The British government has increased its prison capacity to help tackle violent, week-long anti-Muslim riots that have prompted a growing number of countries to warn their citizens about the dangers of travelling in Britain.

Riots across several towns and cities have erupted following the murder of three girls at a Taylor Swift-themed event in Southport, a seaside town in northern England, after false messaging on social media wrongly identified the suspected killer as an Islamist migrant.

Unrest has spread, with rioters targeting mosques and smashing windows of hotels housing asylum-seekers from Africa and the Middle East, chanting “Get them out”, in the first widespread outbreak of violence in Britain for 13 years.

They have also pelted mosques with rocks, unverified videos online have shown some ethnic minorities being beaten up and one man photographed at a protest in Sunderland on Friday had a swastika tattooed on his back.

“My message to anyone who chooses to take part in this violence and thuggery is simple: the police, courts and prisons stand ready and you will face the consequences of your appalling acts,” Justice Secretary Shabana Mahmood said.

Interior minister Yvette Cooper said “there will be a reckoning” for perpetrators, adding that social media put a “rocket booster” under the violence.

The justice department, which is due to release some prisoners early as it battles a jail overcrowding crisis, said nearly 600 prison places had been secured to accommodate those engaged in violence. About 400 people have been arrested so far.

The unrest has prompted India, Australia, Nigeria and other countries to warn their citizens to stay vigilant.

Saminata Bangura, a 52-year-old support worker in a care home in Liverpool, northern England, said she had felt so welcome in Britain after she moved from Sierra Leone. But she was now scared and largely staying at home.

“I’m so scared, even when I’m walking now, because everywhere, we’re scared, especially, we Blacks,” she said, describing how a library was vandalised near where she lives.

Racial hatred

Prime Minister Keir Starmer has vowed a reckoning to those who have engaged in rioting, hurling bricks at the police and counter-protesters, and looting shops and burning cars.

He said today that “99.9 per cent of people across the country want their streets to be safe and to feel safe in their communities, and we will take all necessary action to bring the disorder to an end.”

He was due to chair his second emergency meeting in as many days late on Tuesday as police forces across the country braced for further possible violence.

Police on Tuesday charged a 28-year-old man with stirring up racial hatred over Facebook posts linked to the disorder. A 14-year-old pleaded guilty to violent disorder.

On Monday night, trouble flared in Plymouth, southern England, and again in Belfast in Northern Ireland, where hundreds of rioters threw petrol bombs and heavy masonry at officers and set a police Land Rover on fire.

Messages online say immigration centres and law firms aiding migrants would be targeted on Wednesday, prompting anti-fascist groups to say they will counter any demonstration.

Police have blamed online disinformation, amplified by high-profile figures, for driving the violence.

Stephen Yaxley-Lennon, known by the pseudonym Tommy Robinson and previously the leader of the defunct anti-Islam English Defence League, has long attacked Britain’s policy of housing asylum seekers who arrive in the country.

Tech billionaire Elon Musk escalated a dispute with the UK government by likening Britain to “the Soviet Union”. A spokesperson for Starmer had said there was “no justification” for Musk’s earlier comment that a British “civil war is inevitable”.

At the end of December 2023, there were 111,132 individuals in receipt of asylum support in Britain, with 45,768 people in hotels. During that year, the government’s statistics office estimated that net migration to the country was 685,000.

Experts on extremism and social cohesion say far-right agitators have used the Southport killings to spark violence.

Sunder Katwala, director of the think-tank British Future, which focuses on migration and identity, said the killings had been used “to mobilise against, particularly asylum seekers and Muslims, and that has continued, after the evidence which is that the person is neither an asylum seeker nor a Muslim”.

The police have said the attack was not terrorism-related and that the suspect was born in Britain. Media reports have said the suspect’s parents moved to Britain from Rwanda.

In Birmingham, Britain’s second-biggest city, videos on Monday showed Asian men gathering with Palestinian flags after reports that anti-Muslim protesters may target the area.

Reporters on the scene said they were met with hostility and videos appeared to show one white man being attacked in a pub.

The prospect of clashes between white and ethnic minority groups revived memories of race riots that broke out in Oldham and other northern English towns in 2001 — which an official report later attributed to a lack of social cohesion, with two communities living parallel lives.

A poll by YouGov on Tuesday said three-quarters of respondents said the rioters did not represent the views of Britain as a whole, with seven per cent saying they supported the violence.

Riot suspects in court as UK govt readies 6,000 police

Suspected far-right rioters appeared in British courts today as the UK government said 6,000 specialist police were ready to deal with England’s worst disorder in over a decade.

Justice minister Heidi Alexander told BBC Radio 4 that the government had freed up an extra 500 prison places and drafted in 6,000 specialist police officers to deal with the violence.

Scores of alleged perpetrators were hauled before judges with some entering guilty pleas.

A 19-year-old man became the first person to receive a prison sentence related to the unrest when he received a two-month term, PA Media reported.

Another man was convicted after he admitted assaulting a police officer outside a hotel housing asylum seekers in Rotherham, northern England, on Sunday.

A 15-year-old boy pleaded guilty to committing violent disorder in Liverpool on Saturday after he was identified from a TikTok video, while a man in Leeds admitted posting threatening words on Facebook to stir up racial hatred.