Right to Heal: Rebuilding Community Trust & Support After The 2024 Race Riots

A Reflection on the Sisters Not Strangers Birmingham Gathering, 22 July 2025

By Bridget Obi

On Tuesday, the 22^nd of July 2025, the Sisters Not Strangers Coalition (SNS) hosted an event to launch the SnS report, “Right to Heal: Rebuilding Trust & Communities”. The main aims of this report were to highlight the impact of the worst race riots since 2011 and to delve deeper into how they hit the UK in the summer of 2024.  These riots led to a sickening surge in racism, Islamophobia, and violence against ethnic minorities, especially those trapped in the asylum hotels, which have had long-lasting psychological and physical effects on the community. The riots were triggered by the deliberate dissemination of misinformation by the far right, who exploited and misrepresented the despicable and abhorrent Southport murders,

The SNS event further addressed ways to face and combat these effects through discussion with 40 members of Women with Hope, one of the Coalition partners. These were a mixture of women seeking  asylum and refugees. A range of politicians, academics, and organisations were invited to the event but, because of the midweek timing, only a few were able to attend.

Starting with Wellbeing

To begin with, the event started with an hour-long interactive wellbeing session, allowing everyone to feel relaxed and prepared for the day. The session was led by Sheva. The wellbeing session was well received, and all attendees were engaged. This was a great start, due to the attendees practising and being taught methods of relaxation and unwinding that they too could use when facing stressful and challenging situations: it emphasised the importance of being in control and grounding themselves in situations such as the 2024 riots.

Food as Connection

Following on from the wellbeing session, we had lunch, prepared by one of our very own SNS members, which was delicious! Everyone in attendance thoroughly enjoyed the dishes. It shows that things like food can bridge differences and close gaps, bringing people from various backgrounds together, forming communities and stronger ties.

Facing the Hard Truths

The afternoon session centred around the SNS report, researched by the whole team and presented by one of its main writers. Its focus was on documenting the impact of the riots on the women and children seeking asylum and examining the role that asylum and gender played in spreading the race riots. The recurrence of such riots showed the significance of the report is ongoing, not merely historical.

The report notes that it is accepted that the riots were sparked in response to false rumours that the Southport murderer was a Muslim asylum seeker. The far right used  this as an opportunity to victimise ethnic minorities, and to attack their places of refuge, religion and business. The damage to the hostels housing asylum seekers demonstrates the serious danger to their inhabitants. The report noted that the predominantly white male rioters legitimated attacking these hotels by claiming a need to “protect their kids” from the men they said were living there. In reality, they terrified all the inhabitants, and in many cases the majority of these were women and children. Their fear and sense of insecurity were not isolated feelings: the attendees were women, many of whom have children and continue to fear for their safety. This was an important part of the report, because it showed the role of both gender and asylum in enabling racism to increase its impact.

The report further noted that the use of social media helped to promote more violence, which was used as a medium to document the violence and was open for all to see. Social media became a main outlet for spreading false news at an alarming rate, leaving verification of such news to be left too late. At the same time social media allowed those locked inside their hostels and  to communicate with each other and with their friends and family. Social media itself is therefore not the problem but the lack of regulation of the media.

Rebuilding Trust, Together

But the report didn’t just stop at analysis. It offered a way forward.

It called for building mutual trust between host and migrant communities, grounded in shared humanity and the desire to live in peace with one another, promoting coexistence in their respective areas. This is an important aspect to rebuild communities and trust, because there needs to be acceptance that, whilst we may not all be the same, we should not use that as grounds to discriminate against others.

It offered practical recommendations to increase actual safety and the sense of being secure. It urged local and national leaders to confront racism, Islamophobia, and hate speech head-on, instead of allowing them to fester in silence. If the leaders can address the issues surrounding integration, the necessary policies can be implemented to improve these situations.

Group Discussion

After the presentation the attendees split into three groups, each facilitated by an SNS member. These groups discussed their own experience of the riots and their understanding of the report. This information will be incorporated into the second stage of the research: the online survey of members of each coalition partner to gather responses from a wide geographical area, examining and assessing the preliminary findings before writing the final report.

We believe that, if we want integration and a true sense of belonging, we must build it together—with honesty, accountability, and justice.

A Message of Courage

The key message of the day was this: your pain is real, your voice matters, and your bravery is needed now more than ever.

As Sisters Not Strangers, we will continue to challenge hate and discrimination wherever they appear. We will continue to gather, reflect, and act. And we will continue to remind every woman in our network: you are not alone.

Read the full report here