Starmer is being tough on the rioters, but history shows that preventing further unrest is the real challenge | Martin Kettle

Reducing public anxieties about immigration is the best way to combat those fuelling such fears for their own ends

Britain’s 2024 riots are a surprise national crisis. There was no particular buildup, no clearly discernible pressure cooker process. No one appears to have warned that riots were imminent. Plenty of efforts, some irresistible but some dubious, have now been made to explain them. Yet, more than a week after the first violence in Southport, Britain is only at the start of an agreed and effective response.

This is almost always the way with riots. Riots take many forms. Almost always, though, they come as a shock. Nevertheless, riots are not unknown, either in postwar Britain or in British history more generally. The idea that Britain enjoyed a seamlessly peaceful path towards the blessings of parliamentary democracy, tolerance and the rule of law is simply untrue. There was never a riot-free golden age. But each generation is surprised anew.

Martin Kettle is a Guardian columnist

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