Riots Intensify Across UK as Far-Right Protesters Clash with Police

Far-right protesters clashed with British police during tense rallies over the weekend as unrest linked to disinformation about a mass stabbing that killed three young girls spread across the UK.

Riots have erupted across towns and cities in the last week after three girls were killed in a knife attack in Southport in northwest England, with 420 people arrested so far.

The violence, which has put Britain's Muslim community on edge, presents the biggest challenge yet of Labour Prime Minister Keir Starmer's month-old premiership.

It has also put hard-right agitators linked to football hooliganism in the spotlight at a time when anti-immigration elements are enjoying some electoral success in British politics.

UK's Starmer to hold emergency meeting as riots intensify

British Prime Minister Keir Starmer will hold an emergency meeting with police chiefs on Monday.

The murders of the three girls were seized on by anti-immigrant and anti-Muslim groups as misinformation spread online that the suspected attacker was a radical Islamist who had just arrived in Britain. Police have said the suspect was born in Britain and are not treating it as a terrorist incident.

Interior minister Yvette Cooper said rioters had felt "emboldened by this moment to stir up racial hatred", with bricks thrown at police officers, shops looted and mosques and Asian-owned businesses attacked.

'Anti-Islan' groups, anti-racism rally clashes

Demonstrators threw chairs, flares and bricks at officers in the northwestern English city of Liverpool, while scuffles between police and protesters broke out in nearby Manchester.

Merseyside Police said "a number of officers have been injured as they deal with serious disorder" in Liverpool city centre.

The BBC reported that protesters smashed the windows of a hotel which has been used to house migrants in the northeastern city of Hull. Police said three officers had been injured and four people arrested.

In Belfast, Northern Ireland, fireworks were thrown amid tense exchanges between an anti-Islam group and an anti-racism rally.

In Leeds, northern England, around 150 people carrying English flags chanted, "You're not English any more" while counter-protesters shouted "Nazi scum off our streets".

Opposing groups of protesters also faced off in the central city of Nottingham and Bristol in the southwest.

Over the weekend riots broke out in Liverpool, Bristol, Tamworth, Middlesbrough and Belfast, in Northern Ireland, with largely young men wearing balaclavas and draped in the British flags hurling rocks and shouting "Stop the Boats", a reference to migrants arriving on the south coast in recent years.

In Rotherham, northern England, protesters sought to break into a hotel that housed asylum seekers.

Police blame online information

Police have blamed online disinformation, amplified by high-profile figures for driving the violence. One of the most prominent of these, Stephen Yaxley-Lennon who led the anti-Islam English Defence League group, has been blamed by media for spreading misinformation to his 875,000 followers on X.

"They are lying to you all," Yaxley-Lennon, who is known by the pseudonym Tommy Robinson, wrote. "Attempting to turn the nation against me. I need you, you are my voice."

Elon Musk, the owner of X, also weighed in on the violence. Responding to a post on X that blamed mass migration and open borders for the disorder in Britain, he wrote: "Civil war is inevitable."

Interior minister Cooper told broadcasters that tensions had been amplified and inflamed online, and the government would be pursuing the issue with social media companies.

"I think what you've seen is that networks of different individuals and groups that have been trying to fan the flames," she told Sky News, swerving questions on whether foreign states had been involved.

While she said people had views and concerns about issues such as immigration, she blamed extremist, racist, violent groups for the violence.

"Reasonable people who have all those sorts of views and concerns do not pick up bricks and throw them at the police," she said.