How the UK’s far right used a local tragedy to spur chaos

Riots and violence have erupted in the UK following the killing of three young girls in the quiet seaside town of Southport in northern England. Last week, while learning dance moves to their favorite Taylor Swift songs, a 17-year-old boy entered their classroom and went on a stabbing rampage that left three dead and critically wounded several others. 

Following the attack, a UK law prohibiting the public naming of suspects under the age of 18 created an information vacuum, and within hours, rumors about the suspect in custody, including an incorrect name, were circulating around the far-right media ecosystem. Police in Merseyside, the county that includes Southport, quickly confirmed the suspect was born in the UK, but misinformation on social media claimed he was an immigrant.

Nigel Farage, a British broadcaster, leader of the right-wing Reform UK party and member of Parliament, added to the chaos when he released a video statement casting doubt on the official information released by Merseyside police. “I just wonder whether the truth is being withheld from us. I don’t know the answer to that, but I think it is a fair and legitimate question,” Farage said.

Three days after the attack, a judge agreed to allow the name of the suspect to be released but the damage had been done. While the town of Southport was still in mourning, far-right protesters took to the streets, chanting “We want our country back,” attacked a local mosque, and injured more than 50 police officers. 

That riot, the day after the stabbing attack, was just the first of many violent demonstrations that flared up across Great Britain and in Northern Ireland’s capital, Belfast. On Sunday, around 750 people surrounded a hotel housing asylum seekers in northern England. According to police, rioters smashed windows in an attempt to gain access to hotel residents and lit a large trash bin on fire.

Robyn Vinter, a correspondent for the Guardian covering the north of England, has been covering the protests across the UK and shared her experience with Noel King on an episode of Today, Explained. Their conversation below has been edited for length and clarity.  

Robyn Vinter

[The Southport attack] had happened on a Tuesday night, and by the Friday, there was a list of places where demonstrations were going to be held. They were described as protests. Fliers were going around social media that said things like, “A protest is going to be held outside this mosque.” And then we saw large-scale pockets of far-right riots: a lot of violence in a lot of towns and cities across the UK.

A hotel in Rotherham that was housing asylum seekers was on the list. That one got out of hand very quickly, partly because it was under-policed: there’d been another protest organized in a city nearby, and they perhaps underestimated how many people would attend. In total, there were about 750 rioters. They were physically attacking police, smashing windows, burning things. 

They managed to set fire, briefly, to the hotel with about 240 asylum seekers inside, which was obviously terrifying. The windows were smashed and the asylum seekers were appearing at the windows. They were all fairly young. The ones I saw — teenagers, early 20s — all looked very scared, very worried. I shouted through the window, “Are you okay?” and I was holding a thumbs up. A lot of them were replying, “Okay, okay.” A lot of them don’t have good English. And then one man shouted down, “I am not okay.” 

The police were wearing fireproof gear and helmets and had big riot shields, so they were safe from the fireworks. But there were quite a lot of times when I saw the police that had been relieved from their shifts on the front line of this battle against the rioters. They would go around the corner or down a side street, and they would just be sitting with their heads in their hands because it had been such a draining and exhausting day. A few police officers said to me that it had been by far the biggest riot that they’d ever [responded to]. 

Over time, it calmed down. As the evening went on, it tended to be younger rioters who clearly were teenagers. I spoke to a 16-year-old girl who was there, and she said she recognized a lot of them from school, and that some of them were even younger than she was. 

And that was only one riot that happened. While I was in Rotherham, a colleague of mine was in Middlesbrough on the opposite English coast. It was different scenes in Middlesbrough because there was not really a specific target. The far right were running riot through the town. There weren’t enough police. Journalists were being targeted, because there’s a huge mistrust among the rioters and the general public of journalists. A number of journalists and photographers have been hurt or had equipment stolen. My friend, the colleague who was in Middlesbrough, went back to his car to find it had been completely smashed up, and the police had to drive him home. 

There’ve been 400 arrests, but the arrests keep coming because there are so many people involved. There are more demonstrations due to be held, and there’s a lot of likelihood that these are going to turn into riots as well. 

Noel King

Robyn, you and other news media are using two words. You’re using “riot” and you’re using “protest.” The people who are protesting: What do they say they want to come out of this? 

Robyn Vinter

Some of the protests are local to a situation, but there are broad themes. You hear the phrase “We want our country back.” A lot of it is about a kind of broader anti-immigration sentiment. 

In Rotherham — where I was, where the rioters attacked the hotel housing asylum seekers — there was a feeling that asylum seekers were getting better treatment in the UK than British people were. People were saying, “Well, I have to pay my bills. I have to put a roof over my head. I have to work. And these people are coming here and they’re living in a hotel and they’re not working. Not doing anything. They don’t have to worry about paying bills.” 

There were also — which I found very sinister — rumors going around in certain communities that certain men had been following women home. Or, the rumor in Rotherham was that two women had been raped by asylum seekers and that the authorities had covered it up. Obviously, as a journalist, that would be a very good story if I could stand it up. But I’m just completely unable to find any evidence that that’s the case. 

But in a way, it doesn’t matter, because it goes around on social media. People hear it. Everybody has heard it from somebody else. Nobody’s the person that it’s happened to. 

Noel King

This all got started with a rumor that the boy who had stabbed these little girls was an immigrant. Have rumors continued to contribute to what’s going on? Either rumors or deliberate misinformation — sometimes called disinformation, I suppose.

Robyn Vinter

Disinformation and misinformation have had a really pivotal role in the last seven days. There have been a lot of deliberate instigators on social media — a lot of people, actually, who wouldn’t perpetrate violence themselves, but will easily goad other people into doing so. 

Something I haven’t mentioned so far, as well: there’s something that the far-right instigators on social media are calling “two-tier policing.” They believe that white British people are getting worse treatment — they’re getting more heavy-handed treatment — from the police than Muslims or other groups of people. I wouldn’t go as far as saying “conspiracy theory,” but it’s a huge talking point among the far right. 

We even heard Elon Musk describe Prime Minister Keir Starmer as “Two-tier Keir,” obviously referencing this nonsensical and nonexistent idea of two-tier policing.

Noel King

Keir Starmer is brand new in the office. This would be his first real crisis. How is he perceived to be handling this? 

Robyn Vinter

Keir Starmer is a very interesting character. When we had some riots in urban areas in London and other cities in 2011, he was the director of public prosecutions — kind of like your chief prosecutor, essentially making decisions about how these rioters would be handled by the courts, how they’d be prosecuted. His method of prosecuting was bringing people in quickly and prosecuting them quickly. There were late-night courts and courts running over the weekend in order to process the large numbers of rioters. 

So far we’re seeing something very similar to back then. He’s very keen on clamping down immediately on the rioters, and you can see the method as well. 

I think when people start to see the large sentences that rioters will be getting for attacking police and setting fires, they’re going to be more likely to think twice before they get involved in future violence. 

Noel King

We are expecting more of this; more protests, potentially more rioting, potentially more injuries, potentially more clashes with police. What should we take from all of this? What does this tell us more broadly about what is happening in the UK right now?

Robyn Vinter

The summer of 2024 is going to be defined as a summer of rioting. 

Although the riots will [probably] start to die down in the next couple of weeks, the sentiment will not go away. It’s going to take as long as it took to build it up to dissipate it. 

I don’t have any answers about what we can do to improve that sentiment. It’s something that I feel very worried about. 

We in the UK rarely descend into any kind of real nationwide violence. People from abroad have been saying that “it’s going to end in a civil war.” That’s absurd. But we do have to worry about this. We have to worry about it because that sentiment exists in other countries as well, places that don’t have a long legacy of stability. This kind of thing could be a spark that lights a fire somewhere else.