Is the rate of racist incidents in the UK rising, and is it likely a prelude to greater civil unrest and potential pogroms in future?
This fact-check may be outdated. Consider refreshing it to get the most current information.
Executive Summary
Hate crime recorded by police in England and Wales rose modestly in the year to March 2025, with race and religiously motivated offences increasing, but interpretation is complicated by recording changes and missing Metropolitan Police data; the documented rise is not on its own definitive evidence of an imminent national breakdown into pogroms [1] [2] [3]. Multiple reporting strands show localised spikes — including sharp rises in anti-Muslim and antisemitic incidents and tensions around asylum housing — and parliamentary warnings about online misinformation heighten concern that local flashpoints could cascade into wider unrest if left unaddressed [4] [5] [6].
1. Why the headline numbers show a small rise — but the picture is incomplete and technical
Official Home Office figures report a 2% increase in police-recorded hate crimes across England and Wales (excluding the Metropolitan Police), with a 6% rise in race hate crimes and a 3% rise in religious hate crimes, yet officials warn those figures are distorted by long-term improvements in police recording practices and the absence of Met data [1]. Media summarises mirror those numbers and flag that the Home Office cautions against reading them as straightforward trend evidence; the BBC and Sky reiterate the exclusion of the Met as a significant caveat, and Sky highlights a post–Southport spike that influenced patterns [2] [3]. The technical caveats mean the rise may partly reflect better detection rather than only more incidents.
2. Where the increases are concentrated — Muslim and Jewish communities report worrying spikes
Reporting from charities and community groups documents concentrated rises: religiously motivated offences targeting Muslims are reported up nearly 19%, and organisations monitoring antisemitic incidents recorded a surge, with the Community Security Trust logging 1,521 antisemitic incidents in H1 2025 [2] [4]. These data point to disproportionate impact on specific minority communities, which matters more for on-the-ground security planning than aggregate percentages. Local charity warnings about tensions around Houses in Multiple Occupation (HMOs) housing asylum seekers show how demographic flashpoints — asylum accommodation and community stress — can create concentrated hotspots of anti-migrant activity [5].
3. Local flashpoints, protests and targeted activism increase the risk of escalation
Charity and local reporting warns that anti-migrant activists may target rental homes and that anti-migrant protests could escalate in towns hosting asylum accommodation, creating volatile local dynamics [5]. Welsh reporting and MPs raise alarms about the potential for unrest to spread if authorities do not act, suggesting that localised anger can quickly morph into broader disorder in the presence of misinformation and weak local mitigation [7] [6]. These sources underline that escalation pathways are typically local and contingent, not inevitable national trajectories; they are more plausibly triggers for disturbances than precursors to organised mass violence.
4. Political and online dynamics are flagged as accelerants, not deterministic causes
Parliamentary warnings focus on online misinformation as a repeat catalyst for the 2024 summer riots and caution that unchecked social media amplification could precipitate renewed unrest, but MPs do not equate online harms with a deterministic march toward pogroms [6]. Commentaries about transatlantic influences and far-right rhetoric broaden the context but do not provide direct evidence that the UK is on an unavoidable path to widespread intercommunal pogroms; instead, they suggest exported narratives and local political choices can amplify risk where grievances exist [8]. These lines of analysis treat online platforms as risk multipliers.
5. The evidence supports concern but not inevitability — historical comparisons matter
Sources document worrying spikes and the potential for localized disorder; however, officials and analysts caution against equating a modest national rise in recorded hate crime with an imminent breakdown into pogrom-scale violence [1] [2] [3]. Historical precedents show that large-scale communal violence usually requires multiple reinforcing conditions — organised extremist mobilization, mass propaganda, state failure or collusion, and sustained local breakdown — none of which the sources uniformly demonstrate for the UK in 2025 [6] [4]. The available reporting points to elevated risk and concentrated harms, not an established trajectory to nationwide pogroms.
6. What is omitted or uncertain in the available reporting
Key omissions weaken claims of inevitable national collapse: the Home Office exclusions of Metropolitan Police data, evolving police recording quality, and limited longitudinal context are repeatedly flagged, reducing confidence in trend extrapolation [1] [3]. Community reporting highlights acute local harms but does not document coordinated campaigns that would amount to state-ignored or widespread pogroms [5] [4]. Parliamentary warnings about misinformation identify plausible pathways to unrest but do not provide empirical projections of scale; thus the debate often mixes qualitative alarm with incomplete quantitative linkage.
7. Bottom line for policymakers and the public: targeted prevention, not fatalism
The combined evidence requires urgent targeted responses: strengthen community policing and victim support where minority groups face rising threats, regulate online misinformation as MPs advise to reduce contagion risks, and monitor asylum-hosting localities to prevent escalation [1] [6] [5]. The reporting justifies heightened vigilance and preventive action but does not substantiate a prediction that the UK is inevitably headed toward pogroms; instead, it identifies plausible, addressable flashpoints where timely interventions can avert larger civil unrest [2] [4].