Instead of seeking an electoral route, Britain’s largely atomized far right uses social media to organize — and its most prominent figures, and outriders from abroad, leapt on and contributed to the initial disinformation spread in the aftermath of the Southport attack.
There appears to be little formal organization behind the rioting — with social media used by those involved to try and recruit fellow travelers.
WhatsApp and Telegram have been used to organize gatherings at short notice, while flyers organizing specific protests have been spread on Facebook. TikTok has been abuzz with videos of the violence.
“While many, or even most of those who have attended, are not part of any traditional far-right organization, they are inspired by far right misinformation and are engaging in far right activism,” Hope not Hate said.
“The trigger for these events was the attack in Southport, this weekend’s events have broadened out and are now drawing from a common wellspring of anger and often recycle the same far-right slogans in particular “Enough is Enough,” “Stop the Boats” and “Save Our Children,” it added.
What has the government’s response been?
Warnings of trouble before the weekend were swiftly followed by condemnation from the U.K. government — and a belated attempt to show strength.
On Sunday, a visibly angry Prime Minister Keir Starmer described the riots as “far-right thuggery” and vowed to punish all involved.
He has some experience in this area. Before he became a lawmaker, Starmer was Britain’s director of public prosecutions. He held this role in 2011, when riots triggered in London after the shooting of Black man Mark Duggan by police spread nationwide.
Under Starmer in 2011, British courts sat overnight as the justice system worked to sentence more than 3,000 people arrested during the disorder. A repeat may be on the cards — if Britain’s stretched justice system with a huge courts backlog can handle it.
Starmer on Monday held an emergency meeting of ministers, senior officials and prison chiefs known (after the room in which they meet) as COBR. Speaking after the meeting, he promised to “ramp up” Britain’s criminal justice to arrest and prosecute rioters.
“We will have a standing army of specialist officers, public duty officers, so we will have enough officers to deal with this where we need them,” Starmer said.
According to the National Police Chiefs’ Council Monday afternoon, officers have arrested 378 people over the past week in relation to the unrest. Some of those have already appeared in court.
Some reports have also suggested that ministers are considering 2011-style, 24-hour court sittings to fast track sentencing, though Starmer’s spokesperson told journalists this was a matter for the judiciary.
A readout of the COBR meeting said that Justice Secretary Shabana Mahmood and the prison service are confident there is enough capacity in the U.K.’s stretched justice system to lock up convicted rioters.
Downing Street also confirmed that at this stage no requests have been made from the police for Armed Forces involvement, and that further anti-protest tactics are a matter for the police.
Instead, at this stage the government has promised further protection for mosques, while ministers are engaging with social media firms as they call for more action to tackle criminal material on their platforms.
Is anyone criticizing the response?
The government has faced criticism from some quarters for its response to the riots — which is widely seen as the first big test of Starmer’s young premiership.
James Cleverly, the Conservative Shadow Home Secretary, told GB News that the Labour government has been “slow off the mark” in its response and that it should have convened an emergency COBR meeting earlier.
“The Labour Party have got to get used to the fact they are no longer in opposition. It’s not just about what you say, it’s about what you do, and they have been slow off the mark,” Cleverly said.
Other politicians, including Farage and the Labour MP Diane Abbott, have urged Starmer to cut short the U.K. parliament’s current recess so that MPs can debate the disorder — while polling from the Opinium pollster shows that Starmer’s approval rating has dipped in the last fortnight.
However long the riots last, Starmer’s honeymoon period in government is already over.