Britain’s political and media elites have rightly condemned the riots that have caused such destruction and distress across towns and cities in England and Northern Ireland over the past week. Prime minister Keir Starmer has said that this ‘violent thuggery’ has ‘no place on our streets’. Liberal broadsheets have denounced the disorder as ‘an assault on the rule of law‘. Pundits have fallen over themselves to express their disgust, especially with the riots’ racist dimension.

These are strong words and welcome sentiments. But they’re strong words and welcome sentiments that ring more than a little hollow. After all, many of those now outraged by the sight of violent crowds chucking bricks at cops, attacking public buildings and looting shops have spent much of the past couple of decades justifying and even extolling the virtues of rioting mobs.

Think back to the London riots in August 2011. On Saturday 6 August, a crowd gathered outside Tottenham police station, in protest over the fatal police shooting of Mark Duggan, a young black man. By the evening, what had begun as an angry demonstration against the police had morphed into a dark carnival of destruction. Homes were torched, local businesses looted and the police pelted with bricks and firebombs. Over the next few days, as the police retreated, the rioting spread through inner and outer London and into other towns and cities across England. Crowds of largely young people raided shops, set fire to cars and turned buildings into flaming tributes to nothing very much.