The United Kingdom woke up Sunday morning to city streets covered in debris and smoldering rubbish as a weekend of far-right, anti-immigration demonstrations — stoked by conspiracy theories spread on social media — erupted into violence in seven cities across the nation.
Police arrested at least 100 people, and riot police wearing helmets and holding shields came out in force as Prime Minister Keir Starmer pledged to take action against “extremists.”
On Saturday, groups in Leeds waving St. George’s Cross flags, England’s national flag regularly flown by far-right groups, shouted “Muslims off our streets,” pairing it with a slur suggesting they were criminal child abusers.
In the city of Hull, rioters threw bottles and smashed a window at a hotel housing asylum-seekers as demonstrators clashed with police.
What started as targeted anti-immigration demonstrations quickly descended into directionless disorder. A library in Liverpool, reopened in 2023 as an “education to employment” service for people of all abilities, was set ablaze.
One police officer in the city was hit on the head with a chair and another kicked and knocked off his motorcycle. The police force responsible for the region has confirmed that two officers were taken to the hospital with injuries.
Starmer denounced the violence Saturday, saying that the right to freedom of expression and violent disorder were “two very different things,” adding that “there is no excuse for violence of any kind.”
Some of the protests did not turn violent. In the southwest city of Bristol, groups shouted “we want our country back,” while others chanted “England ‘til I die.” There were also clashes with counterprotesters singing “racist scum, off our streets.”
The latest demonstrations follow a week of riots in the country after three young girls were killed in a knife attack at a Taylor Swift-themed dance party in the town of Southport.
At the center of the demonstrations was a conspiracy theory, spread on social media, based on a lie that the perpetrator was Muslim, an asylum-seeker or both.
Less than three hours after the attack on the girls, AI-generated images were shared on X by an account called Europe invasion, depicting a man in traditional Muslim dress waving a knife outside the U.K.’s houses of Parliament. The post has since been viewed over 900,000 times.
