Britain's Night of Defiance

Mass rallies of opponents of fascism packed Britain's streets on Wednesday, bringing an abrupt halt to more than a week of violence associated with the far-right. Hours after the initial "thugs" were imprisoned for extended periods of time—a decision that might have also contributed to the more subdued scenes—came the counter-protests.

Following the widespread distribution among left-wing activists of an internet list of immigration centers and human rights law companies that they believed would be attacked by the far-right, demonstrators assembled in the major cities of London, Birmingham, Sheffield, Bristol, Liverpool, Brighton, and Oxford.

Shouting "we fight back," thousands of people occupied the street outside an immigration bureau in Walthamstow, east London. Newspapers from all political stripes, including a few that supported the center-right, came together to applaud the "anti-hate marchers."

More than £210,000 has been raised for the Liverpool library that was set on fire over the weekend, and on Tuesday, a small group of people showed up in Belfast to support a shopkeeper who felt that he had been singled out because of his race.

“The show of force from the police and, frankly, the show of unity from communities, together defeated the challenges that we’ve seen,” Mark Rowley, commissioner of London’s Metropolitan Police, said Thursday. Other than a few arrests, “it was a very successful night and the fears of extreme-right disorder were abated,” he added.

The shift in sentiment is a significant shift in the turbulence that has dotted Britain's streets and aroused anxiety about the country's situation ever since three girls were stabbed to death in a group in Southport, Merseyside, on July 29.

Following messages that erroneously claimed the British-born suspect in the attack was an asylum seeker who had traveled across the English Channel on a tiny boat, protestors mobilized using apps, including the encrypted messaging service Telegram.

Police chiefs were hesitant to declare they were out of the woods just yet because neighborhood tensions were still present and temperatures of 29 degrees, which is scorching for England, were anticipated for this weekend.

Tiffany Lynch of the Police Federation, which represents rank and file officers, warned she could “absolutely not” say the violence was over. “I think it will all come down to the intelligence, it will come down to the engagement we have with communities,” she told BBC Radio 4’s Today program on Thursday.

Prime Minister Keir Starmer, who was due to chair a third meeting of the government’s emergency committee COBR later Thursday, would also not say the violence was over.

The former director of public prosecutions, who has endured the biggest test of his premiership since winning July’s general election, tried to credit his tough-talking response with the turn of events — telling broadcasters “we had police deployed in numbers in the right places” and a “criminal justice system working speedily.”

Starmer has faced calls to do more to address and defuse the underlying tensions highlighted by the disorder, particularly over high rates of immigration to the U.K.

Others sought to use Wednesday’s response to the far-right uprising as evidence that the U.K. remains a tolerant country.

The left-wing activist Billy Bragg compared the counter protests to the 1936 Battle of Cable Street, when hordes of anti-fascist protesters blocked a march by the British Union of Fascists through the East End of London, then the capital’s main Jewish district.

However, Walthamstow’s Labour MP Stella Creasy told POLITICO: “When [protesters] say they’re recreating Cable Street, you think — the point is we never wanted to get to Cable Street in the first place.”

She said what happened on her patch was more complex than simple defiance, with thousands of other residents “terrified at home, or in the mosques, in the churches, worrying about their businesses.” Creasy added that she also had constituents with far-right views, saying: “We need to have a national conversation about what is feeding that toxicity, because that isn’t social media in itself. Social media is just another realm in which it is happening.”

Meanwhile, some protesters in Finchley, a Jewish area of north London, were accused of conflating the race riots with the ongoing debate over Israel’s actions in Gaza, with a leaflet shared online saying “get fascists, racists, Nazis, Zionists and Islamophobes out of Finchley!” The area’s Labour MP Sarah Sackman said on X that she had reported “clearly antisemitic” material to police.

On Thursday Labour moved to suspend a councillor who was filmed telling counter-protestors to “cut all the throats” of the “fascists.”

Policing Minister Diana Johnson credited the calmer scenes to the tough justice meted out to rioters, including to 58-year-old Derek Drummond, who was given a three-year sentence for punching a police officer in Southport. Government officials insist there is enough capacity to deal with the “thugs.”

Yet police are exhausted after using up leave time, courts are plagued by backlogs and prisoners are having to be released early as jails are almost full. Johnson told Times Radio that funding for the justice system “will be a very live conversation that’s to be had” in the government’s spending review this fall.

London’s Mayor Sadiq Khan thanked those “who came out peacefully to show London stands united against racism and Islamophobia, while Green MP Sian Berry said the response was “a tremendous, mass show of solidarity with the Muslim community, with people seeking asylum in the U.K, and every community that’s been targeted, attacked or threatened by fascist violence.”

Nigel Farage, leader of right-wing populist party Reform U.K — who critics accused of handing fuel to the rioters last week by asking questions about the background of the Southport suspect — continued to accuse police of treating rival groups unfairly.

“We’ve seen violence on both sides, but let’s be frank, more thuggery from young white youths than Muslim gangs. However, policed very differently,” he told TalkTV.

Farage claimed that Starmer "will do nothing" to address underlying problems as a result of his oppositional display on Wednesday night. Nothing is going to alter. The police will not alter. His story will not alter. Elon Musk, the owner of X, and X may have to deal with some legislation, that's the only thing that might change marginally, he added.

Creasy said she fights nonstop to make sure social media content is truthful, even from encouraging protestors.