UK far-right riots: Everything we know (2024)

LONDON — Britain is on fire — and its new leader hopes to put out the fires by turning to his background as a lawyer.

After just a month as the United Kingdom’s prime minister, Keir Starmer has found himself firefighting riots linked to the far right.

Britain has faced days of noisy protests, many of which turned violent and targeted mosques and hostels housing asylum seekers. Starmer is fighting to regain control by ramping up the U.K.’s stretched justice system.

Here’s what you need to know about what has happened, who is behind the riots and what the government’s response has been so far:

What sparked the latest violence?

On July 29, Southport — a seaside town just outside Liverpool — was rocked by unimaginable tragedy.

Three girls — Bebe King, six, Elsie Dot Stancombe, seven, and Alice Dasilva Aguiar, nine — were fatally stabbed while attending a Taylor Swift-themed dance event. The attack also injured 10 others, some critically.

A 17-year-old male was arrested, and he was later revealed to be born in Cardiff to parents from Rwanda. He has no known links to Islam.

As is usual under British law for suspects aged under 18, the police did not initially name him. Within hours, social media was awash with false rumors about his background — including that there was an Islamist connection to the killings and that the attacker was an asylum seeker, both of which the police later said weren’t true.

A vigil for the victims last Tuesday was hijacked by people that police said were linked to the far-right English Defense League, a now-defunct organization. They tore bricks from residential properties to throw at police and Southport’s mosque, which said it was also hit with petrol bombs. In the days that followed the Southport riot, further disorder flared up across England and in Northern Ireland.

Angry, Islamophobic resentment that had long brewed across the U.K. came to the surface. According to U.K. government data from 2023, no religious group has faced more hate crimes linked to faith than Britain’s Muslims. In the year ending March 2023, more than 4 in 10 of all recorded religious hate crime offenses were targeted against Muslims.

Views on immigration and asylum also influenced many of the rioters, who, according to the Hope not Hate advocacy group, at times used the slogan “stop the boats” — which was adopted by the former Conservative government as it attempted to thwart small boat migration crossings in the Channel.

Others shouted racist slogans, according to The Telegraph. Footage on social media appeared to show Muslim groups shouting “Allahu akbar” (God is greatest) as they clashed with rioters in Bolton.

How widespread is the disorder?

The day after the Southport riot, violent protesters gathered in London outside Downing Street for some minor scuffles with police.

In the four days after that, violent far-right demonstrations took place in more than a dozen towns and cities.

With the exception of a demonstration in Belfast, all of the protests have taken place in England — with the bulk in towns and cities across the midlands and north of England, including Blackpool, Hull, Leeds, Manchester, Nottingham, Bolton, Liverpool and Sunderland.

In Middlesbrough, cars were sat alight and missiles thrown at police following a riot which began at the town’s main cenotaph war memorial.

In both Rotherham and Tamworth, hotels housing asylum seekers awaiting processing were targeted by rioters. In Rotherham, rioters broke into the hotel, attempted to set it on fire and blocked the exits while asylum seekers were inside. The hotel in Tamworth was also set alight.

Further events are planned in the coming weeks.

Who is behind the riots?

Several high-profile characters known for their far-right views have provided vocal commentary on social media in recent days and have been condemned by the government for aggravating tensions via their posts.

Stephen Yaxley-Lennon, who operates under the alias Tommy Robinson, has long been one of Britain’s most foremost far-right and anti-Muslim activists and founded the now-defunct English Defence League (EDL) in 2009.

According to the Daily Mail, Robinson is currently in a hotel in Cyprus, from where he has been posting a flurry of videos to social media. Each post has been viewed hundreds of thousands of times, and shared by right-wing figures across the world including United States InfoWars founder Alex Jones.

The posts vary from claims of “innocent English people being hunted down” to anti-Muslim rhetoric such as “our women are not halal meat.”

Robinson posted a video two days after the Southport attack in which he urged supporters to stay calm and his supporters have repeatedly argued that he has condemned the violence. His English Defense League has been officially defunct for more than a decade.

Fellow agitator Laurence Fox also tweeted saying “it’s war” and “for decades British girls have been raped by immigrant barbarians.” That one’sbeen viewed more than 3 million times.

How organized is Britain’s far right?

Unlike in other European countries, Britain’s far right has little political organization.

While parties explicitly linked to the British far right have in the past garnered hundreds of thousands of votes in general elections and won representation in local councils and the European Parliament, parties of the far right have made little impact in recent elections at any level.

Reform UK — the populist right-wing party led by Nigel Farage — has distanced itself from the riots and condemned the “levels of violence seen in the last couple of days.” Farage has faced criticism for spreading “conspiracy theories” about the initial Southport attack. He has also previously drawn attention to and criticized hotels that house migrants.

Instead of seeking an electoral route, Britain’s largely atomized far right uses social media to organize — and its most prominent figures, and outriders from abroad, leapt on and contributed to the initial disinformation spread in the aftermath of the Southport attack.

There appears to be little formal organization behind the rioting — with social media used by those involved to try and recruit fellow travelers.

WhatsApp and Telegram have been used to organize gatherings at short notice, while flyers organizing specific protests have been spread on Facebook. TikTok has been abuzz with videos of the violence.

“While many, or even most of those who have attended, are not part of any traditional far-right organization, they are inspired by far-right misinformation and are engaging in far right activism,” Hope not Hate said.

“The trigger for these events was the attack in Southport, this weekend’s events have broadened out and are now drawing from a common wellspring of anger and often recycle the same far-right slogansin particular “Enough is Enough,” “Stop the Boats” and “Save Our Children,” it added.

What has the government’s response been?

Warnings of trouble before the weekend were swiftly followed by condemnation from the U.K. government — and a belated attempt to show strength.

On Sunday, a visibly angry Starmer described the riots as “far-right thuggery” and vowed to punish all involved.

He has some experience in this area. Before he became a lawmaker, Starmer was Britain’s director of public prosecutions. He held this role in 2011, when riots triggered in London after the shooting of Black man Mark Duggan by police spread nationwide.

Under Starmer in 2011, British courts sat overnight as the justice system worked to sentence more than 3,000 people arrested during the disorder. A repeat may be on the cards — if Britain’s stretched justice system with a huge courts backlog can handle it.

Starmer on Monday held an emergency meeting of ministers, senior officials and prison chiefs known (after the room in which they meet) as COBR. Speaking after the meeting, he promised to “ramp up” Britain’s criminal justice to arrest and prosecute rioters.

“We will have a standing army of specialist officers, public duty officers, so we will have enough officers to deal with this where we need them,” Starmer said.

According to the National Police Chiefs’ Council Monday afternoon, officers have arrested 378 people over the past week in relation to the unrest. Some of those have already appeared in court.

Some reports have also suggested that ministers are considering 2011-style, 24-hour court sittings to fast-track sentencing, though Starmer’s spokesperson told journalists this was a matter for the judiciary.

A readout of the COBR meeting said that Justice Secretary Shabana Mahmood and the prison service are confident there is enough capacity in the U.K.’s stretched justice system to lock up convicted rioters.

Downing Street also confirmed that at this stage no requests have been made from the police for Armed Forces involvement, and that further anti-protest tactics are a matter for the police.

Instead, at this stage the government has promised further protection for mosques, while ministers are engaging with social media firms as they call for more action to tackle criminal material on their platforms.

Is anyone criticizing the response?

The government has faced criticism from some quarters for its response to the riots — which is widely seen as the first big test of Starmer’s young premiership.

James Cleverly, the Conservative Shadow Home Secretary, told GB News that the Labour government has been “slow off the mark” in its response and that it should have convened an emergency COBR meeting earlier.

“The Labour Party have got to get used to the fact they are no longer in opposition. It’s not just about what you say, it’s about what you do, and they have been slow off the mark,” Cleverly said.

Other politicians, including Farage and the Labour MP Diane Abbott, have urged Starmer to cut short the U.K. parliament’s current recess so that MPs can debate the disorder — while polling from the Opinium pollster shows that Starmer’s approval rating has dipped in the last fortnight.

However long the riots last, Starmer’s honeymoon period in government is already over.