(Bloomberg) -- Prime Minister Keir Starmer called an emergency security meeting in a bid to quell anti-immigrant protests that rocked communities across the UK and threatened to plunge his month-old government into a polarizing cultural debate.
Violence erupted in towns and cities including Rotherham, Blackpool and Bristol over the weekend in the first major test for the new Labour government. The disorder has been fueled by an online misinformation campaign since an attack a week ago left three young girls dead in Southport, northwest England. Far-right activists falsely claimed the suspect was a Muslim migrant to stoke anti-immigrant and Islamophobic sentiment.
In Rotherham, South Yorkshire, protesters on Sunday attacked a hotel they believed was housing asylum seekers and started a fire, injuring around a dozen police officers. Home Secretary Yvette Cooper told BBC radio on Monday that hundreds of arrests have been made in England’s worst rioting in over a decade.
“We have seen truly appalling criminal violence and thuggery in some of our cities and towns; it is a total disgrace,” Cooper said. “There has to be a reckoning; they have to pay the price for their crimes”
Speaking from Downing Street on Sunday, Starmer blamed the far-right for the violence and said those who took part will face “the full force of the law.” On Monday, he is due to hold an emergency Cobra meeting with senior ministers and police chiefs, Cooper said.
The prime minister is preparing emergency court sittings, getting prosecutors to work longer hours and weekends to process cases, and the redeployment of police if necessary.
Authorities have yet to point the finger at specific named groups, and there is no apparent unified structure to those behind the violence. Disparate groups of far-right activists appear to have mobilized online, including using Twitter and Telegram to call for protests in towns and cities across the country. Far-right agitator Tommy Robinson, whose real name is Stephen Yaxley-Lennon, has used Twitter posts to stoke tensions, while Reform UK Party Leader Nigel Farage has questioned whether police withheld the truth in the Southport attack.
Asked specifically about Robinson, Cooper declined to comment on individual cases, but said “if there is criminal provocation online, that needs to be addressed.”
“There is definitely criminal material online, and that needs to be pursued,” Cooper said. “You can’t just have the armchair thuggery of people being able to incite and organize violence and also not face consequences for this. There does also need to be action by the social media companies.”
The violence is the worst in England since the summer of 2011, when rioting raged for five days following the police killing of a Black man in north London. That led to the prosecution of thousands of people and lengthy prison sentences. Starmer was the director of public prosecutions at the time and is expected to take a similarly tough approach to the latest unrest, according to the official.
Cooper announced additional measures to protect the mosques and pledged “full backing” for the police in dealing with the unrest.
Tensions have been rising since the stabbing attack at a Taylor Swift-themed dance party in Southport, near Liverpool, on July 29. Police have said the suspect, Axel Rudakubana, 17, was born in Britain in an attempt to counter false claims spread on social media that he was a Muslim migrant.
Around 300 people were involved in disturbances in the Walton area of Liverpool on Saturday night, according to Merseyside Police. The force, also responsible for Southport, said that a local convenience store was set on fire and that a library was damaged, while firefighters who attended to the scene had a missile thrown at their vehicle.
In Hull, demonstrators gathered outside a hotel that houses asylum seekers, a number of windows were smashed and bottles thrown. In videos uploaded to social media many of the protesters can be heard chanting “stop the boats,” a reference to crossings made from the European continent by migrants attempting to get to Britain.
Many police forces across the country have issued so-called dispersal orders to try to break up and deter rioters. There have also been disturbances in Leicester, Stoke-on Trent, Nottingham, Manchester, Middlesbrough and Sunderland, as well as Belfast in Northern Ireland.
“We will do whatever it takes to make sure that people can get through the court system,” Diana Johnson, the policing minister, said Sunday in an interview on Sky News. Courts could sit through the night to deal with the large number of people arrested if necessary, she added.
For the UK’s strained justice system, haste could prove difficult.
Since 2010, when the Conservatives took office, funding cuts have left much of the court system struggling to process even their regular workload. More than half of magistrate courts, which deal with lower-level offenses, closed during the Tories’ 14 years in power. Those courts are now working with a backlog of around 387,000 cases as of April this year, a figure that has surged since the pandemic.
The unrest comes just days after the House of Commons rose for the long summer recess. Priti Patel, a former home secretary who is now vying to succeed Rishi Sunak as Conservative Party leader, has called for Parliament to be recalled.
--With assistance from Alex Morales.
(Updates with comment from Cooper starting in third paragraph.)
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