London:

Thousands of anti-racism demonstrators rallied across the UK on Saturday to protest recent rioting blamed on the far-right in the wake of the Southport knife attack that killed three children.

Crowds massed in London, Glasgow in Scotland, Belfast in Northern Ireland, Manchester and numerous other English towns and cities, as fears of violent confrontations with anti-immigration agitators failed to materialise.

It followed similar developments on Wednesday night when anticipated far-right rallies up and down the country failed to materialise. Instead, people turned out for gatherings organised by the Stand Up To Racism advocacy group.

Up until that point, more than a dozen English towns and cities — and Belfast too — had been hit by anti-migrant unrest, following the deadly July 29 stabbings which were falsely linked on social media to a Muslim immigrant.

Rioters targeted mosques and hotels linked to immigration, as well as police, vehicles and other sites.

Recent nights have been largely peaceful in English towns and cities, prompting hope among the authorities that the nearly 800 arrests and numerous people already jailed had deterred further violence.

Despite the respite, UK media reported Saturday that Prime Minister Keir Starmer had cancelled plans to go on holiday next week to remain focused on the crisis.

 ‘No to racism’ 

In Northern Ireland, which has seen sustained disorder since last weekend, police said they were investigating a suspected racially motivated hate crime overnight.

A petrol bomb was thrown at a mosque in Newtownards, east of Belfast, early Saturday, with racist graffiti sprayed on the building, said the Police Service of Northern Ireland (PSNI).

The petrol bomb thrown at the property had failed to ignite, it added.

“This is being treated as a racially motivated hate crime, and I want to send a strong message to those who carried this out, that this type of activity will not be tolerated,” PSNI Chief Inspector Keith Hutchinson said.

Overnight, there were also reports of damage to property and vehicles in Belfast, as nightly unrest there rumbled on.

While the disturbances in Northern Ireland were sparked by events in England, they have also been fuelled by pro-UK loyalist paramilitaries with their own agenda, according to the PSNI.

Around 5,000 anti-racism demonstrators rallied in Belfast on Saturday “largely without incident”, police said.

Fiona Doran, of the United Against Racism group which co-organised the gathering, said it showed “that Belfast is a welcoming city… that says no to racism, to fascism, to islamophobia, to antisemitism, or misogyny”.

 ‘Delivering justice’ 

In London, thousands massed outside the office of Brexit architect Nigel Farage’s Reform UK party before marching through the city centre, accompanied by a large police presence.

They blame Farage and other far-right figures for helping to fuel the riots through anti-immigrant rhetoric and conspiracy theories.

“It’s really important for people of colour in this country, for immigrants in this country, to see us out here as white British people saying ‘no, we don’t stand for this’,” attendee Phoebe Sewell, 32, from London, told AFP.

Fellow Londoner Jeremy Snelling, 64, said he had turned out because “I don’t like the right-wing claiming the streets in my name”.

He accused Reform party founder Farage of having “contributed” to the volatile environment.

“I think he is damaging and I think he’s dangerous,” Snelling added.

Meanwhile, suspected rioters continued to appear in court on Saturday.

Stephen Parkinson, the head of the prosecution service, said hundreds of alleged participants in the violence would soon face justice as a “new phase” of “more serious” cases worked through the system.

Those convicted could face jail terms of up to 10 years under the most serious offence of rioting, he warned.

“It’s not about exacting revenge, it’s about delivering justice,” Parkinson said, in comments reported by the Sunday Times.

(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)

Demonstrators toss a trash bin during an anti-immigration protest, in Rotherham, Britain, August 4, 2024.
| Photo Credit: REUTERS

King Charles III on Friday (August 9, 2024) made his first comments about riots that have shaken British cities to praise the work of police in countering the violence.

While the monarch and Queen Camilla conveyed their condolences to the families of three girls killed in a mass stabbing on July 29, Buckingham Palace had not commented on the near-daily riots which followed.

The King praised British police and emergency services “for all they are doing to restore peace in those areas that have been affected by violent disorder”, according to a Buckingham Palace spokesperson.

He hoped the “shared values of mutual respect and understanding will continue to strengthen and unite the nation”, the spokesperson added.

Many observers had been watching to see if the King, who is on his annual summer holiday in Scotland, would end his noticeable silence on the disturbances.

Hundreds of people have been arrested in the near-nightly unrest that hit cities across England and in Northern Ireland and which authorities have blamed on far-right agitators.

Officials say the rioters took advantage of the killings of the girls in the northwestern English coastal town of Southport to launch racist and Islamophobic protests. The suspect accused of the killings was born in Britain.

Traditionally, the monarch does not comment on anything that could cause political controversy.

But in calls with Prime Minister Keir Starmer and police chiefs, the King said he had been “greatly encouraged” by the reaction “that countered the aggression and criminality from a few with the compassion and resilience of the many”.

While extra police have been put on standby, there have been many counter-demonstrations in cities where far-right protests had been planned.

‘Perilous moment’

His call for unity followed a silence that had concerned some royal watchers.

“I am surprised that the king as head of state hasn’t come out more forcefully, given that it’s a perilous moment for the United Kingdom,” historian and royal commentator Ed Owens said before the statement’s release.

According to constitutional law expert Craig Prescott, however, “the monarchy does not comment on current political events”. The late Queen Elizabeth II remained similarly quiet during the last wave of riots which shook England in 2011.

“Once the riots have subsided, you might expect members of the royal family to visit places affected and perhaps to see them more in multicultural settings,” Mr. Prescott said in a post on the X social media platform.

“If the King speaks out about this, then what about the next big issue, and the one after that.”

Mr. Owens argued that King Charles, who has gradually resumed public duties after a cancer diagnosis earlier this year, may not have publicly reacted for two main reasons.

He may have been “advised by his government that it would be unwise at this stage” to intervene directly.

And the monarch might himself have deemed the issue too “combustible”. The question of “illegal migration” is politically divisive and sensitive in Britain, said King Owens.

But as heir to the throne, King Charles made known his opposition to the previous government’s plan to send asylum seekers to Rwanda.

And the King has been more vocal about topics such as climate change over the years. Since becoming the monarch he is seen as having presented himself as more accessible than his predecessors, including by opening up about his health.

But for Graham Smith, head of Republic, a pressure group which campaigns for an elected U.K. head of state to replace the monarch, the lack of a response to the riots showed that the monarchy is an institution “for someone who isn’t able to speak really”.

According to media reports, quoting palace sources, the king has asked for a daily update on the crisis.

But Mr. Smith said: “There’s no value in a billionaire sitting in his holiday home being updated about what’s happening. I mean, it’s easy to be updated — switch the TV on.”

An unruly crowd clash with police, Tuesday, July 30, 2024, in Southport, northwest England, near where three girls were stabbed to death in a dance class the day before. The violence erupted shortly after a peaceful vigil was attended by hundreds in the center of Southport to mourn the 13 victims of the stabbings, including seven still in critical condition.
| Photo Credit: AP

The British government has called on Elon Musk to act responsibly after the tech billionaire used his social media platform X to unleash a barrage of posts that officials say risk inflaming the violent unrest gripping the country.

Justice Minister Heidi Alexander made the comments Tuesday morning (August 6) after Mr. Musk posted a comment saying that “Civil war is inevitable” in the U.K. Mr. Musk later doubled down, highlighting complaints that the British criminal justice system treats Muslims more leniently than far-right activists and comparing Britain’s crackdown on social media users to the Soviet Union.

“Use of language such as a ‘civil war’ is in no way acceptable,’’ Ms. Alexander told Times Radio. “We are seeing police officers being seriously injured, buildings set alight, and so I really do think that everyone who has a platform should be exercising their power responsibly.’’

Britain has been shaken by violence for more than a week, as police clashed with crowds spouting anti-immigrant and Islamophobic slogans in cities and towns from Northern Ireland to the south coast of England. The unrest began after right-wing activists used social media to spread misinformation about a knife attack that killed three girls during a Taylor Swift-themed dance event on July 29.

Prime Minister Keir Starmer, who has described the riots as “far-right thuggery,” on Monday (August 5) said the government would deploy a “standing army” of specialist police officers to quell the unrest.

But the government is also calling on social media companies, such as Mr. Musk’s X, formerly known as Twitter, to do more to combat the spread of misleading and inflammatory information online.

Ms. Alexander said Tuesday that the government would look at strengthening the existing Online Safety Act, which was approved last year and won’t be fully implemented until 2025.

“We’ve been working with the social media companies, and some of the action that they’ve taken already with the automatic removal of some false information is to be welcomed,” Ms. Alexander told the BBC. “But there is undoubtedly more that the social media companies could and should be doing.”

That type of rhetoric may be part of what sparked Mr. Musk’s attack on the government. Mr. Musk has taken a more combative approach to his critics than was the norm in Silicon Valley technology firms, said Alex Krasodomski, who studies the intersection between technology and politics at Chatham House, a London-based think tank.

“He has sparred with U.K. and EU policymakers in the past when they have questioned his approaches to content moderation on the platform,” Mr. Krasodomski said.

X didn’t respond to an email seeking comment. It rarely responds to media requests.

Mr. Musk just kept wading into the debate about the violence in Britain.

After Starmer posted a comment on X saying that the government “will not tolerate attacks on mosques or on Muslim communities,” Mr. Musk responded with the question, “Shouldn’t you be concerned about attacks on all communities?”

Mr. Musk attached a similar comment to a video that said it showed a “Muslim patrol” attacking a pub in Birmingham, highlighting the original post for his 193 million followers.

Such comments are vintage Mr. Musk, who has a history of making provocative statements, said Stephanie Alice Baker, a sociologist at City University of London who has studied online discourse. Mr. frequently comments on geopolitical issues and his fans come to his defense when he is criticized, Ms. Baker said.

Earlier this year, he clashed with a Brazilian supreme court justice over free speech, far-right accounts and purported misinformation on X. He also accused Venezuela’s socialist President, Nicolás Maduro, of “major election fraud” after last week’s disputed election.

Those comments are closely watched by a group of people attracted by his success in business, Ms. Baker said.

“Mr. Musk’s following represents the cult of the entrepreneur …” she said. “By questioning convention, they are depicted as gifted visionaries, who can predict the future and bring it into being. For his fans and followers, Mr. Musk’s impulsive comments are perceived as part of his genius.”