What triggered Britain's far-right riots and how did they unfold?

Anti-immigration and anti-Muslim riots targeting mosques and hotels housing asylum seekers erupted in towns and cities across the UK this weekend, days after a deadly stabbing attack in Southport was falsely attributed to a Muslim "illegal immigrant".

The five days of violence began on Tuesday when far-right activists mobilised to target the Southport Islamic Society Mosque following the stabbings of three girls at a dance class in the coastal town.

Over the weekend, riots and Islamophobic attacks spread across the country, fuelled by disinformation online.

A range of far-right factions and individuals targeted mosques, Muslim-owned businesses and hotels housing asylum seekers in London, Liverpool, Leeds, Bristol, Manchester, Sunderland, Stoke-on-Trent,  Blackpool, Rotherham, Hartlepool, Aldershot, Middlesbrough, Belfast and Hull.

Rioters mobilised support through Telegram channels and WhatsApp groups with slogans such as “enough is enough”, “save our kids”, and calling to “stop the boats”, an anti-migrant slogan touted by the Conservative government.

Here is what we know about the unrest so far.

What triggered the riots?

The wave of rioting followed the deadly stabbings of three girls at a Taylor Swift-themed dance class in Southport on Monday. 

The suspect, 17-year-old Axel Rudakubana, was born in Britain. However, a misinformation campaign falsely claiming the attacker was a Muslim and/or an undocumented migrant circulated online, fuelled by far-right activists such as Tommy Robinson and Laurence Fox.

In the wake of these messages, hundreds of masked men from across Merseyside and Wirral descended on the Southport Islamic Society Mosque on Tuesday, pelting projectiles at the building where the imam was sheltering inside.

Far-right watchdog Hope not Hate found the earliest mention of the riot on social media platforms was by a Telegram user named “Stimpy”, who began encouraging others to assemble outside the mosque from 6pm on Monday.

According to Hope not Hate, Stimpy then set up a WhatsApp chat group entitled “Southport Wake Up” to post misinformation and publicise the location of the mosque.

The attack spawned a week of riots that spread to several towns and cities across the country, the worst the UK has seen in over a decade. 

On Saturday, at least 100 people were arrested as riots erupted in Hull, Liverpool, Stoke-on-Trent, Nottingham, Bristol, Manchester, Blackpool and Belfast.

On Sunday, rioters stormed hotels housing asylum seekers in Rotherham and Tamworth armed with fireworks and smoke grenades. The rioters, some draped in Saint George's Cross flags, besieged the buildings and tried to set them on fire with people trapped inside, changing “burn it” and “set it alight”.

Who are the riots coordinated by?

While the police attributed the Southport riot to the English Defence League (EDL), far-right watchdogs have said that the riots are not being organised by a formal group. The EDL has been in decline since its founder, Tommy Robinson, was briefly arrested and then left the group.

“The EDL hasn’t been able to mobilise the kind of numbers it did 10 years ago,” a spokesperson for the far-right monitoring group Red Flare told Middle East Eye.

According to Red Flare, former EDL activists, as well as members of its offshoots such as Patriotic Alternative and North East Infidels, have been identified at several of last week’s riots.

However, the watchdog emphasised that the events are primarily being orchestrated by informal networks via social media platforms.

“What we’re seeing is the ‘post organisational far right',” the spokesperson said. “It’s a shift away from formal, hierarchical membership organisations towards a more informal, networked, amorphous situation.”

“You can just be a member of a Telegram channel or Instagram. People are able to move seamlessly from one formation to another.”

A Telegram channel that sprang up in the wake of the Southport attack has garnered 13,000 members. It shares neo-Nazi content and has become a central rallying point for the rioters.

On Monday, the channel shared a list of 39 immigration-related charities, advice centres and solicitors as targets for arson attacks on Wednesday night. 

“There are PDF guides on how to commit arson attacks without being caught. There's all sorts of terrorist material being shared in this chat,” Red Flare said.

But Red Flare explained that this ‘post-organisational’ shift in far-right organising is nothing new.

“It’s this acceleration of a terroristic strain of the far right that's existed for the last few years on the dark corners of Telegram. But this is a real mainstreaming of it,” the spokesperson said.

How has the government responded?

Following an emergency Cobra meeting, Prime Minister Keir Starmer announced that a "standing army" of specialist officers would be deployed to combat upcoming riots.

Starmer accused "thugs" of "hijacking" the nation's grief to "sow hatred" and pledged that those committing violent acts would "face the full force of the law".

However, campaigners and commentators have criticised the government for failing to explicitly condemn the racist and Islamophobic nature of the attacks.

Jeremy Corbyn and four independent MPs wrote to Home Secretary Yvette Cooper, criticising Starmer for not going “nearly far enough in identifying the anti-immigrant and anti-Muslim hatred” driving the riots.

In an interview with Good Morning Britain, Labour MP Zarah Sultana urged politicians to use the term “Islamophobia” when referring to the motivation behind the riots and highlighted the correlation between the slogans used by the rioters and the anti-migrant rhetoric deployed by politicians.

How have local communities responded?

The rioters have been met with, and in many cases outnumbered by, counter-protests staged by anti-fascist activists across the country.

In Liverpool on Friday, some 200 counter-protestors formed a human barrier around the Abdullah Quilliam Society, outnumbering a crowd of around 30 rioters. 

In Bristol, around 200 far-right activists were outnumbered by some 700 counter-protesters who barred the rioters from entering a hotel housing asylum seekers.

Local communities have also rallied in efforts to clean up the devastation left by rioters. In Southport, volunteers swept the streets and rebuilt the demolished mosque wall.

Are there more riots expected this week?

Yes, although this will be difficult to predict due to the loose nature of the networks organising the demonstrations.

“There are all sorts of closed groups across the country where organising for these riots is getting done beyond anything that monitoring groups like us will be able to observe," a Red Flare spokesperson told MEE.

"It's clear that the police intelligence is wanting, given their inability to respond over the weekend. I don't think that's necessarily a huge indictment of their intelligence capacity. I just think with this sort of situation, it's very difficult to know in advance where it's going to kick off," he added.

Journalist Taj Ali said on X that he had received several unconfirmed reports of far-right presences in Bradford and Birmingham.

Meanwhile, anti-fascist networks have issued calls for a counter-protest against a far-right demonstration planned outside a hostel housing asylum seekers in Crawley.