inflammatory communication and manipulative use of language, that friends, neighbours and colleagues suddenly started to view each other with suspicion, distrust, and even terror - solely because of the colour of their skin.

I do not allow the cynical agendas of divisive politicians to distort my view of my community, nor do I obey their attempts to coercively control my behaviour through fear, so I dismissed your warnings to avoid the town centre and stay cowering in my house in terror, and instead, headed down to St. George's Square to verify for myself what was going on. I wished to clarify if - as I strongly suspected - you were wildly exaggerating in your claims.

Of course, by this point you will be well aware of what I found:

Nothing.

There was not only not a "far-right riot", but, in fact, not one single, solitary "extremist" of any description had turned up at all. The only protestors were a small number of counter-protestors holding "hate will not win" banners.

Despite this being the case, multiple town centre businesses had shut their doors and closed down for the day, so petrified were they of being targeted by the "extremists" that you had sought to terrorise them about - and please let me be emphatically clear that that is not too strong a word.

The definition of "terrorism" is "the use of intimidation, especially against civilians, in the pursuit of political aims".

That is what you did. You used fear to deeply intimidate the people of Huddersfield, to the extent that they fled their livelihoods in abject terror. You terrorised them.

I am well aware of exactly what is behind all this political fear-mongering and grotesque exaggeration of the threat of the so-called "far-right" (if this faction was really such a threat, then - even if the alleged "riot" at Huddersfield was initially advertised by "fake news" social media posts - one would still assume that hordes of "far-right extremists" would have turned up anyway, given how much blanket coverage the local press and council gave this event, telling them exactly where to go. That not a single one of them did attend almost suggests the north of England isn't actually an unstable racist hellscape full of lawless thugs).

You wish to clamp down upon our civil liberties and personal freedoms, bringing in a range of anti-democratic and illiberal measures such as facial recognition and digital ID, as well as limiting our rights to peacefully gather and protest, and to freely share our views and opinions online. You know you can't simply impose these measures without a reason, so riots and the supposed threat of the "far-right" have been largely manufactured, then wildly exaggerated and amplified by politicians and the press, in order to give governmental bodies an excuse to introduce measures the populace would otherwise never have accepted.

This is an age-old political strategy known as "problem-reaction-solution", and this is what you are currently engaged in.

If, however, you feel that I have somehow misinterpreted your intentions, and you are not attempting to exploit and weaponise recent tragedies to fulfil your political ambitions, then I expect to see a comprehensive public apology issued to the people of Huddersfield for your attempts to terrorise and pit them against each other yesterday.

Trying to deflect responsibility and blame the situation on "social media users spreading fake news" is not acceptable, because social media users are not our elected and handsomely remunerated representatives. You are, and therefore you are wholly accountable for how you handle extremely sensitive and febrile situations such as the alleged threat of political and racial violence.

You are responsible for conducting robust fact-checking before you promulgate anything shared on social media - particularly when it relates to such incendiary issues as racial tensions - as fact. As you will recall, shortly after the Southport attacks, a "fake news" story regarding the identity of the assailant was widely shared online, suggesting he was a Muslim asylum seeker.

Those who shared this fabrication as fact were - rightly - widely condemned as allowing their personal prejudices to cloud their objectivity, being too quick to demonise a particular demographic in an attempt to politically point score.

No doubt you yourselves were some of the most outspoken condemning these individuals.

Yet you are guilty of exactly the same prejudicial bigotry yourselves, leaping immediately on the opportunity to vilify a certain group, rather than exercising professional judgement and discernment, and taking the time to verify if what you were promoting was in fact true.

As such, I would like to see full acknowledgement from you that not a single "extremist" ventured into Huddersfield town centre yesterday (despite the fact you effectively advertised the event to as many of them as possible), and that the only people who came out to protest were counter-protestors against extremism.

I would also like to see you compensate, in full, every business that shut its doors because of your baseless fear-mongering for their loss of earnings.

I also expect that, in future, you will commit to practicing less emotive hysteria and more appropriate engagement where it comes to possible political demonstrations in our town. Political demonstrations are a normal - and indeed vital - part of a functioning democracy, and the small minority of troublemakers who occasionally infiltrate such events and behave aggressively can easily be dealt with by law enforcement. Containing aggressive or threatening individuals at protest situations is something the police are extremely experienced in and perfectly adept to handle.

It is therefore completely inappropriate and unacceptable for you to respond to the possibility of protests by addressing the local populace as if they are living in some sort of war zone, indicating the danger is too high for them to go about their business as usual - or even leave their houses at all.

These kind of warnings have a disproportionately detrimental effect on more vulnerable populations, such as the elderly, as well you know. The reality is that there is absolutely no reason for any individual resident in Huddersfield to be living in fear of any sort of political extremism, given that genuinely dangerous extremist incidents are vanishingly rare and one is far more likely to be injured crossing the road than by a "far-right extremist", even if a political protest is going on.

It is incumbent on you as elected representatives bankrolled by we tax-payers to accurately risk-assess events, and then issue any required warnings in the appropriate and professional manner, avoiding inflammatory language, divisive rhetoric, and attempts to use fear to control. As I previously detailed, using fear and intimidation tactics to control people's behaviour is known as terrorism and that is illegal in this country.

Note that in your correspondence to Huddersfield residents yesterday, you warned that any "perpetrators" would feel "the full force of the law".

Yet the primary perpetrators of any fear and division yesterday, were you.

Please note that I am an independent writer and researcher with a sizeable audience locally and throughout the country, and I have published this letter to you on my various online platforms.

I look forward to your prompt response.

Yours sincerely,

Miri Finch

www.miriaf.co.uk

miri.substack.com

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