Would-be rioters end up needing police protection from huge counter protest
'Nazi scum off our streets.'
Eight men found themselves surrounded by thousands of anti-fascist protesters chanting ‘Nazi scum off our streets’ in Brighton last night.
It had been touted as the biggest day of unrest yet after more than a week of far-right riots that have set the country ablaze.
A list of 100 locations – mostly immigration advice centres, along with some refugee charities and a pensioner’s house – was circulated online.
But instead of being a climax of violence, the country was littered with far-right no-shows as up to 25,000 anti-racist demonstrators took a stand.
The gaggle who did appear in Brighton found themselves so outnumbered, they needed a line of police to keep the crowd clogging the street at bay.
As the sun set, officers shepherded them away from the wall where they’d been slouching, arms crossed, and into a police van before ferrying them to safety.
It may be too early to see if the tide has been turned against the far-right violence.
But last night’s humiliating defeat of the far-right is a clear break from a week of terror that left black and brown people warning each other to stay home and stay safe.
Unrest kicked off after three young girls were stabbed to death in Southport last Sunday.
Misinformation spread online, claiming the killer was a man called Ali Al-Shakati, a Muslim asylum seeker on an MI6 watchlist who arrived on a small boat last year.
The accused is Axel Rudakubana, an 18-year-old born in Cardiff.
But that didn’t stop racist rioters from attacking mosques, storming an asylum seeker hotel and burning it, hurling bricks at police, or attacking random ‘Asian’ people on the street.
Even amid the chaos, there have been these flashes of comic relief right from the start as rioters faced instant karma.
‘Party animal’ painter and decorator Brian Spencer posed in front of riot police with his hands on his wiggling hips right before bricks hit him in the face and balls on the first day of riots in Southport.
Stacey Vint, 34, rolled right into police lines as she wheeled a burning bin towards them before it dragged her down onto her face in Middlesbrough. She was arrested on the spot.
A phone-wielding rioter had his shorts nearly ripped off after taunting officers with a dance on the street, a slap of his arse and chants of ‘I pay your wages’ in Hartlepool.
One man squirmed on the ground with his mouth agape as dogs bit his arse right after lunging towards police lines with a javelin-looking plank in Rotherham.
Speaking about the thousands of anti-fascists who turned out last night, Stand Up To Racism organiser Miça Evans, 30, told Metro in Brentford: ‘It just shows there are people out there and these people are a minority.
‘There’s a huge community of people wanting to stand up to racism.’
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