2024-08-05 14:47:36
Anti-immigration protesters smashed hotel windows and set fire to rubbish bins in northern England in the latest wave of unrest that poses a major test for Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s government, Reuters reports.
Violent protests involving hundreds of anti-immigrant demonstrators erupted in cities across Britain after three girls were killed in a knife attack at a children’s dance school in the coastal town of Southport in northwest England last week.
The killings were exploited by anti-immigrant and anti-Muslim groups, who spread misinformation that the suspected attacker was an immigrant and a radical Islamist. Police said the suspect was born in Britain. The media reports that he is from a Christian family.
Violent riots erupted in cities across the country yesterday, including Liverpool, Bristol and Manchester, with dozens of people arrested, shops and businesses vandalized and looted and several police officers injured, police said in a statement. . The government has promised strict action against those involved in the violence.
Today, hundreds of anti-immigration protesters gathered outside a hotel used to house asylum seekers near Rotherham, Northern England, reports BTA.
According to a Reuters witness, protesters threw bricks at police and broke several hotel windows, then set trash cans on fire. Dozens of other protesters gathered outside another similar hotel in Aldershot, southern England.
There were anti-racist counter-protests in both Rotherham and the north-west city of Lancaster, with police preventing the two groups from clashing.
The weekend protests followed several days of unrest.
Starmer, a former attorney general who took office a month ago after his Labor Party won an election victory over the long-ruling Conservatives, said the unrest was the result of deliberate actions by the far right, coordinated by “a group of individuals who are absolutely prone to violence’, not out of legitimate protest.
Yesterday, Home Secretary Yvette Cooper said “those involved in criminal disorder will be subject to the strongest possible penalties”.
The last time such violent protests erupted in Britain was in 2011, when thousands of people took to the streets after police shot dead a black man in London.