U.K. far-right riots spread, triggering emergency security meeting

A police officer was also injured in the clashes at another Holiday Inn hotel in the town of Tamworth, north of Birmingham in the Midlands. Windows were smashed and three Molotov cocktails were used to start fires, Staffordshire Police said. Here too, projectiles were thrown at officers, resulting in one suffering a broken arm, according to the force. No one inside was injured, the police statement added.

In the town of Bolton, in the northwest of England, police were trying to keep rival demonstrators apart, with one group shouting “Allahu Akbar” at anti-immigration protesters, according to the footage shared by the BBC on Sunday. 

Anti-immigrant and anti-Muslim groups seized upon the child murders at a Taylor Swift-themed dance class in Southport last Monday as disinformation spread on social media that the suspected attacker was a refugee and radical Islamist. 

In a desperate effort to stop the spread of misinformation, British authorities revealed that the suspect, who is a minor, was born in Britain and had lived for years in a village near Southport itself.

Starmer held an emergency response meeting, or Cobra, attended by ministers, civil servants and police Monday, after he condemned what he called the “far-right thuggery” behind the riots and promised that the rioters would face “full force of the law” in a televised address Sunday night. He later said a “standing army” of specialist officers would be formed to tackle the unrest.

Home Secretary Yvette Cooper, who oversees borders and policing, called the attack on the hotel in Rotherham “utterly appalling.”