Stop blaming police racism for the Manchester Airport incident

The story of the Manchester Airport incident has taken some dramatic twists and turns.

Last week, video footage emerged of a Greater Manchester Police (GMP) officer kicking a man in the head. The details of what exactly sparked the altercation are still murky. It seems like two brothers – Fahir and Amaad Amas – were meeting their mother at the airport. Prior to landing, an argument broke out between her and a male passenger on the plane. In the terminal, things escalated and a fight started between the passenger and the brothers. Police officers then quickly became involved.

After the video clip of one officer stamping on Fahir’s head surfaced online, he was swiftly suspended by GMP and is now under criminal investigation. The incident has also sparked protests in the area, with hundreds gathering outside Rochdale Police Station last week.

Now, though, another video has emerged. This clip, obtained by the Manchester Evening News over the weekend, reveals a more complicated picture. The footage shows that, in the build-up to Fahir being kicked in the head, the Amas brothers attacked the police and two officers were punched to the ground. In the violent fracas, a female officer was left with a broken nose and a male officer is believed to have had his jaw broken.

This is not to excuse the police officer responsible for kicking Fahir. GMP were right to remove him from frontline duty and the assault probe being carried out by the Independent Office for Police Conduct (IOPC) will determine whether such force was reasonable or not. Some have certainly been far too quick to conclude that the officer did nothing wrong at all, and should therefore be immediately reinstated. Reform UK MP Lee Anderson has even suggested he should receive a medal.

Nonetheless, the identitarian side has been equally keen to jump to conclusions. Because the Amas brothers are Muslims of South Asian origin, some have assumed that the police’s actions were racially motivated. There have even been suggestions that the GMP are an institutionally racist police force.

The GMP’s own actions suggest the very opposite. For starters, they swiftly suspended the officer and launched an investigation. There was no attempt to cover up the incident or rally around the officer, as might have happened in the past, when Britain really did have a problem with police racism. Accusations of long-standing racism or Islamophobia against the GMP are even flimsier. In fact, one reason the force failed to properly investigate grooming gangs in Rochdale was because the perpetrators were often of Pakistani heritage and police were afraid of being seen as prejudiced.

Of course, identitarians have never allowed the facts to get in the way of an accusation of racism. Tribalism and sectarianism have defined their response to the Manchester Airport incident. Protesters outside Rochdale Police Station openly chanted ‘Allahu Akbar’. Political commentator and so-called anti-racist activist Bushra Shaikh wrote on X: ‘Some people seem to be pissed because a bunch of white officers got their arses handed to them by Pakistanis.’

Even supposedly serious political figures appeared to jump to premature conclusions. Paul Waugh, Labour MP for Rochdale, immediately insinuated that the police officers were in the wrong. On the day the first piece of footage emerged, he posted a statement on X that he was ‘extremely concerned’ by the ‘truly shocking and disturbing’ video. He also promised to meet the family of Fahir Amas, who is a Rochdale resident. Waugh later claimed that the family was ‘deeply traumatised’ by the event and expressed a desire that the ‘offenders should be punished appropriately’. ‘No one’, he wrote, ‘particularly the police, should be above the law’. This was all, let’s not forget, before anyone actually knew what had really happened.

Labour mayor of Greater Manchester, Andy Burnham, was at least cautious over condemning the police in a case where a female officer was violently assaulted. Burnham has rightly said the public should remain calm and allow the relevant authorities to carry out their investigations.

In the wake of the Manchester Airport incident, far too many people jumped to conclusions or instinctively adopted tribalistic positions, well before many of the facts had emerged. Of course, we should always condemn acts of police brutality and expect the highest standards of conduct among officers, even in high-pressure scenarios. Most people expect frontline officers to behave responsibly, but they also understand the dangerous nature of their role. The rush to condemn one side or the other on the basis of their identities helps no one. This kind of behaviour can only end in more division and more tension.

Rakib Ehsan is the author of Beyond Grievance: What the Left Gets Wrong about Ethnic Minorities, which is available to order on Amazon.