(Bloomberg) -- London’s Metropolitan Police arrested more than 100 people after demonstrators gathered in the center of the capital to protest against the murders of three girls and stabbings of eight others in northwest England earlier this week.
The demonstration — promoted on the social media platform X by the account of far-right agitator Stephen Yaxley-Lennon, better known as Tommy Robinson — was held Wednesday on Whitehall and in Parliament Square. Videos posted on X showed protesters calling the police “traitors” and chanting “shame on you,” “save our kids” and “rule Britannia.”
Protesters were charged with a range of offenses including violent disorder, assault on an emergency worker and breach of protest conditions, the police said in an emailed statement.
The violence is the latest sign of political and racial tension that poses a challenge to UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer less than a month into his tenure, following a riot on Tuesday by far-right demonstrators in Southport, the town where the three girls were killed on Monday. Starmer later on Thursday will meet with police leaders to discuss the unrest.
Merseyside Police charged a 17-year-old boy with the Southport attacks, and have previously said he was born in Britain. But in the wake of the stabbings, a number of influential right-wing accounts on X spread false information about the attacker, including claims that he was an asylum seeker or a refugee. That helped fuel protests in the same town a day later, when police said “a large group of people — believed to be supporters of the English Defence League — began to throw items towards a local mosque.”
Disorder was also reported late Wednesday in Hartlepool, northeast England — where at least eight people were arrested — as well as in Aldershot, southern England, and in Manchester.
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