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Viral video footage has exposed violent race rioters blocking traffic in North Yorkshire to check if drivers were white or English before letting them through.
As unrest grips the nation, footage that’s been widely shared across social media shows several white men in Middlesbrough screening vehicle drivers’ ethnicity.
In one clip, men stop a a grey car at an intersection and look through the window, before another man wearing a red t-shirt beckons the driver forward.
“Are you white? Are you English?,” the same man can be heard saying, while pointing at drivers.
The area was described at the time as a “no go zone” for Black and Asian people, owing to these checks, with one online user posting: “God knows what’ll happen if they find black or brown people driving”.
The person recording the footage appears to say: “Are you white? Actually mental,” while the person in the red top continues to traffic and asks drivers if they are white.
Cleveland Police has been approached for comment.
The Independent is rounding up and verifying details of horrifying racist incidents carried out by far-right thugs across these riots which, so far, include a Black man beaten by a mob, an Asian man stabbed at a train station, mosques under siege and Muslim graves vandalised.
Last week, footage shared online appeared to show violent far-right rioters dragging an Asian man, believed to be a taxi driver, out of his car in Hull, while racially abusing him by repeatedly yelling “P**i”, and damaging the vehicle.
There have been at least 378 arrests since the race riots broke out last week, with the National Police Chiefs’ Council (NPCC) warning the total is expected to rise each day.
On Monday, prime minister Sir Keir Starmer said a “standing army” of specialist police officers was being assembled to crack down on rioting, as he called for perpetrators to be named and shamed.
Sir Keir vowed to “ramp up criminal justice” after an emergency Cobra meeting was called following disorder over the weekend which saw rioters storm hotels housing asylum seekers.
The prime minister said he was focused on ensuring police can carry out their duties, as MPs from across the political spectrum demanded Parliament return from its summer recess.
Over 80 anti-racist and migrants’ rights organisations have also written to Sir Keir urging the prime minister to recall parliament.
Organisation Tell Mama, which monitors anti-Muslim attacks, said it had called the police over “far-right threats on Telegram that seek to target immigration solicitors and refugee services” in more than 30 locations across the country on Wednesday.
