Police are braced for further violence from far-right agitators in Southport in the days ahead as the seaside town struggles to come to terms with a knife attack that killed three children and left several others in a critical condition.
A mob of up to 300 attacked officers with bricks, destroyed garden walls, set cars and bins alight and attacked a mosque and shop on Tuesday night while many residents of the Merseyside town were attempting to digest the horror that had unfolded at a Taylor Swift-themed dance class for children on Monday.
The mother of Elsie Dot Stancombe, one of the children who was killed, intervened in a bid to cool tensions. “This is the only thing that I will write, but please, please stop the violence in Southport tonight,” Stancombe said. “The police have been nothing but heroic these last 24 hours and they and we don’t need this.”
But the chief constable of Merseyside, Serena Kennedy, warned they had intelligence that suggested a risk of further violence in the days ahead. Speaking on a walkabout with reporters in Southport, she said: “We absolutely have sufficient resources here to deal with the intelligence that we’re receiving about potential further protests this evening and potentially into the weekend. We are planning now for the next 24 hours, but also into the weekend and into next week.”
On Wednesday evening there were scenes of disorder in central London as crowds of protesters marched on Downing Street. Demonstrators threw flares and cans while chanting “Rule Britannia”, “save our kids” and “stop the boats”, while police were seen wrestling a man off the road and onto the pavement. Others attempted to kick down a fence and were confronted by riot police. More than 100 people were arrested, the Metropolitan police said.
Police also arrested at least four people following a protest in Hartlepool, after videos on social media showed a crowd of people throwing objects at a line of officers in riot gear. Later in the evening a police vehicle was set alight in the town centre.
More than 50 police officers were were hurt in the violence on Tuesday night, with injuries including fractures, cuts and concussion. By Wednesday evening, five men aged from 31 to 39 had been arrested on suspicion of offences including violent disorder, affray and possession of a bladed article. Kennedy warned more arrests would be made.
Nigel Farage, the Reform UK leader and MP, came under criticism for doubling down on remarks he made in a social media video that questioned “whether the truth is being withheld from us” at a time when tensions were running high. The husband of the murdered MP Jo Cox, Brendan Cox, said Farage had “whipped up” rioters.
Baseless rumours had been spread on social media misidentifying the suspect and falsely claiming he was an asylum seeker. He was born in Cardiff to Rwandan parents.
The violence in Southport follows unrest in Rochdale and Manchester after footage circulated on social media that showed a police officer kicking the head of a man at Manchester airport, as well as a riot in the Harehills area of Leeds triggered by a dispute over four children from a Roma family being taken into care.
Special powers – known as section 60 and section 34 orders – are in place giving officers authority to stop and search individuals and direct people who are engaging in antisocial behaviour.
As police dealt with the fallout from the Southport riot, detectives were granted more time to question the 17-year-old boy held in connection with the atrocity in which three girls, aged six, seven and nine, were killed, and eight other children and two adults were severely injured.
The boy, from the nearby village of Banks, was arrested on suspicion of murder and attempted murder on Monday.
Alice Dasilva Aguiar, nine, Bebe King, six, and Elsie Dot Stancombe, seven, were fatally stabbed, while five children and two adults remain in critical condition. Some of the victims were being treated at Alder Hey children’s hospital.
On Wednesday, the metro mayor of Liverpool, Steve Rotheram, speaking in Southport, said: “They were people from outside the area, with one intent, and that was to stir division, and the people round here won’t allow that to happen.”
After the violence, people rallied together to support Muslim residents in the town and clear up the mess left by rioters. Dozens of people were outside Southport mosque with brushes and shovels on Wednesday morning and cleared bricks from a wall knocked down during the rioting.
The mosque chair, Ibrahim Hussein, said he had been “barricaded” inside the building with eight worshippers while hundreds of rioters descended on the mosque. He said: “It really was terrifying and it was uncalled for. There was no reason for it whatsoever. We just have to keep on going, there’s nothing else we can do.”
Merseyside police said “a large group of people – believed to be supporters of the English Defence League [EDL] – began to throw items such as bricks towards the mosque … at about 7.45pm”.
The EDL is a far-right, Islamophobic group founded in 2009 by Tommy Robinson, whose real name is Stephen Yaxley-Lennon.
Humza Yousaf, Scotland’s former first minister, called for the EDL to be banned under terror laws. Robinson insists the group no longer exists.
The deputy prime minister, Angela Rayner, later said Yvette Cooper, the home secretary, would “be looking at” whether the EDL should be proscribed under terrorism laws.
Kennedy said the rioters had attended “for the purpose of mindless violence, thuggery and hooliganism, and they do not represent Southport, they do not represent Merseyside”.
She denied the force was caught unprepared. “There was absolutely not a failure of intelligence. What you’ve got to remember is the people who came to Southport last night for the purposes of violence are organised, and they don’t use mainstream social media to organise themselves, so there was no intelligence there that we were going to see the events taking place.”
The arrested teenager, who has not been named because of his age, remains in custody. After the first 48 hours, police can apply for permission from magistrates to hold a suspect for up to a total of 96 hours without charge.
