Far-right protests erupt in the UK, with more than 90 people arrested

UK police have announced more than 90 arrests in a series of far-right protests that have erupted across the country since last Monday (29).

According to a government spokesman, British Prime Minister Keir Starmer promised full support to law enforcement against “extremists” who try to “sow hatred” and said that freedom of expression and violent unrest are two different things.

Some media outlets have identified around 30 far-right demonstrations that were scheduled to take place this weekend in the country.

Tensions began after a 17-year-old entered a Southport recreation center last Monday (29), where a music workshop was taking place with the theme ‘Taylor Swift’, and killed three women and injured eight other children and two adults.

Due to the age of the perpetrator, the British justice system and the local press did not initially release the name of the suspect. This created a vacuum for conspiracy theories and misinformation to be used to fuel a wave of attacks and mass mobilization.

From there, a fake name of an alleged suspect began to circulate among far-right groups, indicating that he was a Muslim refugee. Within minutes, he had been mentioned 30,000 times by more than 18,000 accounts on the X platform, according to the Institute for Strategic Dialogue (ISD).
The invented name was Ali al-Shakati, supposedly a Muslim immigrant who arrived in the UK on a small boat in 2023. None of this was true, however, and the name has since had at least 27 million views and interactions on social media.

On Saturday, demonstrations in several cities ended with clashes between protesters and police, as well as with groups of counter-protesters mobilized by anti-racist associations. Authorities in the region said that several police officers were injured. Almost 100 people have been arrested so far, with at least 23 in Liverpool, 20 in Hull, 20 in Blackpool and 14 in Bristol.

A month after taking office, Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s Labour government is facing its first crisis. He is now trying to convince the country that he can stop the violence. The issue is a sensitive one for him, as during his campaign the Conservatives accused him of being soft on security and immigration issues.

Asked about the possibility of resorting to the Army, the Minister in charge of the Police, Diana Johnson, assured the British network BBC this Sunday that the forces “have all the necessary resources”.

Assistant Chief Constable Alex Goss called the protesters’ behaviour “deplorable” and said the impact of the disorder would be “devastating” but that police were “doing everything we can to arrest those involved and bring them to justice”.

At the demonstrations, organised under the slogan “Enough is enough”, participants shout anti-immigration and Islamophobic slogans while waving British flags.

Although condemnations of the violence are unanimous, as the days go by, opportunistic criticism of the government is beginning to emerge. Former Conservative Home Secretary Priti Patel said the government “risks appearing to be swept along by events rather than in control.”