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Abstract

Social psychological research has shown how far‐right leaders mobilize people by claiming that majority populations are threatened or silenced. This paper builds on this work to examine a related process in naturalistic interactions: how riotous actions are explained and justified through appeals to ‘British values’ in online forums. Using discursive psychology, we analyse talk surrounding the riots that followed the stabbing of three young girls in Southport, England—the UK race riots of August 2024. We show that invoking British or English values serves two key functions: it renders rioters' actions self‐explanatory and offers a competing account of rioters as the more authentic representation of Britishness and the British people than the government. This reframing of ‘British values’ offers up a challenge to those attributing riots to ‘far right’ motivations and instead portrays the riots as effortful and even ideal expressions of British citizenship. Thus, British values operate not merely as symbols but as rhetorical tools that can sanitize the ‘far‐right’ label linking the riots, immigration, state policy and national identity.

Publication Type:	Article
Additional Information:	© 2026 The Author(s). British Journal of Social Psychology published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd on behalf of British Psychological Society. This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
Publisher Keywords:	British values, discursive psychology, far-right, online hate, race riots, UK riots
Subjects:	B Philosophy. Psychology. Religion > BF Psychology J Political Science > JA Political science (General)
Departments:	School of Health & Medical Sciences School of Health & Medical Sciences > Department of Psychology & Neuroscience
SWORD Depositor:	Symplectic Administrator

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