In the wake of the stabbing attack in Southport and the riots in Brixton, Peter Coughlan joins us on the show to discuss the events that have unfolded in the past week, and what we can learn from them.
00:02:03.600And there's people still in hospital now, extremely seriously injured.
00:02:09.580And, of course, the nation were utterly horrified and I guess remained so.
00:02:16.720And what's happened from then is, you know, we can talk about police communication and whatever, but we can see that there's been a lot of tension bubbling under the surface in this country for a long time now.
00:02:32.500And it is spilling out onto the streets into pretty horrific scenes.
00:02:36.840I would think as a particular retired officer, seeing whatever you think about the motivations of the people and whatever, just the fact that police officers are having bricks thrown at them and all of that must be really awful to see.
00:02:52.320And anybody who engages in that kind of criminality, I'll be polite, is an idiot and should desist immediately.
00:03:00.100It's not going to achieve anything apart from many, many people get in very lengthy jail terms.
00:03:07.560The establishment comes down very hard when we have rioting.
00:03:11.660Just go and ask anybody who got nicked in 2011 when some very hefty jail terms were handed down.
00:03:18.880And if we look at the images of complete idiots trying to set fire to that Holiday Inn in Tamworth the other night,
00:03:27.460arson with intent to endanger life carries a maximum punishment of life imprisonment.
00:03:36.320There are going to be huge jail terms handed down if those people are identified, charged and convicted.
00:03:44.380And they will only have themselves to blame.
00:03:46.600Many, many people are going to have a lot of time in a jail cell to reflect about their actions.
00:03:54.360And we've already seen some people, apparently there was a fellow appeared in court today and was asking for his mum or something and was booing in court.
00:04:03.140You know, act in haste, repent at leisure.
00:04:08.120But I fundamentally don't think the whole, shall I say, very robust language that we've seen from the Prime Minister and ministers,
00:04:20.420I don't think that's really going to be, well, it's falling on deaf ears at the moment,
00:04:25.220so it's not having the right effect, and I think a more, and I'll explain this if I may, if that's okay,
00:04:32.720I think a more conciliatory approach would be much, much better.
00:04:39.280But I better explain myself before, you know, people start kicking me to death on social media, so to speak.
00:06:42.960Certain sections of the Bangladeshi community in East London, and certain men within that forbid their women from speaking English.
00:06:51.580I was in East London last night, actually, at one point, on a bit of a jolly up, a leave-in do for someone.
00:06:59.360But I spent quite a bit of time talking to a group of Bangladeshi businessmen, some of whom had flown over to the UK on a short holiday to see relatives,
00:07:08.660and others who were established in East London and had businesses and all of that.
00:07:12.320And I've got to tell you, judging by the look of them, you'd like to have been a pound note behind some of these guys.
00:07:16.640They were obviously some of them, very astute businessmen, and they're all in a booze, having a drink and a chat, this, that, and the other.
00:07:28.220And, of course, there are Asian communities that are not integrated.
00:07:35.480Brown-faced people that don't dress like us and do not integrate with us.
00:07:41.880And, of course, they are invariably followers of Islam.
00:07:46.640Let's not be around the bush, as you say.
00:07:50.320So all those simmering tensions have kind of manifested themselves very recently in the Reform Party getting over 4 million votes, for example.
00:08:04.320And Reform essentially were on a platform of migration issues.
00:08:09.740And clearly that chimes with over 4 million people who voted for them.
00:08:13.540So this is not a tiny minority of people who have concerns about immigration.
00:08:21.840And, again, to flesh that out, I know we said please take your time and please do take your time.
00:08:26.040But just to flesh that out, actually, for two decades now, successive governments have been elected on the promise of reducing immigration to the tens of thousands.
00:08:35.000So reform is perhaps a more hard-line position.
00:08:39.900But I think it's important for people to understand in the context of this discussion that actually the majority of the British public have consistently voted against mass immigration on the scale that we've seen.
00:08:51.780Cameron, didn't he say he was going to get it under 100,000 all those years ago?
00:08:55.320So, you know, fail, fail, fail, come all the way up to Sunak, stop the boats, utter nonsense.
00:09:01.400The boats are still arriving on a daily basis, weather permitting.
00:09:41.240But, of course, there are lazy politicians who will take out their big, broad brush and paint them all as being far right.
00:09:58.020When many of them, I'm sure, probably voted Labour as well in the last general election and all that stuff.
00:10:02.880I'm sure there's many people that voted Labour last time round that harbour concerns about the rise of Islam and unfettered migration.
00:10:11.240But you all get painted with that brush as being far right.
00:10:14.600So much so that people are afraid to have sensible conversations, within which there is not a scintilla of racism.
00:10:28.340Not a trace that people are afraid to have those conversations, because it is very easy for lazy politicians
00:10:38.980and rampant left-wingers to go, racist, racist, when it's complete, utter nonsense.
00:10:47.920I don't have to prove my credentials to anyone about race, so I'm not going to go on about friends and family and this, that and the other.
00:10:57.980Although I do know people who are married to people who have migrated into the UK, who have concerns about the rise of Islam and unfettered migration.
00:12:37.840So then how do we get from a society in which you say lots of people have concerns about immigration and the lack of integration and the rise of Islam,
00:12:47.480to riots in the streets of a dozen British cities in which you have people burning things, attacking things.
00:12:54.860And now also you have Muslim men gathering, arming themselves, and trying to get there and have those fights.