Monday 29th July
I’m on the train when I get a concerned message from a friend, asking if my family and I are okay. She’s seen the news from Southport before I have and can’t quite remember how nearby we live. I reply telling her not to worry—we’re fine, and Southport is miles away—then put my phone back in my pocket. I even think: bless her, she’s mixed up Southport and Stockport. It is only when social media is flooded with footage of burning vehicles, destroyed libraries and riots spreading across the north that I realise just how short-sighted my dismissal was. The violence breaking out in Southport was not as far off as I’d thought.
Friday 2nd August
We’re keeping an eye on the news from Liverpool, the city where I grew up. A riot is planned for that evening. A friend is at Abdullah Quilliam Mosque, the first to be established in Britain, in 1889. She spends the day with the police and security officials, surveying the building’s vulnerabilities, the walls and windows which might get smashed. The community turns out to protect the building. This isn’t passive victimhood; it is solidarity. It requires action.
Saturday 3rd August
The English Defence League (EDL) is rumoured to be gathering at Manchester Piccadilly station, worryingly close to the weekly Gaza ceasefire demonstrations. The resulting group of around 150 far-right demonstrators is aggressive. Friends who miss the warning to avoid the station are singled out, pushed, spat at. One has her keffiyeh stolen. Video footage from nearby shows a young black man being assaulted, while a mob encourages his attacker to “kill him” and “stamp on his face”. At night, unverified rumours of an acid attack on a -Muslim woman in Middlesbrough circulate on WhatsApp. We later learn that the police have received no official reports of such an attack, but the threat of potential violence has already made itself felt.
Monday 5th August
I’m heading to a poetry workshop, despite the unrest. My parents have given in to my stubborn insistence to go, on the condition that I drive into town, have someone walk me back to the car afterwards and wear a hoodie to hide my hijab. My headscarf is only covered for an hour, but I still feel mortified to have made myself smaller. I don’t want to hide something that makes me feel unstoppable, something I spent many years building up the courage to wear. My mother’s work meeting in Manchester has been cancelled, too. Her organisation works with refugees, so all meetings and client visits are off, in case their accommodation is targeted. I drive past her office that afternoon. The building is quiet, the windows dark. Tonight the far right is on the march in north Lincolnshire. Over the course of my drive home, messages from friends there pop up on my phone, obscuring my sat nav. I keep my eyes on the road.
Wednesday 7th August
I’m gaping at a video of a man wielding an electric hedge trimmer and chasing a Muslim couple from a Manchester petrol station. I flick through anxious WhatsApp messages from friends and people I barely know. I check in on my sister, on fellow writers, on a childhood friend whose first day as a junior doctor in Rotherham fell just after the arson attack on a local hotel housing asylum seekers there. A Turkish friend in Liverpool tells me how an elderly woman stopped her mother in Tesco and said to her, “Listen love, I just wanted to let you know that not all Scousers are racist, and I’m sorry that all of this is happening.”
Saturday 10th August
I stand by the Queen Victoria statue in Piccadilly Gardens, part of a huge crowd of counter-protesters. Over the past two weeks, many of us have witnessed individual stories of fear, frustration and defiance, but I’m more aware than ever that we are facing a structural problem. The unsettling escalation of racist violence feels like an inevitable extension of the anti-immigrant and Islamophobic sentiment that has been amplified by politicians and the mainstream media for decades. My friend Lila points out that although we are surrounded by anti-fascist solidarity at counter-demos, none of us can carry these thousands of people with us everywhere we go. None of us can guarantee that this community will surge to our aid if we end up in the wrong place at the wrong time. And until we address the institutional racism that lies behind this outpouring of violence, we will never be far from the wrong place. The wrong time will never quite pass.
