Were the Leeds riots ‘Unacceptable’?

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I have been seeking the Lord about the riots in Leeds and Southport. The Leeds affair was confined to July 2024. Southport started with the shocking and tragic stabbing to death of three little girls in July, but its ramifications are continuing.

So let’s take a biblical look at Leeds. I warn you, feathers may be ruffled.

Politicians and Commentators

Home Secretary Yvette Cooper MP said: ‘disorder of this nature has no place in our society’. The word ‘our’ is I think doing a lot of heavy lifting in that sentence.

UK Prime Minister, Keir Starmer, said: ‘Rioters will feel the full force of the law’. As will people (like the author) who stand with Bible verses outside abortion centres, for that matter.

From the chattering classes, here’s former Labour MP Tom Harris writing in the Telegraph: ‘Political violence in a democracy is unacceptable,’ he says. He goes on: ‘It was unacceptable when rioting broke out in Leeds, sparked by local anger at the removal by social workers of two Roma children from their families.’

In this video I’m going to tell you why scripture completely disagrees with Mr Harris.

And it was four children, not two. (The footage of the police marching away the struggling children, in our video, is harrowing.)

And is a ‘democracy’ a system in which a regime comes into office with the support of just 20% of the population and rules in its own authority for the next five years?

Parents could not explain injuries

So how did the Leeds trouble begin? In April 2024 a Roma family took their baby to hospital with injuries they could not explain.

The doctors told Leeds City Social Services. All four children became subject to Family Court orders and were sent to stay with different family members in the Harehills area of Leeds.

These are not the first parents to fall under immediate suspicion when not able to explain what has caused their child’s injuries.

Then, in July, Leeds Social Services mounted an operation to take all four children into what they call ‘care’. I’ll explain why that happened in a moment.

Taking children into ‘care’

But I have sat in court as a reporter in cases like these. I have to tell you, taking children into ‘care’, as they call it, instead of keeping a family together, is Child Protection’s default, even kneejerk, mode of operation.

Social workers are terrified of adverse media if a child is harmed, as that might affect their job prospects. Even the good ones are trained in a godless system which views ordinary families with suspicion.

I never saw social workers help a family, they just made demands. If you work in Social Services and you want to use the comments to tell me I’m wrong, please feel free.

Negative outcomes of ‘Care’

But over two years covering such cases in court, that is how I was drawn to see it. Parents felt the entire system of social workers, solicitors, barristers, Cafcass, judges, was against them.

And as for their ‘care’ system, it’s so good, that if a young mother who has been ‘in care’ comes to the future attention of social services, the mere fact that she has been in care counts against her.

They are more likely to take her children if she herself has been ‘in care’. That’s how good local authority ‘care’ is at doing what should be the parental job of raising children.

The Biblical position on Family

The Good Book says:
Exod 20:12 Honour thy father and thy mother: that thy days may be long upon the land which the LORD thy God giveth thee.

And we read:
Psalm 127:3 Lo, children are a heritage of the LORD: and the fruit of the womb is his reward.

That is the Roma culture.

So when social services turned up to remove these four children, the family, part of a local community from Romania, living in Harehills, objected. Their children are important to them. You don’t touch Roma children.

You can call this a culture clash if you wish. There’s a culture which values family as a God-given institution versus a culture in which the overweening godless State believes it can do parenting better.

You can call this a culture clash if you wish. There’s a culture which values family as a God-given institution versus a culture in which the overweening godless State believes it can do parenting better.

Police and SS seized Domenic

And why were the children being taken into ‘care’? Incredibly, Leeds Children’s Services had been alerted that family members planned to take the children back home to Romania without their permission.

That was it. I mean, what business is it of Leeds Council if a family take their children out of their jurisdiction?

We saw this in Sweden, years ago, in the case of Domenic Johansson. Domenic and his Indian mum, who was home-schooling him, were about to take off for India. Police and social services boarded the plane and seized Domenic.

Arrogance of State officials

You see exactly the same arrogance of Western state officials in Leeds.

West Yorkshire Police were called, but also, word spread and a crowd gathered. So when the police tried forcibly to help social services spirit the children away, local people from the various communities, the Roma, the Muslims, the whit folks, all rose up against the police and a riot broke out.

The officers were outnumbered and retreated because it was ‘too dangerous’, according to the Telegraph.

A police car was overturned. For some reason a bus was set on fire. I’m not excusing criminal damage. But people do not always act rationally. Drink can also become a factor.

Not ‘mindless violence’

Apart from stuff like the bus, what we were seeing was not mindless violence. There were no serious injuries and to date, only one person has been charged, with the bus fire, if I am not very much mistaken.

It was nothing whatsoever to do the ‘politics of the subcontinent’ as Nigel Farage immediately surmised. That’s when Muslim youths fight the Hindus in Leicester, sir.

No, it was an uprising by a left-behind community sparked by one incident but built on years of resentment against deprivation and state over-reach, which many people will have seen in their own lives, including reacting against a police force which thinks it is more important to protect pompous council child thieves and to place under arrest an autistic teenage girl, less than a year ago, merely for observing that a police woman looked like ‘her lesbian nana’, than to investigate burglaries.

‘Diversity, equality and inclusion’

And of course West Yorkshire Police have a ‘Diversity, Equality and Inclusion’ policy. The British establishment care far more about virtue signalling than about protecting the public.

By the way, do you want to know the reason why we are not allowed to name the children involved?

They say it’s to protect the children. But it is actually to protect the system. The less the sunlight of publicity penetrates their workings the happier secularist social workers are.

The Lord Jesus said:
John 3:20 For every one that doeth evil hateth the light, neither cometh to the light, lest his deeds should be reproved.

’Urgent Review of child care cases

Meanwhile, the riot continued in and around Harehills into the next day. The papers reported: ‘Give the kids back’: ‘Hundreds take to the streets in second night of chaos in Leeds.’

Reports were headlined: ‘Romanians chant “please bring the kids back” as Leeds council launches an “urgent review” of its child care cases’. It took a riot to bring about an ‘urgent review’.

The parents of the children announced a hunger strike until they were returned. What Tom Harris described as ‘unacceptable’ rioting continued over the weekend.

Children returned only after court hearing

Finally, on the Tuesday, the Council returned the children, after a Family Court hearing. In the interim, the court heard, the children had been ‘feeling unhappy and unsettled’ with the paid foster carers. What a surprise that when you go against God’s created order things go wrong.

The Children and Family Court Advisory Support Service (CAFCASS) social worker actually wanted to leave the children in care and subject Leeds to further riots. She said she had not had enough time to go round and assess the family. Yes, officials can be that dumb.

Nevertheless, the Mail reported: ‘Judge Helen Trotter-Jackson stressed the importance of the children’s welfare and the need to cool the tension.’

That comment from the learned judge shows that if there had been no riots, as well there being no review, the children would likely have stayed in care.

Rioters achieved their aims

The rioters had achieved their modest aims. Mercifully, the low life who always see an opportunity to loot shops, as happened in Tottenham in 2011, were absent.

The local people appeared to have no leader, yet, like the Bible’s locusts:
Prov 30:27 The locusts have no king, yet go they forth all of them by bands;

It was the same in Kenya last month, when Generation Z took to the streets against an ungodly finance bill imposing taxes on items as diverse and basic as bread and sanitary products.

They too had no leader, only, they said, the Constitution. Similar language came from Kenya’s president, William Ruto, condemning the protesters as came from Keir Starmer.

Then Mr Ruto dropped the bill.

Our leaders need repentance

The common factor is an attitude of the elite that ordinary people may be viewed with contempt and that rather than government trying to better the people’s lives, as the Bible demands:
Prov 29:7a The righteous considereth the cause of the poor:

They do what they think they can get away with. They need repentance and the Gospel truth of fearing God and loving their neighbour.

So rioting on the streets against tyranny is not ‘unacceptable’. It may just be the only language the establishment understand.

In Leeds it brought the state, in the ruling of Judge Helen, to heel. In Kenya it has forced ungodly taxation to be abandoned.

The Bible position on riots and rebellion

So, what does the Bible say about riots and rebellion? Well, when the people of Israel rebelled against Solomon’s son king Rehoboam over taxation, there is not one word of condemnation of them in 1Kings 12 to 14 or in 2Chronicles 10 to 12.

Not a single word. It’s the leaders whose actions prompted the rebellion who are criticised.

Yes, Rehoboam’s stupidity and political ineptitude were the judgment of God, but the key verse is this advice from the wisdom of the old men, which he ignored:

1Kings 12:7 And they spake unto him ( Rehoboam), saying, If thou wilt be a servant unto this people this day, and wilt serve them, and answer them, and speak good words to them, then they will be thy servants for ever. (cf : 2Chron 10:7)

That is what our leaders too have forgotten. They have replaced government of the people, by the people, for the people, which is true democracy, by oligarchy, that is, government of the elite, by the elite, for the elite.

In January 2023, at Davos, journalist Emily Maitlis asked Sir Keir Starmer which he preferred, Westminster or Davos. Without hesitation, the Labour leader replied:  ‘Davos’.

Politicians should consider their ways

Politicians, well, most of them, always seem to be much more keen to condemn the behaviour of their people, who they reckon should know their place and do as they are told, than to examine themselves and consider their ways, as the Bible puts it.
Hag 1:5 Now therefore thus saith the LORD of hosts; Consider your ways.

The Bible calls them to replace their arrogance with humility and to remember they are there to serve the people, not their ideology or themselves and their friends.
Prov 15:33 The fear of the LORD is the instruction of wisdom; and before honour is humility.

In short, they must return to this nation’s Christian constitution, and acknowledge there is one higher than they, the Lord Jesus, the King of kings, to whom they must answer.

Do please continue to pray for them as scripture demands, and for the true peace which comes when a nation’s leaders seek the Lord.

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