Nazi salutes and attacks on asylum seeker hotels: rioting spreads from Southport

Dear readers — Far-right rioters have attacked mosques, hotels housing asylum seekers and police stations across the country this weekend in some of the worst disorder this country has seen this century. This afternoon, the prime minister Keir Starmer said a “standing army” of specialist police officers is being formed to counter the violence, promising that the “full force of the law will be visited on all those who are identified as having taken part in these activities.” 

The very worst incidents so far seem to have taken place in Rotherham, Sunderland, Tamworth, Middlesbrough and Southport, the location of the mass-stabbing last week that has been used as a pretext by the rioters. But over the weekend, there were ugly scenes in Bolton, Bredbury and in Piccadilly Gardens, leading to 19 arrests over the weekend by Greater Manchester Police. We’ve got details of those incidents below. 

In Rotherham yesterday, rioters attempted to set fire to a hotel housing asylum seekers. Our colleagues at The Tribune, our sister title in Sheffield, witnessed the attack first hand and have published a must-read account of what happened. As Dan Hayes writes:

If you have any further information to share with us about what happened over the weekend or upcoming events this week, please get in contact with Mollie. And if you’d like to support our reporting on this story and you’re not already a Mill member, please hit the button below. 

🌦️This week’s weather

After a lovely week of sunshine, our local weatherman Martin Miles says we’re back to changeable weather, with average temperatures for the time of year.

Tuesday 🌦️ Early rain then mostly cloudy with occasional bright spells. 21°C.

Wednesday 🌦️ Windy with sunny spells and some scattered blustery showers. 10°C.

Thursday 🌧️ Cloudy and breezy with intermittent rain. Feeling muggy. 20°C.

Friday 🌤️ Windy and partly cloudy with mostly dry conditions. 21°C.

Weekend 🌦️ Remaining changeable and often breezy with seasonal temperatures.

You can find the latest forecast at Manchester Weather on Facebook — daily forecasts are published at 6.15am.

The big story: Far-right violence spreads to Greater Manchester

Top line: Violent disorder continued to spread over the weekend. Having begun in Southport — where false rumours about the identity of the man behind a frenzied stabbing that left three children dead led to attacks on a mosque — violence spread across the country, including Greater Manchester. Keir Starmer has described the violent riots as the acts of “thugs” on the “far right”, and has vowed that “those who have participated in this violence will face the full force of the law.”

Rewind: Far-right protesters attacked a mosque in Southport with bricks and beer bottles last Tuesday. At least 39 police officers sustained injuries and 27 were hospitalised, according to the North West Ambulance Service. A chilling piece by The Sunday Times’ northern editor David Collins describes the horror faced by the imam and three other worshippers after rioters threw bricks at the Southport Islamic Society mosque and threatened to burn it down. 

• “I have a little boy and was thinking about him. I thought for a second, ‘I’m going to die,’” Iqbal Ahmed told The Sunday Times. “In my life there’s twice when I thought I was going to die. The first time was in a car accident, and the second time was inside that mosque. I was crying.”

• Our colleague Jack Walton wrote a powerful first-person account of what he saw at the riot for The Post.

The spread: By Wednesday night, riots had spread to London, Hartlepool and Aldershot, with further protests planned for the weekend. In Newton Heath, dozens of protesters gathered outside the Holiday Inn on Oldham Road, which is known to house asylum seekers. Some of the most disturbing scenes came from Rotherham, where hundreds of protesters attempted to set fire to a hotel housing asylum seekers yesterday evening, and Middlesborough, where rioters appeared to be stopping drivers in the road to ask if they are “white and English” before deciding whether to allow them to pass.

Manchester riots: On Saturday, protesters were pictured raising Nazi salutes in the city centre, while others looted the Sainsburys on Mosley Street, forcing the supermarket to shut down. Public transport was brought to a standstill as hundreds clashed with the police and counter-protesters. A viral video, captured by the independent Tke Media and posted on X, shows a black man being surrounded, attacked and kicked in the head by a gang of white men and women in Piccadilly Gardens. At the same time, a protester chanted “Save our kids”. 

• A protester can be heard chanting “Save our kids” amidst the chaos, and the man manages to fight back, before two police officers intervene.

• Greater Manchester Police says it made two arrests in connection with the chaos in the city centre but hasn’t commented specifically on the video. 

Unrest in Bolton: The Manchester Evening News reported that 300 people gathered outside Bolton Town Hall yesterday, where bricks and missiles were launched at riot officers. GMP says it made a total of 19 arrests across the region over the weekend in relation to offences for being drunk and disorderly, possession of a weapon, assault, criminal damage, and violent disorder. Seven people have been charged with possession of a weapon, and one person has been charged with assault. 

• GMP’s chief constable has declined to blame any group in particular for the unrest, saying in a statement today that while some demonstrated their right to protest peacefully, “it was clear that across all events, there were people of all political and cultural backgrounds who attended with the intent of causing trouble and breaking the law”. 

Hotels: Last night, the campaign group Manchester Anti-Fascists called for counter-protesters to show up outside Bredbury Hall Hotel, a hotel in Stockport thought to house asylum seekers, where far-right protesters had gathered in small numbers.

Background: As Mill readers know from our reporting in January 2022, the tactic of turning up at hotels housing asylum seekers has become a popular format for far-right influencers. At that point, we counted 76 instances of the far-right “monstering” hotels in the previous 12 months, including an incident in Didsbury. 

‘Might be ISIS’: Nigel Farage led a campaign to publicise these hotels in a series of videos posted on YouTube and Facebook in the summer of 2020. In one video, after turning up at a hotel in Cheshire, he told his followers, "We've no idea who some of these people are. We've no idea whether some of these might be ISIS." 

• In another video in which he tried to visit several hotels in the North West, Farage pointed out "the lovely swimming pools" and thanked followers who had "given me the addresses of these hotels". Some people posted the addresses of hotels under the videos.

• Farage’s videos received more than 2 million views in total and attracted comments like “Bullets are cheaper”.

Who is behind the riots? Georgie Laming, campaign director of the anti-fascist group Hope Not Hate, told the FT that there is “no single organiser” for the riots. The supposedly defunct English Defence League and neo-Nazi group Patriotic Alternative have been named as key organisers of the riots, but media analysis has also looked to the phenomenon of the “post-organisational far right” — a looser coalition of interests, with no clear hierarchy. As our sister newspaper The Post wrote in a recent long read:

More to come? There are signs of far-right groups attempting to gather local support — stickers advertising the white nationalist group White Lives Matter were spotted in Failsworth over the weekend. And this morning, Southport Wake Up, a far-right group that was created in the wake of the attack, posted details on its Telegram channel of protests expected to take place at immigration support services across the country this Wednesday at 8pm, including centres in Greater Manchester. 

The crackdown: Downing Street has confirmed that Keir Starmer, senior ministers, civil servants, police officials and intelligence officers will sit in an emergency meeting today to discuss the government’s response in the coming days. So far, over 400 arrests have been made and the government is considering allowing the courts to sit for 24 hours in order to fast-track sentencing. 

Clogged courts: But Nazir Afzal, chancellor of the University of Manchester and former chief crown prosecutor for the North West, has warned that some judges may need to come out of retirement to deal with the backlog. The government has also stepped up security in mosques and Muslim faith schools at risk of violent disorder.

Correction 06/08/24: A previous version of this story linked to a video of protesters outside an asylum seeker hotel in Bredbury. We have since found this video shows a hotel in Bristol. We apologise for the error.

Your Mill briefing

🛫 Airport arrests: four individuals were arrested at Manchester Airport this morning, on suspicion of conspiring to cause a public nuisance. The protestors, who were acting on behalf of Just Stop Oil, were found with items described by police as being able “to cause damage and significant disruption to the Airport and their operations”. They have been taken into custody for questioning.

🏃‍♀️ Keely Hodgkinson cruised into the final of the women’s 800m at the Paris Olympics yesterday. The middle distance runner, from Wigan, completed the course in 1.56.86, and told the BBC the “mission is on” to upgrade her silver medal from Tokyo to a gold. She’ll be running in the final tonight, scheduled for 20:47.

🚧 Work to redesign Deansgate is beginning at long last today. The road, which since the pandemic has had temporary bike lanes, will be have segregated bike lanes added, and improvements to pedestrian crossings. It’s expected to end in Spring 2025, and is meant to make walking and cycling easier.

🛣️ A6 pushback: Active travel campaigners have been less impressed with the plans for the A6 in Stockport. Around £15 million has been allocated to improve the road, but the designs do not include segregated cycle lanes. Pushed on this on BBC Radio Manchester, Andy Burnham said that the A6 is “very constrained”, but that he would speak to the leader of Stockport Council to see if they could take on some of the active travel proposals. “It ultimately is Stockport’s decision, we have a funding role and a supporting role”, he said. However, active travel campaigner Harry Gary told The Mill the council was unwilling to move the kerb on the road back, and were also overestimating the width needed for a cycle lane.

🎮 Esports investment: The University of Salford has spent £200,000 on an “esports lab”, complete with a tournament space and an F1 licensed racing simulator. While it might seem strange for a University to spend so much on a space for gaming, course leader Ian Earle told the BBC that esports is a “rapidly growing” sector, and that “Turning your esports hobby into a career is now within reach”.

Home of the week

This end-of-terrace two-bedroom cottage is tucked away on a quiet country lane in Oldham and has lovely views from the rear garden. £170,000.

Our favourite reads

The masjid uncles of the front row — STAT Magazine

We loved this photo essay celebrating the stories of old men in local mosques, from the North West-based arts and culture magazine STAT. “These men are known as uncles – one of the elders of the congregation. While rarely related by blood, referred to as uncle out of respect. After a playful back and forth about why we had chosen them of all people to be photographed, the uncles would pose with a kind of honourable demeanour, much like the photos you see in archives from the 60s.”

Britain is a home but not a haven for Hong Kongers — The Economist

Two years after leaving Hong Kong, Priscilla So and Brian Hung still feel a duty to draw attention to the reasons why they left. They named their Manchester bar “Harcourt”, after the road where some of the pro-democracy protests took place, and they’re vocal about the plight of some of their friends, currently jailed in Hong Kong. Others are more discreet, fearing repression even on British soil. “Finn Lau, says he has been followed and attacked since arriving in the country, in what he claims was a politically motivated assault.”

He was the flashy fashion mogul of Manchester - now Mahmud Kamani faces a battle for Boohoo — The Telegraph

Is Boohoo, one of the biggest players in the fast-fashion industry, in trouble? A raft of senior staff have departed in recent months, turnover has plunged 17% and company insiders talk of “low morale” after 30 executives went on “an ill-timed five-day sojourn in Bodrum on Turkey’s southern coast last month”. Plus, they’re facing increasing competition from the ultra-cheap fast fashion company Shein. Senior figures blame “a post-Covid hangover”, but do its problems go beyond the pandemic? “They are burying their heads in the sand because as soon as they acknowledge Shein as a threat then you acknowledge there is a structural problem with the business.”

Our to do list

Tuesday

📖 One of our most popular reads of all time was this piece by Jack Chadwick looking at the author Jack Hilton. Hilton was from Oldham, and his iconoclastic work inspired Orwell and Auden — but his memory was almost forgotten. Chadwick will be talking with Ian Kershaw about Hilton’s legacy at Chadderton Library and Wellbeing Centre — tickets here.

🪡 Fantastic exhibition at the Whitworth of work by post-war designer Shirley Craven — whose vivid, abstract textiles are brought together for this exhibition.

Wednesday

🎻 The National Youth Orchestra are playing Wagner and Mahler at the Bridgewater Hall — go along to see some of the most impressive teen talent in classical music. Better still, tickets are free for teenagers — perfect for inspiring music practice over the summer holidays. Details here. 

🎭 Enjoy the best of theatre and cinema, with the National Theatre Live screening of Noël Coward’s play Present Laughter at Stockport Plaza. Viewers are promised “a chaotic whirlwind of love, sex, panic and soul-searching.” Details here.

Thursday 

🛹 The finale of Build Manchester at Aviva Studios, featuring skate demos, open competitions, film premieres, and an exhibition about Manchester’s skate culture. Free to attend, no booking required. More here.

🥇 Feeling inspired by the Olympic action? Then head to Viaduct Park in Stockport this Thursday, or any other Thursday in August. The park, which happens to be in the shape of a running track, will host free sports activities and sports-themed crafting sessions. Details here.