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Abstract
The Walk featured a 3.5m tall puppet named Little Amal walking across Europe to raise awareness of the plight of refugees and displaced children. While warmly welcomed in more than 60 villages, towns and cities, this article centres on the handful of locations where instead of celebration Little Amal was met with hostility. In doing so, this article begins with a detailed overview of the rationale behind The Walk and Little Amal. From here, it continues by reflecting on the hostility expressed towards Little Amal in three geographical locations: Greece, France and the UK. Investigating and unpacking both the perceived and actual contributing factors – the social, political and so on – this article goes on to draw on existing scholarly literatures to frame and contextualise the hostility encountered. In conclusion, this article posits that the hostility directed towards Little Amal was neither without precedent nor should it have been unexpected.

Since 2012, the United Kingdom government has annually published data relating to the number of hate crimes recorded by police forces across England and Wales. Over the past half-decade, the number of hate crimes has increased year on year and are currently at record levels. Some have referred to this as a crisis. This article seeks to investigate the drivers and causes for this, to try and better understand what hate crime looks like in the UK today. First, this article considers and contextualises what is currently known about hate crime in the UK. Having identifi ed some correlations, it explores the relationship between increases in hate crime numbers and the UK's withdrawal from the European Union (Brexit), terror attacks, COVID-19 and Black Lives Matter. In trying to explain these relationships,
Perry's 'permission to hate' model is used. In conclusion, this article argues that while hate crime numbers are currently at record levels it is highly likely that they will continue to increase for at least the foreseeable future. A timely and contemporarily salient study, this article puts forward new thinking about hate crime in the UK and the correlation that is clearly evident with occurrences that take place in the country's socio-political spaces.

In today's the United Kingdom, Islamophobia is as contested as it is real. Challenging this contestation, this article presents findings from ten small-scale, qualitative studies that seek to evidence and better understand the lived, tangible experience of Islamophobia in real-world spaces. To do so, this article briefly explores the development and incidence of Islamophobia in public and political spaces and how contestation has ensued. From here, the findings draw out how Muslims experience Islamophobia in their everyday lives, ranging from instances of verbal abuse through threats and intimidation to physical assault and violence. As part of this exploration, new insights are afforded into the role and impact of terrorist attacks on hate crimes, geopolitical and military conflicts, the content of Islamophobic abuse, and the rapidly changing nature of that, which shapes and informs tangible forms of Islamophobia. In doing so, this article concludes by contextualizing the realities of Islamophobia within the far from conducive public and political spaces of the UK. This article makes a timely contribution to and improves knowledge about Islamophobia in today's UK.

In the British setting, the deployment of the phrase 'doing god' has become increasingly common to refer to an emerging trend whereby religion has acquired an increasingly prominent role in political spaces and discourses. This was particularly prominent while David Cameron was Prime Minister and leader of the Conservative Party. While historically, religion has not had a prominent place in either the former Prime Minister David Cameron. Here, the findings from critical analyzing a series of Cameron's public pronouncements about religion—and Christianity in particular—is set out to try and better understand his own adherence to Christianity (the personal) how this intersected with his politics and role as Prime Minister (the political), and more importantly how this shaped his views about Britain being a Christian country (the national). Contextualized within the embryonic scholarly literature relating to the phenomenon of 'doing god' in the contemporary British setting, this article concludes by considering alternative and analogous frames through which greater elucidation of the true motivations of his pronouncements might be understood.

Soon after the Conservative-led Coalition government came to power in 2010, Baroness Sayeeda Warsi announced that Islamophobia had passed the 'dinner-table test' in contemporary Britain. Resultantly, the need to address Islamophobia was identified as a priority for the Coalition. This article critically analyses how the Coalition sought to achieve this and the extent to which it was successful. Focusing on the period 2010–15, this article initially frames what is meant by Islamophobia, before briefly setting out how it had been responded to by previous British governments. Regarding the Coalition, a threefold approach is adopted that considers the All-Party Parliamentary Group on Islamophobia, the Cross-Government Working Group on Anti-Muslim Hate, and the political discourses used by the Coalition about Muslims and Islam more generally. Concluding that the Coalition failed to meet the high expectations set by Warsi's speech, this article considers why this might have been so.

AbstractIn December 2016, the British Government banned National Action for being an extremist organisation. It was the first time in British history that membership of a far‐right group was outlawed. While so, little is known about the group. This article responds to this lack of knowledge by setting out the origins of National Action and its leaders, its preference for a traditionalist Nazi ideology, and its penchant for stunts and demonstrations to gain media attention and publicity. The article concludes by considering whether proscription was rather more symbolic than serious.