Multiple right-wing demonstrations turned violent across the UK on Saturday night, as anti-immigration protesters clashed with police following the murder of three children by a teenager of African descent earlier this week.
Violence broke out at more than 30 protests held in cities including Liverpool, Nottingham, Leeds, Belfast, Stoke-on-Trent, Blackpool and Hull. The demonstrations came almost a week after riots in the town of Southport following the fatal stabbing of three children and wounding of ten others, allegedly by 17-year old Axel Rudakubana, who was born in Britain to Rwandan parents.
The Southport riots spread across England, with more than 100 people arrested in London on Wednesday and a police station set on fire in Sunderland on Friday.
Protesters and rioters on Saturday shouted anti-immigration and anti-Islam slogans, despite the fact that Rudakubana is not a Muslim. However, tensions between Muslim immigrants and native British have simmered in northern England since it was revealed that police covered up the existence of multiple Muslim ‘grooming gangs’ in the region over the last two decades.
In Leeds, where seven Muslim men were given prison sentences in April for raping eight British girls, demonstrators chanted “pedo Muslims off our streets” and “save our kids.” Police officers kept the protesters separate from a group of pro-immigrant left-wingers who turned up to stage a counter-demonstration.
In Manchester, fighting broke out between left- and right-wing protesters, with the right-wing side hurling fences and other debris at police officers attempting to separate the groups.
Police and protesters also clashed in Liverpool, with two officers hospitalized after being pelted with bricks and other projectiles.
Police officers in Bristol were unable to prevent sporadic clashes between left- and right-wing groups.
Video footage from the city of Stoke purportedly showed gangs of Muslim men marching with machetes and other weapons.
In one video, a police officer can be seen telling men to surrender their weapons at a nearby mosque, but no arrests have been reported. Footage from another unverified location showed another large group of Muslim men chanting “Allahu Akbar” as riot police watched from a distance.
In a speech to the nation on Thursday, British Prime Minister Keir Starmer focused almost entirely on the reaction to Monday’s stabbings, rather than the stabbings themselves. Starmer condemned the “far-right hatred” fueling the riots, and vowed to give police additional powers to tackle similar unrest in future.
Home Secretary Yvette Cooper warned on Saturday that additional prosecutors and prison spaces had been prepared, and that anyone involved in “criminal violence and disorder” would “pay the price.”