Even France is surprised by Britain’s riots

The riots that have erupted across Britain in the last week have been reported extensively in France. The centre-right Le Figaro describes a ‘whiff of civil war’ in the air. The French media are well-versed in covering riots of their own, but the trouble on the other side of the Channel is unusual in that the troublemakers are regarded as far-right.

The violence that has been a regular feature in French streets in recent years comes from elsewhere. Far-left mobs regularly smash up shops and banks and battle the police, and last summer, there was a week of rioting across France after a teenage French-Algerian driving without a licence was shot dead by police.

But what France hasn’t seen for years is any comparable violence from the far-right. In the 1980s and 1990s, there were regular street demonstrations organised by a variety of far-right organisations, most of which were anti-Semitic and nostalgic for the Vichy regime of the Second World War.