Inside the unrest disfiguring English cities

Britain’s police knew they were in for a difficult weekend. On July 29th three children were murdered in a dance class in Southport. False rumours that their killer had been Muslim and an illegal immigrant who had arrived in a small boat quickly spread across the internet, leading to a riot in the northern town on the following day, as well as violence in London, Hartlepool and elsewhere. Sir Keir Starmer, Britain’s prime minister, decried the unrest as the work of a “tiny, mindless minority” of “thugs” on the “far right”. Further demonstrations across English cities on August 3rd reinforced that verdict but also revealed a wider, inchoate sense of grievance.

The protests at Piccadilly Gardens in Manchester were one of a number organised via channels on X, a social-media site, and WhatsApp and Telegram, two messaging apps. Perhaps because it took place in the morning, the Manchester demonstration was relatively calm. The 150 or so anti-immigration demonstrators who had come to “stand up for their country” were outnumbered by approximately 350 counter-protesters. Although the two hurled abuse at one another and occasionally tried to break through the lines of police officers separating them, there was little violence.

Many of the protesters took offence at the claim that they were members of the far right, and to chants of “Nazi scum” from the counter-protesters. We’re just “ordinary people”, said John Taylor, an ex-marine who was attending a demonstration for the first time. He said he did not object to immigration itself but rather to the violent crime and cost to the taxpayer it brings when newcomers are not “vetted” properly. (Never mind that the person charged with the murders in Southport was born in Britain to Rwandan parents.) Yet chants of “Muhammad is a paedo” and “Oh, Tommy Robinson”, in support of a far-right firebrand who has repeatedly spread the “Great Replacement” conspiracy theory claiming that Muslims are being brought into Western countries to outbreed and “replace” whites, suggested that plenty in the crowd deserve the labels they have been given by Sir Keir.

Others in Manchester complained of “two-tier policing”. One protester, still young enough to have peach fuzz on his lip, said that the authorities controlled white Britons who are demonstrating “for what’s right for our country” more harshly than those who protest against white Britons. “They oppress the wrong people,” he complained. Some pointed to the police response to unrest among the Roma community in Leeds in July, as well as a recent violent clash between Muslim men and police officers at Manchester airport, as evidence of double standards. Plenty of the counter-protesters in Manchester told precisely the opposite story: of two-tiered policing that discriminates against ethnic minorities.

Underpinning all of these protesters’ concerns was a feeling that successive governments had ignored them. “Every time we talk, we’re shut down instantly,” complained Josie, a young woman with a St George’s flag wrapped around her hand.

Not all of the day’s protests were as calm. With the summer sun beating down, Liverpool erupted into what the Merseyside Police called “serious disorder”. As protesters and counter-protesters shouted at each other down on the Strand, a road that runs along the Mersey river, some of the anti-immigration protesters charged the police lines separating the two groups. The police pushed them back, starting a repeated dance that lasted the afternoon.

Some of the protesters, mostly young men and boys, would throw bottles, bricks and chairs. The police would run at them with riot shields and batons to repel them. And then both groups would pause for breath before starting again. At one point, a group of youths were tearing chunks off St George’s Dock pumping station, a 143-year-old red-brick building, raising them above their heads and dropping them to make debris to use as ammunition.

The violence in Liverpool was repeated elsewhere. In Sunderland the night before protesters threw beer cans and bricks at police officers outside a mosque. Several cars and a police station were set on fire. Violence also broke out on Saturday at protests in Blackburn, Blackpool, Bristol, Hull, Nottingham, Preston and Stoke-on-Trent. Yvette Cooper, the home secretary, vowed that those involved would feel the “full force of the law”. More than 90 people were arrested. Plans are being drawn up for courts to sit for extended hours to cope with the expected surge in cases.

Among the masked faces in Liverpool was the occasional symbol of the far right—the distinct black and gold-trim Fred Perry shirts of the Proud Boys or the skull masks of the Atomwaffen Division, a neo-Nazi group. For them, people with less militant views who feel ignored are potential recruits. Attendance at these protests exposes newcomers to more radical ideas; the violence and inevitable prosecutions to follow draw attention to their cause. On Saturday afternoon, the Independent Nationalist Network, a small neo-Nazi group, posted an image of a window to its Telegram channel labelled “Overton window”, the academic term for the range of socially acceptable political views. All of the glass was smashed.

With more protests expected on August 4th, the question is how much to worry about these disturbances. It is certainly possible to overreact. In Liverpool, at least, the real troublemakers were mostly youngsters enjoying the excitement of anarchy. Among adults, the crossover between far-right ideologues and football hooligans is significant: some simply find violence enjoyable. Hot weather and sporadic outbreaks of rioting occasionally disfigure Britain; arrests and prosecutions may soon dampen protesters’ enthusiasm, as they did during the London riots in 2011. But complacency is also a mistake. The protesters’ anger about immigration is real. Disinformation can rapidly inflame tensions. And fury is the fuel of the far right. ■

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