ABSTRACT: 

During the summer of 2020, the United Kingdom, like many countries in Europe, witnessed a strong upsurge in mobilization 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 mobilization: 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 mobilization 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 mobilization in such circumstances: quotidian disruption, frame diffusion, and remaindered resources.

Full PDF available open access at: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/epub/10.1080/23254823.2023.2239328?needAccess=true