London:

Thousands of anti-racism demonstrators rallied across the UK on Saturday to protest recent rioting blamed on the far-right in the wake of the Southport knife attack that killed three children.

Crowds massed in London, Glasgow in Scotland, Belfast in Northern Ireland, Manchester and numerous other English towns and cities, as fears of violent confrontations with anti-immigration agitators failed to materialise.

It followed similar developments on Wednesday night when anticipated far-right rallies up and down the country failed to materialise. Instead, people turned out for gatherings organised by the Stand Up To Racism advocacy group.

Up until that point, more than a dozen English towns and cities — and Belfast too — had been hit by anti-migrant unrest, following the deadly July 29 stabbings which were falsely linked on social media to a Muslim immigrant.

Rioters targeted mosques and hotels linked to immigration, as well as police, vehicles and other sites.

Recent nights have been largely peaceful in English towns and cities, prompting hope among the authorities that the nearly 800 arrests and numerous people already jailed had deterred further violence.

Despite the respite, UK media reported Saturday that Prime Minister Keir Starmer had cancelled plans to go on holiday next week to remain focused on the crisis.

 ‘No to racism’ 

In Northern Ireland, which has seen sustained disorder since last weekend, police said they were investigating a suspected racially motivated hate crime overnight.

A petrol bomb was thrown at a mosque in Newtownards, east of Belfast, early Saturday, with racist graffiti sprayed on the building, said the Police Service of Northern Ireland (PSNI).

The petrol bomb thrown at the property had failed to ignite, it added.

“This is being treated as a racially motivated hate crime, and I want to send a strong message to those who carried this out, that this type of activity will not be tolerated,” PSNI Chief Inspector Keith Hutchinson said.

Overnight, there were also reports of damage to property and vehicles in Belfast, as nightly unrest there rumbled on.

While the disturbances in Northern Ireland were sparked by events in England, they have also been fuelled by pro-UK loyalist paramilitaries with their own agenda, according to the PSNI.

Around 5,000 anti-racism demonstrators rallied in Belfast on Saturday “largely without incident”, police said.

Fiona Doran, of the United Against Racism group which co-organised the gathering, said it showed “that Belfast is a welcoming city… that says no to racism, to fascism, to islamophobia, to antisemitism, or misogyny”.

 ‘Delivering justice’ 

In London, thousands massed outside the office of Brexit architect Nigel Farage’s Reform UK party before marching through the city centre, accompanied by a large police presence.

They blame Farage and other far-right figures for helping to fuel the riots through anti-immigrant rhetoric and conspiracy theories.

“It’s really important for people of colour in this country, for immigrants in this country, to see us out here as white British people saying ‘no, we don’t stand for this’,” attendee Phoebe Sewell, 32, from London, told AFP.

Fellow Londoner Jeremy Snelling, 64, said he had turned out because “I don’t like the right-wing claiming the streets in my name”.

He accused Reform party founder Farage of having “contributed” to the volatile environment.

“I think he is damaging and I think he’s dangerous,” Snelling added.

Meanwhile, suspected rioters continued to appear in court on Saturday.

Stephen Parkinson, the head of the prosecution service, said hundreds of alleged participants in the violence would soon face justice as a “new phase” of “more serious” cases worked through the system.

Those convicted could face jail terms of up to 10 years under the most serious offence of rioting, he warned.

“It’s not about exacting revenge, it’s about delivering justice,” Parkinson said, in comments reported by the Sunday Times.

(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)

British Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer visits The Hub – Solihull Mosque, in Solihull, West Midlands, England, on August 8, 2024.
| Photo Credit: AP

British Prime Minister Keir Starmer on Thursday (August 8, 2024) vowed no “let up” in moves to prevent further far-right riots across England, after more anticipated street violence failed to materialise overnight.

“It’s important that we don’t let up here,” Mr. Starmer told media outlets as he visited a mosque and met community leaders in Solihull, western England, following the easing of more than a week of unrest in towns and cities nationwide.

Rioters thwarted by ‘show of unity’ by communities, says police chief

A heavy security presence across Britain and a “show of unity” by local communities prevented a repeat of the widespread rioting seen in recent days involving racist attacks targeting Muslims and migrants, London’s police chief said on Thursday (August 8, 2024).

Britain has been hit by a series of riots after the killing of three young girls in a July 29 knife attack in Southport, northwest England, triggering a wave of false online posts that wrongly identified the suspected killer as an Islamist migrant.

Far-right groups opposed to immigration planned dozens of gatherings across the UK on Wednesday.

In response, thousands of police and anti-racism protesters gathered in cities across the United Kingdom and London’s Metropolitan Police Commissioner Mark Rowley said the night had gone “very peacefully” apart from a few criminal incidents.

“I think the show of force from the police, and frankly, the show of unity from communities, together defeated the challenges that we’ve seen,” Rowley told reporters.

While anti-racism protesters marched carrying banners with slogans like “Refugees Welcome” and “No to Hate”, no large far-right gatherings were reported, only smaller groups.

Police said several dozen people had thrown bottles and tried to cause disruption in the southern English town of Croydon, while in Northern Ireland, bins were set on fire in Belfast and authorities said they dealt with a number of race-related hate crime incidents.

Rowley said police had continued to make raids and arrest violent offenders on Thursday morning, including many with criminal backgrounds. Over 400 people in total have been arrested across the country since the start of the riots.

“Any suggestion they’re patriots, or they’ve got a cause… is nonsense,” Rowley said. “They’re criminals, and frankly, most of them are going to be charged with violent disorder, and most of them are going to go to prison for a few years.”

Policing minister Diana Johnson said on Thursday she remained cautious about the situation.

“There are consequences for the criminality on our streets, and I think that swift justice that we’re seeing is also helping to make people think twice about getting involved,” Johnson told Sky News.

An unruly crowd clash with police, Tuesday, July 30, 2024, in Southport, northwest England, near where three girls were stabbed to death in a dance class the day before. The violence erupted shortly after a peaceful vigil was attended by hundreds in the center of Southport to mourn the 13 victims of the stabbings, including seven still in critical condition.
| Photo Credit: AP

The British government has called on Elon Musk to act responsibly after the tech billionaire used his social media platform X to unleash a barrage of posts that officials say risk inflaming the violent unrest gripping the country.

Justice Minister Heidi Alexander made the comments Tuesday morning (August 6) after Mr. Musk posted a comment saying that “Civil war is inevitable” in the U.K. Mr. Musk later doubled down, highlighting complaints that the British criminal justice system treats Muslims more leniently than far-right activists and comparing Britain’s crackdown on social media users to the Soviet Union.

“Use of language such as a ‘civil war’ is in no way acceptable,’’ Ms. Alexander told Times Radio. “We are seeing police officers being seriously injured, buildings set alight, and so I really do think that everyone who has a platform should be exercising their power responsibly.’’

Britain has been shaken by violence for more than a week, as police clashed with crowds spouting anti-immigrant and Islamophobic slogans in cities and towns from Northern Ireland to the south coast of England. The unrest began after right-wing activists used social media to spread misinformation about a knife attack that killed three girls during a Taylor Swift-themed dance event on July 29.

Prime Minister Keir Starmer, who has described the riots as “far-right thuggery,” on Monday (August 5) said the government would deploy a “standing army” of specialist police officers to quell the unrest.

But the government is also calling on social media companies, such as Mr. Musk’s X, formerly known as Twitter, to do more to combat the spread of misleading and inflammatory information online.

Ms. Alexander said Tuesday that the government would look at strengthening the existing Online Safety Act, which was approved last year and won’t be fully implemented until 2025.

“We’ve been working with the social media companies, and some of the action that they’ve taken already with the automatic removal of some false information is to be welcomed,” Ms. Alexander told the BBC. “But there is undoubtedly more that the social media companies could and should be doing.”

That type of rhetoric may be part of what sparked Mr. Musk’s attack on the government. Mr. Musk has taken a more combative approach to his critics than was the norm in Silicon Valley technology firms, said Alex Krasodomski, who studies the intersection between technology and politics at Chatham House, a London-based think tank.

“He has sparred with U.K. and EU policymakers in the past when they have questioned his approaches to content moderation on the platform,” Mr. Krasodomski said.

X didn’t respond to an email seeking comment. It rarely responds to media requests.

Mr. Musk just kept wading into the debate about the violence in Britain.

After Starmer posted a comment on X saying that the government “will not tolerate attacks on mosques or on Muslim communities,” Mr. Musk responded with the question, “Shouldn’t you be concerned about attacks on all communities?”

Mr. Musk attached a similar comment to a video that said it showed a “Muslim patrol” attacking a pub in Birmingham, highlighting the original post for his 193 million followers.

Such comments are vintage Mr. Musk, who has a history of making provocative statements, said Stephanie Alice Baker, a sociologist at City University of London who has studied online discourse. Mr. frequently comments on geopolitical issues and his fans come to his defense when he is criticized, Ms. Baker said.

Earlier this year, he clashed with a Brazilian supreme court justice over free speech, far-right accounts and purported misinformation on X. He also accused Venezuela’s socialist President, Nicolás Maduro, of “major election fraud” after last week’s disputed election.

Those comments are closely watched by a group of people attracted by his success in business, Ms. Baker said.

“Mr. Musk’s following represents the cult of the entrepreneur …” she said. “By questioning convention, they are depicted as gifted visionaries, who can predict the future and bring it into being. For his fans and followers, Mr. Musk’s impulsive comments are perceived as part of his genius.”