Police data shows 1 in 5 men arrested during 2024 riots have since been reported for domestic abuse

Joint statement from Southall Black Sisters (SBS), Hibiscus, Latin American Women’s Rights Service (LAWRS), Imkaan, End Violence Against Women Coalition (EVAW), Women for Refugee Women, Asylum Matters

In summer 2024, the UK witnessed 29 anti-immigration demonstrations and riots. Mosques, community centres, libraries and hotels housing asylum seekers were targeted in 27 towns and cities across England and Northern Ireland. Many of those involved claimed to be acting in defence of women and girls, using slogans such as “protect our women” and “save our girls” – a narrative that recent police data calls into serious question. That data shows that a striking proportion of those arrested during the riots have themselves been reported to police for domestic abuse, both before and since the disorder.

This violence, which followed the horrific murder of three young girls at a dance class in Southport, was fuelled by false claims online, with rioters ignoring the pleas of bereaved parents and using the appalling violence against these girls as an excuse for taking part in racist violence. These events were not an isolated episode. In recent years, concerns about violence against women and girls (VAWG) have increasingly been appropriated by far-right and anti-migrant groups to advance divisive political agendas. Rather than addressing the realities of male violence, such narratives misdirect public attention, distort understanding of who perpetrates abuse, and fuel hostility towards migrant and minoritised communities in the UK.

With this in mind, the police data reported in the Guardian warrant serious attention. They reveal that one in five people arrested during the 2024 anti-migrant riots have since been reported to police for domestic abuse, adding to earlier findings that two in five had already been reported for domestic abuse before the disorder took place. It points to what we, specialist organisations working with women who have survived sexual and gender-based violence, have known for a long time: most cases of men’s violence against women and girls are perpetrated by men who are known to the victim-survivors.

This data also indicate a worrying trend: a significant overlap between perpetrators of public violence, violence against women and girls, and anti-migrant rhetoric. If this weaponisation of violence against women and girls is left unchecked, it will continue to fuel violence, deepen division, and undermine the respect and freedom of our communities.

This matters because much of the disorder was justified in the name of protecting women and girls. When concern for women’s safety is used as a rationale for hostility towards migrant and minoritised communities, it tends to obscure rather than address the realities of abuse that women experience. Women’s safety becomes politicised and weaponised. And this shows us that weaponising violence against women and girls to justify anti-migrant disorders obscures the realities of abuse that women experience, misleads the public about its perpetrators, and allows its underlying causes to remain unchallenged.

For victim-survivors, and particularly for Black, migrant and minoritised women, the consequences are damaging. Public attention and resources are diverted towards scapegoats that do not reflect the lived realities of abuse, while the specialist services that victim-survivors rely on remain under-funded and overstretched.

These findings demand more than acknowledgement, as such, we are calling on the Government to:

• Commit sustained, ring-fenced funding to specialist VAWG services, prioritising by and for organisations – the very services victim-survivors rely on, and the ones too often left to do the most with the least.

• Guarantee protection and safe reporting for every victim-survivor regardless of immigration status, by establishing a full, unconditional firewall between statutory agencies, the police and Immigration Enforcement, so that no woman is ever forced to choose between her safety and her status.
• Reject and challenge the weaponisation of violence against women and girls in political and public discourse, including by publicly rejecting alarmist anti-migrant rhetoric, referring MPs who make racist or inflammatory comments to the Parliamentary Standards Committee, and reviewing the role of social media platforms in amplifying it, as set out by Southall Black Sisters, Women for Refugee Women, Latin American Women’s Rights Service, Safety4Sisters and Imkaan in the 12 Demands to the Prime Minister following the 2024 riots.

The weaponisation of violence against women and girls is not inevitable – it is a political choice, and it can and must be challenged. We stand ready to work with policymakers, practitioners and partners to make these changes a reality. But women’s safety must never again be turned into a weapon against the communities they belong to.