Navigating Far-Right Landscapes in Britain: From the Riots of 2024 to ‘Operation Raise the Colours’ > Journal

Britain’s far right has undergone transformation in recent years. In the aftermath of the 2024 riots, a heavy criminal-justice response curtailed street-level disorder, but it did not diminish the underlying grievances that fuelled the unrest. Instead, these energies flowed into new cultural-symbolic forms of non-violent mobilisation, most notably the nationwide ‘Operation Raise the Colours’ campaign. This article offers a three-fold contribution. Conceptually, it clarifies the ‘far right’ as an umbrella category encompassing both the extreme right and radical-right populism. It explicitly positions Reform UK inside this far-right umbrella. Empirically, it traces the shift on Britain’s far right from violent, extra-parliamentary protest to decentralised, non-violent cultural-symbolic activism that weaponised national identity through flags, heritage and territorial marking. Analytically, it shows how digital infrastructures enabled a fragmented far right to mobilise rapidly, transforming organisational weakness into a strategic asset. By unpacking a series of interconnected dynamics, this article reveals how Britain’s far right has recalibrated and embedded itself within the contemporary political moment.

Is Britain a ‘Far-Right’ Country?

The Terrain

What’s in a Name? Far-Right, Radical Right or Extreme Right