The night Britain fought back against riots

LONDON — It was the night the tide turned — at least for now.

More than a week of far-right-linked riots ended abruptly Wednesday as mass gatherings of anti-fascists crowded Britain’s streets instead. The counter-protests came hours after the first “thugs” were jailed for lengthy periods, a move which may also have contributed to the calmer scenes.

Demonstrators gathered in the major cities of London, Birmingham, Sheffield, Bristol, Liverpool, Brighton and Oxford, after an online list of immigration centers and human rights law firms — which it had been feared would be targeted by the far-right — was shared widely among left-wing activists.

In Walthamstow, east London, thousands took over the street outside an immigration bureau shouting “we fight back.” Newspapers from across the spectrum, including several aligned with the center-right, united in praise of the “anti-hate marchers.”

A fundraiser for a library in Liverpool that was set alight at the weekend has raised more than £210,000, while in Belfast, a small crowd turned out on Tuesday to support a shopkeeper who believed he had been racially targeted.

“The show of force from the police and, frankly, the show of unity from communities, together defeated the challenges that we’ve seen,” Mark Rowley, commissioner of London’s Metropolitan Police, said Thursday. Other than a few arrests, “it was a very successful night and the fears of extreme-right disorder were abated,” he added.

A week of unrest

The change of mood marks a dramatic turn in the unrest that has peppered Britain’s streets and sparked angst about the state of the nation since three girls were killed in a mass stabbing in Southport, Merseyside, on July 29. 

Rioters mobilized using apps including the encrypted messaging service Telegram after posts falsely claimed the British-born suspect in the attack was an asylum seeker who arrived on a small boat across the English Channel.

With community tensions still simmering and temperatures of 29 degrees — hot for England — predicted this weekend, police leaders were reluctant to say they were out of the woods yet.

Tiffany Lynch of the Police Federation, which represents rank and file officers, warned she could “absolutely not” say the violence was over. “I think it will all come down to the intelligence, it will come down to the engagement we have with communities,” she told BBC Radio 4’s Today program on Thursday.

Prime Minister Keir Starmer, who was due to chair a third meeting of the government’s emergency committee COBR later Thursday, would also not say the violence was over.

The former director of public prosecutions, who has endured the biggest test of his premiership since winning July’s general election, tried to credit his tough-talking response with the turn of events — telling broadcasters “we had police deployed in numbers in the right places” and a “criminal justice system working speedily.”

More than a week of far-right-linked riots ended abruptly Wednesday as mass gatherings of anti-fascists crowded Britain’s streets instead. | Carl Court/Getty Images

Starmer has faced calls to do more to address and defuse the underlying tensions highlighted by the disorder, particularly over high rates of immigration to the U.K.

The Battle of Cable Street revisited

Others sought to use Wednesday’s response to the far-right uprising as evidence that the U.K. remains a tolerant country.

The left-wing activist Billy Bragg compared the counter protests to the 1936 Battle of Cable Street, when hordes of anti-fascist protesters blocked a march by the British Union of Fascists through the East End of London, then the capital’s main Jewish district.

However, Walthamstow’s Labour MP Stella Creasy told POLITICO: “When [protesters] say they’re recreating Cable Street, you think — the point is we never wanted to get to Cable Street in the first place.”

She said what happened on her patch was more complex than simple defiance, with thousands of other residents “terrified at home, or in the mosques, in the churches, worrying about their businesses.” Creasy added that she also had constituents with far-right views, saying: “We need to have a national conversation about what is feeding that toxicity, because that isn’t social media in itself. Social media is just another realm in which it is happening.”

Meanwhile, some protesters in Finchley, a Jewish area of north London, were accused of conflating the race riots with the ongoing debate over Israel’s actions in Gaza, with a leaflet shared online saying “get fascists, racists, Nazis, Zionists and Islamophobes out of Finchley!” The area’s Labour MP Sarah Sackman said on X that she had reported “clearly antisemitic” material to police.

On Thursday Labour moved to suspend a councillor who was filmed telling counter-protestors to “cut all the throats” of the “fascists.”

Justice funding a ‘very live conversation’

Policing Minister Diana Johnson credited the calmer scenes to the tough justice meted out to rioters, including to 58-year-old Derek Drummond, who was given a three-year sentence for punching a police officer in Southport. Government officials insist there is enough capacity to deal with the “thugs.”

Yet police are exhausted after using up leave time, courts are plagued by backlogs and prisoners are having to be released early as jails are almost full. Johnson told Times Radio that funding for the justice system “will be a very live conversation that’s to be had” in the government’s spending review this fall.

London’s Mayor Sadiq Khan thanked those “who came out peacefully to show London stands united against racism and Islamophobia, while Green MP Sian Berry said the response was “a tremendous, mass show of solidarity with the Muslim community, with people seeking asylum in the U.K, and every community that’s been targeted, attacked or threatened by fascist violence.”

Nigel Farage, leader of right-wing populist party Reform U.K — who critics accused of handing fuel to the rioters last week by asking questions about the background of the Southport suspect — continued to accuse police of treating rival groups unfairly.

“We’ve seen violence on both sides, but let’s be frank, more thuggery from young white youths than Muslim gangs. However, policed very differently,” he told TalkTV.

A protester holds a placard during a counter demonstration against an anti-immigration protest called by far-right activists, outside the Asylum Welcome immigration support service offices in Oxford. | Justin Tallis/AFP via Getty Images

Farage said the show of resistance on Wednesday night means Starmer “will do nothing” about underlying issues. “Nothing will change. Policing won’t change. His narrative won’t change. All that might slightly change is that [X proprietor] Elon Musk and X might face a bit of regulation,” he said.

Creasy said, even among supportive protesters, she is in a constant battle to ensure information on social media is accurate.

“People are much more connected, but much more divided as a result,” she said. “So they’re sharing stuff because it’s shocking to them, but they’re also — in sharing it — helping to give it credibility. And that goes around like wildfire.” Waiting “five or six hours for somebody to sign off a press release,” she said, is no longer enough.