The United Kingdom woke up Sunday morning to city streets covered in debris and smoldering rubbish as a weekend of far-right, anti-immigration demonstrations — stoked by conspiracy theories spread on social media — erupted into violence in seven cities across the nation.
Police arrested at least 100 people, and riot police wearing helmets and holding shields came out in force as Prime Minister Keir Starmer pledged to take action against “extremists.”
On Saturday, groups in Leeds waving St. George’s Cross flags, England’s national flag regularly flown by far-right groups, shouted “Muslims off our streets,” pairing it with a slur suggesting they were criminal child abusers. In the city of Hull, rioters threw bottles and smashed a window at a hotel housing asylum-seekers as demonstrators clashed with police.
What started as targeted anti-immigration demonstrations quickly descended into directionless disorder. A library in Liverpool, reopened in 2023 as an “education to employment” service for people of all abilities, was set ablaze.
I’m surprised it hadn’t happened sooner tbh.
The police said “we don’t believe this to be terrorism related”, which seems to be code for “the suspect is not white, and Tommy Robinson is on the way”. Or he would have been had he not fled the country so he didn’t get arrested for something else.
There’s a lot of hate for the illegal immigrants that have been shoved into run down hotels up and down the country, often in the poorest areas. I often check my local Facebook groups, and no matter what happens (ducks found dead, dog missing, theft, rape) the response is always “Probably one of the Novotel lot!” It wouldn’t have surprised me in the slightest if rioting kicked off here as well. I suspect the only reason it hasn’t is we’re just not a big enough town for any of them to organise it.
The incident sparking this wave isn’t even for that fire. It’s a British guy who snapped. But people don’t care. It’s just an excuse now for a show of force.
It could all have been avoided by hiring more people to process applications back when the numbers started ramping up, but here we are with hundreds of thousands of immigrants awaiting decisions with nowhere else to go.