Mobilisation without opportunity: The UK’s 2020 Black Lives Matter protests

Abstract

During the summer of 2020, the United Kingdom, like many countries in Europe, witnessed a strong upsurge in mobilisation for Black Lives. Inspired by protests in the United States following the murder of George Floyd, British demonstrators took to the streets in order to make their voices heard. Peculiarly, they lacked something which we generally associate with substantial episodes of mobilisation: a conducive political opportunity structure. Rather, the political context present in the United Kingdom was generally prohibitive of movement success. This article examines the case of the UK’s 2020 protests to consider how mobilisation can be stimulated despite a palpably politically inopportune context. It draws on contemporary open-source data to characterise and detail the prohibitive structure of political opportunities in the UK domestic setting before laying out three factors that can nonetheless help stimulate mobilisation in such circumstances: quotidian disruption, frame diffusion, and remaindered resources.