In the small courtroom of Basingstoke Magistrates’ Court, a 13-year-old girl holds her mother’s hand as she pleads guilty: she is one of hundreds of rioters facing trial for the racist and Islamophobic violence that has rocked the UK.
The schoolgirl, dressed in a cream-coloured sweater and cycling shorts, was told by the prosecutor that she faces prison for punching and kicking the door of a hotel for asylum seekers on 31 July in the nearby town of Aldershot in southern England.
The knife attack that killed three girls on July 29 sparked the worst riots in the UK since 2011, with mosques and asylum seeker shelters targeted for a week in dozens of towns and cities across England and Northern Ireland.
In order to curb the violence, the government has promised a firm and swift judicial response and law enforcement has made more than 1,000 arrests and filed more than 500 charges.
Involving children, teenagers and the elderly, the court appearances and convictions that have now followed reveal the very varied profiles of the rioters, whom Prime Minister Keir Starmer has described as a “gang of thugs”.
They point to deeper problems affecting the UK’s disadvantaged populations, beyond the responsibility of far-right groups targeted by the police, such as the English Defence League, an Islamophobic movement created by hooligans.
Deep anger
An 11-year-old boy has been charged with possession of petrol bombs in Belfast, while two 12-year-olds have pleaded guilty to assault for throwing projectiles at police in the north of England.
Around 50 minors have been charged. But all ages are concerned: a 69-year-old man has been accused of vandalism in Liverpool.
The family of Kieron Gatenby, 19, broke down in tears in court as he was sentenced to 16 months in a young offenders’ institution after he was filmed throwing an egg during riots in Hartlepool, north-east.
His lawyer said the young man had never expressed racist ideas but had “been swept up in a wave of madness”.
In Southport, the town where the deadly knife attack took place, AFP heard from young people expressing “impatience” at the prospect of further violence, an AFP journalist noted.
The suspect in the triple murder was initially misidentified on social media as a Muslim asylum seeker. He is in fact Axel Rudakubana, who has turned 18 since the attack, born in Cardiff to a family originally from Rwanda, a largely Christian country.
The terrorist lead was not retained.
Met by AFP on site, Patrick, 22, said he found it “stupid” that the rioters had attacked a mosque in the city. But he felt that the violence against the police was an expression of deep anger towards the authorities.
Vacuum cleaner and snacks
Seven of the ten most deprived areas in England, which often also have higher than average numbers of asylum seekers, have been rocked by riots, according to a survey by the Financial Times.
Some are calling on the Labour government, formed in July, to address the root causes of the violence.
The authorities insist that no political claim can justify the recent racist and Islamophobic scenes, accompanied by looting of shops and destruction of public services.
Nearly 70 sentences were handed down, almost all of them in prison: 26 months for a man who threw a vacuum cleaner through a window, three years for another who grabbed a police officer’s baton, etc.
Some have been ridiculed on social media, such as John Honey, who was pictured raiding snacks at a cheap fast food restaurant in Hull, north-east.
His sentencing was delayed when the judge learned that a prison guard had asked him for his autograph because of his newfound online fame.