By Esther Bintliff and Eve Sampson
Violent unrest has erupted in several towns and cities in Britain in recent days, and further disorder broke out on Saturday as far-right agitators gathered in demonstrations around the country.
The violence has been driven by online disinformation and extremist right-wing groups intent on creating disorder after a deadly knife attack on a children’s event in northwestern England, experts said.
A range of far-right factions and individuals, including neo-Nazis, violent soccer fans and anti-Muslim campaigners, have promoted and taken part in the unrest, which has also been stoked by online influencers.
Prime Minister Keir Starmer has vowed to deploy additional police officers to crack down on the disorder. “This is not a protest that has got out of hand,” he said on Thursday. “It is a group of individuals who are absolutely bent on violence.”
Where have riots taken place?
The first riot took place on Tuesday evening in Southport, a town in northwestern England, after a deadly stabbing attack the previous day at a children’s dance and yoga class. Three girls died of their injuries, and eight other children and two adults were wounded.
The suspect, Axel Rudakubana, was born in Britain, but in the hours after the attack, disinformation about his identity — including the false claim that he was an undocumented migrant — spread rapidly online. Far-right activists used messaging apps including Telegram and X to urge people to take to the streets.
Over 200 people descended on Southport on Tuesday night, many traveling by train from elsewhere in Britain, the police said. Rioters attacked a mosque, wounded more than 50 police officers and set vehicles alight.
On Wednesday night, another far-right demonstration brought clashes with the police in central London, leading to over 100 arrests. Smaller pockets of disorder broke out in Hartlepool, in northeastern England; in the city of Manchester; and in Aldershot, a town southeast of London.
On Friday night, Northumbria Police said its officers had been “subjected to serious violence” as far-right demonstrators set fires and attacked officers in Sunderland, a city in the northeast.
Saturday brought violent protests to cities including Hull, Leeds, Manchester, Nottingham and Stoke-on-Trent, as well as Belfast, Northern Ireland. In Liverpool, the police said more than 300 people had been involved in “violent disorder” on Saturday night, with businesses looted and two officers hospitalized.
The chair of the National Police Chiefs’ Council, Gavin Stephens, told BBC Radio on Friday that extra officers would be on Britain’s streets and that the police would use lessons learned from the 2011 London riots.
“We will have surge capacity in our intelligence, in our briefing and in the resources that are out in local communities,” he said. The organization has said that nearly 4,000 additional officers have been deployed to deter the violence.
Which groups are behind the unrest?
Several far-right groups have been at the riots or promoted them on social media. David Miles, a prominent member of Patriotic Alternative, a fascist group, shared photographs of himself in Southport, according to Hope Not Hate, a Britain-based advocacy group that researches extremist organizations.
Other far-right agitators spread information about the protest on social media, including British Movement, a neo-Nazi group. Images of the protests examined by Hope not Hate showed some people with Nazi tattoos.
After the disorder in Southport, the police said that supporters of the English Defence League had been involved. The riots have also attracted people linked to soccer violence, or hooliganism, which has long overlapped with nationalist movements in Britain.
Officials noted that not everyone at the demonstrations had far-right views. David Hanson, a cabinet minister, told LBC Radio on Friday: “Some might be caught up in the summer madness. Some might be people who’ve got genuine concerns.”
But, he warned, “If you are organizing this now, we will be watching you.”
What is the English Defence League?
Created in 2009, the English Defence League was a far-right street movement notorious for violent protests and an anti-Islam, anti-immigration stance.
The group emerged in Luton, England, where community tensions had risen after a handful of Islamic extremists chanted abuse at British soldiers returning home from Iraq. Luton was already associated with Islamist extremism, because it was home to a small number of adherents to Al Muhajiroun, an extremist group implicated in the 2005 London bombings.
Among the English Defence League founders was Stephen Yaxley-Lennon, who goes by the name Tommy Robinson. Born in Luton, he was at one time a member of the far-right British National Party. He also had connections to soccer violence and was convicted of leading soccer fans in a brawl in Luton in 2010.
In the group’s early years, regional divisions carried out local demonstrations, including protests over planned mosques, and engaged in actions like placing pig heads around Muslim sites.
According to Matthew Feldman, a specialist on right-wing extremism, the group represented a new stage in far-right British politics, because unlike the National Front or the British National Party, it did not contest elections.
“This is direct-action politics, disseminated and coordinated via the new media — ranging from Facebook to mobile phones, and digital film to YouTube,” Professor Feldman wrote in a 2011 academic study of the English Defence League.
In 2013, Mr. Yaxley-Lennon said he had broken ties with the league. And after leadership disputes and internal divisions, the group no longer formally exists. But experts say that many of its supporters remain active through other nationalist groups with similar aims and tactics.
In the later 2010s, Mr. Yaxley-Lennon rose to prominence in international circles that shared his anti-Muslim stance, including in Europe and the United States. In the past week, he has used social media, including a previously banned X profile that was reinstated under Elon Musk, to promote falsehoods about the identity of the Southport attacker.
Nowadays, experts say the English Defence League has evolved into a diffuse idea spread mainly online. Its Islamophobic and xenophobic stance has become an “ideal that people self-radicalize themselves into,” said Sunder Katwala, the director of British Future, a nonprofit that researches public attitudes on immigration and identity.
Why is the disorder so hard to quash?
Many far-right groups in Britain have deliberately moved away from formal hierarchies and leadership structures, experts say.
Joe Mulhall, Hope Not Hate’s director of research, called the movement “post organizational” in a 2018 analysis. Social media and other technologies, he wrote, offer “new ways for it to engage in activism outside the confines of traditional, organizational structures.”
Violent street rallies, a core part of the English Defence League’s rise, often serve as a recruiting tool for extremist groups, according to Paul Jackson, a University of Northampton professor who specializes in the history of radicalism and extremism.
“Social movements thrive on such demonstrations,” he wrote in a 2011 paper. “They are ‘performances’ that can reinforce the perceived senses of injustice and being ignored by mainstream voices to followers.”
The police may also struggle to respond to mobs that can be conjured within hours through private messaging apps. According to Professor Feldman, “police are still oftentimes thinking in 20th-century terms — that something like this might take a few days to set up; that they might ask for a permit for a march.”
The Southport riot, he said, “was very nearly a flash demo.”
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