Protesters clash with police as ministers to meet to discuss potential disorder
Riot police have been involved in face-offs with protesters as UK Government ministers are expected to meet to discuss the potential for further widespread disorder.
Planned demonstrations got under way on Saturday as tensions remain high after the killing of three young girls at a Taylor Swift-themed holiday club in Southport, Merseyside, on Monday.
Axel Muganwa Rudakubana, 17, from Lancashire, is accused of the attack, but false claims spread online that the suspect was an asylum seeker who had arrived in the UK by boat.
On Saturday, bricks were thrown at officers in Stoke-on-Trent, fireworks were thrown amid tense exchanges between an anti-Islamic group and an anti-racism rally in Belfast, and windows of a hotel which has been used to house migrants were smashed in Hull.
Greater Manchester Police said a dispersal notice had been authorised for the city centre and Merseyside Police said greater stop and search powers had been granted for officers to deal with planned demonstrations.
Scuffles
Scuffles broke out as opposing groups faced each other in Nottingham’s Market Square with bottles and other items thrown from both sides, and chants of “England until I die” and “Tommy Robinson” were drowned out by boos from the counter-protesters.
A planned “vigil” in Cardiff, promoted by the far-right activists behind Voice of Wales, was called off on Thursday.
A small group of protesters turned up despite the decision but were heavily outnumbered by a counter demonstration estimated to have drawn around 400 people to the Senedd.
Around 150 people carrying St George’s flags shouting “you’re not English any more” and “paedo Muslims off our street” were greatly outnumbered in Leeds by hundreds of counter-protesters shouting “Nazi scum off our streets”.
On Saturday it was not possible to search “Tommy Robinson” on TikTok, and the social media platform instead showed the message: “This phrase may be associated with behaviour or content that violates our guidelines.”
The weekend protests followed a night of “unforgivable” violence in Sunderland, which saw a Citizens Advice Bureau office burned down.
Gravestone
A priest at Sunderland Minster said yobs tried to smash a gravestone to use as missiles during widespread violence in the city, adding that they were guilty of “an act of sacrilege”.
Sunderland Central Labour MP Lewis Atkinson said a link could be drawn between the disorder in his constituency on Friday and the ashes of the English Defence League (EDL), which was founded by Mr Robinson, whose real name is Stephen Yaxley-Lennon.
The far right has drawn condemnation from MPs across the political spectrum after disorder in London, Manchester, Southport and Hartlepool over the past three days.
The EDL has disbanded but its supporters remain active, and Mr Atkinson said evidence suggested a Nazi offshoot of the group was involved in the violence in his constituency on Friday, in which a police station was torched and a mosque attacked.
Northumbria Police Chief Superintendent Mark Hall said four officers were injured during the violence in Sunderland and 10 people have been arrested.
He told reporters that those involved in the disorder should “expect to be met with the full force of the law”, adding: “This was not a protest, this was unforgivable violence and disorder.”
Chairman of the Mosques and Imams National Advisory Board, Qari Asim, said the Muslim community is “deeply worried and anxious about the planned protests by the far-right groups across the country”.
An extra 70 prosecutors will be drafted in on standby this weekend to charge people who set out to cause violent disorder as the authorities prepare to deal with dozens of demonstrations planned over the next two days.
Campaign group Hope Not Hate has identified more than 30 events taking place.
Thousands of people had turned out to pay their respects to Bebe King, six, Elsie Dot Stancombe, seven, and Alice Dasilva Aguiar, nine, at a vigil in Southport on Tuesday.
Violence later erupted outside a mosque in the town and 53 police officers and three police dogs were injured.
Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer later condemned “thugs” who had travelled to the town to cause unrest.
The unrest poses the biggest challenge yet of Sir Keir’s premiership, evoking the scale of public disorder last seen during the 2011 riots.
There were a series of riots in August 2011 in cities and towns across England, which started in Tottenham Hale, north-east London, after the killing of Mark Duggan, who was shot dead by police on August 4.
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I hope the response on Tik Tok to Farage was the same…
MI5 should take him to one side…
The chickens have come home to roost from the soft police and judiciary response to Just Stop Oil and the ER stunts and disruptions.
The bien pensants looked on, the general public interest was ignored, and now the mob are replying, in brutal and unreasonable action.
The democratic deficit does matter.
Different chickens different roosts.
Just Stop Oil and Extinction Rebellion – non violent but annoy the hell out of many
English Defence League. – Violent, threatening and injurious and cause actual bodily harm.
I don’t think JSO and ER are on the EDF’s radar.
Otherwise the EDL thugs would be gluing there faces to the roads and scattering orange powder paint about rather than lobbing bricks at the police.
In the era of the smartphone, everyone is looking at everyone else.
I was looking at you …
You were looking at me …
Contact!
English Defence League thugs have not been inspired by Just Stop Oil or Extinction Rebellion or as I said they would be gluing their faces to roads rather than lobbing bricks and shouting obscenities
By the look of current TV coverage EDL are getting their inspiration from the nice summer weather and cans of lager.
They thrive on media coverage. Yes the press is supposed to be free, but surely the time has come to clamp down on the extent to which news media collude with, or even encourage, this sort of violence. I acknowledge that by adding my comments to social media, particularly those inflamatory BBC HYS columns, I become part of the problem. Maybe “they” should shut down the internet for a couple of weeks? Just a thought, as in reality I despair.
I agree with you up to a point CapM but what appears to have happened here is the authorities & the police service in particular, have found & allowed themselves to get wrapped up in the previous government’s culture war & anti wokery nonsense the last few years. Along with with some police forces having to investigate their own & other forces officers for various law & rule breaking, plus, being dragged into investigating the various shenanigans of MPs & then of course using their full weight & powers going after soft targets such as women’s protest groups and recently… Read more »
I think there is already sufficient capacity to police organised fascism, the problem now being faced is that instead of being organised groups it’s more connected individuals, or ‘influencers’ who escape monitoring because they are not a formal group and just spring up like mushrooms, and I suspect can just vanish with equal ease.
Non-violent climate protests have nothing to do with this. Far right and racist thugs are rioting, assaulting and committing arson because their groups are organised, aggressive and motivated by hate.
Also – XR and JSO are not handled softly by police. Climate protests are spied on by undercover police and JSO activists have gone to prison for as little as disrupting cultural events; sentences condemned by the UN.
“Voice of Wales (Voice of Outsiders)”
Do they represent all people from outside who have crossed the channel in time, or just the English.
Trouble is that VoW is run by Welsh people, and they do have a following in Wales, but fortunately thus far the extreme-right have been kept very fragmented in Wales and their influence, thus far, is limited. A far bigger threat are parties like Reform UK that have a veneer of respectability, yet are just another facet of creeping fascism.
Racist thugs supported by useful idiots. Now I see ARTD trying to blame Starmer for it and going for the “two tier” policing trope that is doing the rounds (his twitter feed). The same ARTD that uses inflammatory language relating to boats and leaving ECHR and supporting braverman. Also trying to conflate an issue with halal on a public platform, Cons in north wales repeating TR posts, Farage trumpeting bull, our far right politicians can lower. the temperature, but they wont. Time to dish out to the racist rioters what the just stop oil got, long sentence’s, and any politician… Read more »
This is nothing to do with the Young girls that where Murdered its to do with RUSSIA GIVING FALSE INFORMATION FARAGE AND REFORM JUMPING ON THE BANDWAGON AND E D L FAR RIGHT MOVEMENT under Tommy robinson who do not care about the murder of the 3 young Girls they are trying to overthrow an elected government Labour and install Farage and his GOONS This is not going to end well either the Far right will kill somebody then the Police will react and then they will be aided with the right wing Media calling Police Brutality the police where… Read more »
Does anyone in Power ever bother to find out why so many young people feel the need to rage? Maybe because this, and previous Governments have made their lives futile and meaningless. Cannot afford to buy home, cannot earn enough to lead a decent life. Sqillions to pay back in ‘student debt’ WHY is anyone surprised that they are so angry. The future looks grim for so many. it is terribly sad. And punishment will not solve a thing, Deal with the underlying cause and things just might improve. I am over Eighty and I can see the problem ,… Read more »
I don’t disagree with anything you say but what you have mentioned has been caused by the ruling political establishment and not refugees or asylum seekers.
Valerie didn’t mention refugees or asylum seekers…
Could not be bothered to work hard at school and could not be bothered to apply themselves in a career = Cannot afford to buy a home, cannot earn enough to lead a descent life.
Fromage and the extreme right get the populist vote because they tell those people what they want to hear, rather than the harsh realities of life.
And why are the realities of life so hard? Because of nearly half a century of neoliberal nonsense economics that has only ‘worked’ in the sense of making the rich exceedingly richer and making the UK the country with the greatest level of inequality in Europe. I don’t blame young people at all, very often if they go to university all they have to look forward to is a mountain of debt and a s**t job at McDonalds on a zero hour contract at a crap pay rate, rents are obscenely high due to the lack of controls on rent… Read more »
It isnot young men leading these attacks. The evidence on the screen shows many fat, bald middle aged men at the forefront and the demographic which fits the EDL fit . The young uns are just joining the riot cos its entertainment. You won’t have many Sociology graduates chucking pavement stones
Our leaders can see the same things that you and I, and many others can see. They have no excuse, they have been told, time and time again what they need to do, and the importance of ensuring that ordinary people’s lives improve relatively quickly and in obvious ways. That they haven’t listened is apparent in that we still have the two-child cap for Universal Credit claims, the lifting of which would bring 300,000 kids out of poverty overnight. And yet Starmer and Reeves prevaricate over removing this blight on our society. Secondly, instead of taxing the rich, who can… Read more »
I note that – at least, thus far- almost all of these violent outbursts have taken place in England, and, from what I hear, there have up to now been none in Wales. Having lived in Wales throughout my twenties and thirties, I moved back to my native south Manchester in 1984 for family reasons. At that time I had young children, and though the family issues resolved themselves within a year or two, by then the kids were settled in school and so I resisted the impulse – you might call it hiraeth! – to move back to Wales.… Read more »
Politicians ignore the electorate at their peril, this kind of mayhem has been on the cards for years, and of course the knuckle-draggers have weighed in. Perfectly reasonable people have been voicing legitimate concerns for many years about such things as unprecedented immigration (legal and illegal), lawlessness on our streets, knife culture, gang culture, grooming gangs, and more besides…and it doesn’t matter whether you agree or disagree: everyone is entitled to have their voice heard in a democracy. Politicians of all stripes have consistently ignored those who would simply like to have a serious conversation about such things: more often… Read more »
Violent football hooliganism was rife in the seventies and eighties. It was often explained as a reaction to the ignoring the economic conditions adversely effecting men and violence was a consequence. Those offering such explanations would have been declared “Woke” by those now explaining the current riots as a reaction to ignoring economic conditions adversely affecting men and violence is a consequence. Oh the irony. Some types just want a punch up and what they need is an excuse, good weather and a few bevvies don’t go amiss. I bet the “bleeding heart woke liberals” who are promoting the idea… Read more »
You’re arguing with someone who isn’t here.
Any chance of you engaging with what I actually said?
So have you drunk the Kool Aid or are you dispensing it?
A bunch of environmental protestors get long prison sentences for a non-violent protest, after a trial in which they were not allowed to explain the reasons for their actions. There has been talk of treating some of the more activist environmental groups as terrorist organisations.
So, will a variety of far-right organisations be proscribed at terrorists? Will violent rioters who were arrested get really long sentences?
Those environmental protesters broke the law and were, quite rightly, punished accordingly. It’s a separate issue.
Questions
“So, will a variety of far-right organisations be proscribed at terrorists? “
“Will violent rioters who were arrested get really long sentences?”
Answer
“It’s a separate issue.”
That sort of reveals what types of actions you will accept if you agree with the motive!
You’ve lost me I’m afraid – in what way is it not a separate issue?
It’s the same in the sense that protestors that disrupt should be dealt with harshly whatever their motives for protest are.
An attempt can be made to present them as separate issues if someone is more accepting of the actions and types of action of one set of protestors.
From your comments it’s clear that you are not lost and know exactly where you stand regarding the violent thuggery that’s occuring.