Riot police battling baying masked mobs against a backdrop of burning vehicles and smashed windows. Violence unleashed amid a wave of rumour and misinformation. And all the while, Sir Keir Starmer aiming to deliver swift justice designed to quell the disorder.
They are the scenes and circumstances both of recent days and also of almost exactly 13 years ago when first London and then other English cities were convulsed by what became the worst rioting in two centuries – resulting in four deaths, nearly 4,000 arrests and damage to property in excess of £500m.
As director of public prosecutions in 2011, Sir Keir played a pivotal role in the state’s response to the riots as courts were kept open for 24 hours a day, processing nearly 2,000 defendants. Now, as Prime Minister, he has found himself once more confronting widespread violence across Britain.
The full duration and intensity of the far-right rioting that has scarred towns and cities from Weymouth to Belfast in the wake of the knife attack in Southport on 29 July could still remain to be seen.
But as the authorities remain on the alert for any further flare-ups of violence, there are both similarities and differences to be explored between the febrile, riot-hit Augusts of 2011 and 2024.
How many people have been involved and how widespread has the disorder been?
Lasting four days and initially focused on London, the 2011 riots involved far more people – both trouble-makers and police officers – than has thus far been the case in recent days.
The 2011 riots, which began in the wake of the fatal shooting by police of Mark Duggan in Tottenham, north London, eventually resulted in the arrest of 3,960 individuals, of whom some 1,984 had faced prosecution by that October. A total of 684 suspects were found guilty, with 331 being sent to prison.
According to one estimate, 20,000 people were involved in the disorder and looting which affected 22 of the 32 London boroughs, and by the fourth night had spread to Birmingham, Manchester, Liverpool, Nottingham and Gloucester. Police catalogued some 5,175 offences during the violence, widely held to have been the worst since the anti-Catholic Gordon Riots in 1780.
By contrast, significantly fewer people have been arrested in connection with the 2024 violence. As of late on Friday, some 595 individuals had been detained, with more than 150 charges having so far been laid. While both figures are likely to increase, it seems unlikely they will approach the levels seen 13 years ago unless there is large-scale further violence.
However, experts point out that when it comes to the sheer geographical spread of disorder, 2024 has been worse. While 2011 was largely restricted to six locations, violent gatherings have spread from Southport in recent days to at least 17 other places, ranging from Plymouth to Middlesbrough and Hull to Belfast.
What triggered the rioting?
On 4 August, 2011, armed police following a minicab with the stated intention of thwarting a suspect gun attack, opened fire and killed 29-year-old Mark Duggan. An illegally converted handgun was found in the vicinity.
The circumstances of the shooting were immediately controversial, with accusations of racism directed at the Metropolitan Police. Two days later about 100 people, including family members who insisted Duggan had been unarmed, gathered outside a police station in Tottenham asking to speak to a senior officer.
After the family departed, trouble began and police vehicles were set on fire. The rioting had begun, at first spreading through Tottenham and to Brixton in south London, before reaching other parts of the capital.
The disorder of recent days has its roots in the aftermath of the deaths by stabbing of three girls, aged six to nine, at a Taylor Swift-themed dance class in Southport, Merseyside.
The attack, in which ten others, including eight children, were also injured, led to the arrival of hundreds of protesters in the town after misinformation about the suspect – wrongly stating from different sources that he was variously an asylum seeker and of Muslim faith – began circulating on social media.
Unrest then spread to other locations as far-right online agitators twisted the Southport stabbings into a racist narrative focused on immigration.
A leading criminologist who has studied the 2011 disorder pointed out that it is an intrinsic feature of riots that they begin by catching authorities and the wider public unaware.
Professor Tim Newburn, of the London School of Economics, told i: “Riots are unpredictable. When things started to happen in Southport, there wasn’t any sense that it had been anticipated, and the same was true in Tottenham.
“The challenge for the authorities is how best to respond in the face of civil disorder. It is a question that to some extent still remains a puzzle and is shared by the events of 2011 and 2024.”
How has the violence been quelled?
A year after the 2011 riots, Sir Keir, as head of the Crown Prosecution Service, looked back on the unrest and concluded that it had been the swiftness of the justice dispensed to rioters which played a role in stopping the disturbances almost as quickly as they had begun.
Some 13 years on, it appears that the now Prime Minister has applied the same lessons when it comes to holding to account those responsible for rioting in the wake of the Southport attack.
At a time when the justice system is beset by delays – the backlog of cases in Crown Courts currently stands at a near record high – some of those arrested in locations from Merseyside to Hartlepool have found themselves brought before a judge or magistrates and put behind bars in days.
On Wednesday, Derek Drummond, 52, from Southport, was jailed for three years after he admitted charges including punching a police officer in rioting on 30 July. It is one of the longest sentences so far handed down for the disorder.
In 2011, one of the longest sentences was the four-year term given to two men for inciting violence on Facebook – part of a vogue for harsher punishment which later showed longer sentences than average were handed down for offences linked to the riots as courts sat 24 hours a day to process defendants.
But, speaking in 2012, Sir Keir said it was the less the severity of the punishment than its rapidity which had been important. He said: “I don’t think people gamble on the length of sentence, particularly. They gamble on: ‘Am I going to get caught? Am I going to get sentenced and sent to prison?’ And if the answer is: ‘I’m now watching on the television some other people who had been caught 24 hours or 48 hours after they were on the streets with us’ – I think that’s a very powerful message.”
It is a view with which the experts tends to agree. Professor Newburn said: “Keir Starmer knows perfectly well what the evidence says, and the evidence on deterrence is that it is swiftness that is important.
“This idea that severe prison sentences are going make the difference is less supported by the evidence than the idea of quick and certain justice catching people and then punishing them swiftly.”
However, he and others point to another key factor in what has become the British state’s playbook for dealing with large-scale disorder – bolstering police officer numbers.
In 2011, the number of riot police in London deployed rose from about 4,000 in the first two days of unrest to some 16,000 by the fourth day, allowing chiefs to ensure rioters were controlled and often outnumbered. A similar, albeit less expansive, strategy has been applied for 2024 with a core of around 4,000 officers boosted by what Sir Keir referred to as a “standing army” of 2,200 additional public order officers.
Professor Newburn added: “There is no doubt that the absolutely huge policing response in 2011 played a significant part in reducing the rioting to almost nothing very quickly. Starmer’s actions now are supported by what happened then.”
That is not to say, however, that for all the similarity in tactics between 2011 and 2024, the result is public approval. In August 2011, two thirds of Britons (65 per cent ) felt the police handled the unrest well – with nearly half (45 per cent) feeling the same of then prime minister Lord Cameron. This week, just 52 per cent thought police had handled the latest rioting well, and 31 per cent approved of Sir Keir’s performance.
What role has been played by social media and the scourges of misinformation and disinformation?
It is a measure of the pace of technological change that the digital platform which defined the 2011 riots no longer exists. Blackberry Messenger (BBM), a secure and free messaging service for the owners of Blackberry phones which had become the mobile brand of choice for many younger people 13 years ago, served as a logistical hub for the unrest.
The then novel system allowed thousands of people to receive messages telling them where to gather, the locations of police units and routes to follow. While other platforms, including Twitter (now X) and Facebook, were used, the ability of BBM – which ceased to function in 2019 – to transfer information en masse and with anonymity also gave it a primary role in the spreading of false rumour about acts of police violence and far-right activity.
But while BBM may be no more, the role of the internet and social media platforms and its more adept agitators in fomenting and co-ordinating disorder has grown exponentially.
Within hours of the Southport attack, a seemingly US-based news website published a story providing a supposed name for the suspect along with the claim that he was an asylum seeker who was known to MI6. The site in question has insisted that it is a legitimate business and simply made a mistake.
But the fact that the information was completely wrong did not stop it rapidly circulating with existing misinformation on X and other social media platforms, fuelling a false narrative about the tragedy which ultimately brought violence to the streets of Southport and beyond.
Key in pushing these falsehoods has been a toxic mixture of far-right influencers and agitators, using encrypted platforms such as Telegram, and individuals living close to subsequent gatherings using their own networks to draw attendees.
Dubai-based Telegram has proved particularly prominent in spreading the far-right message. One forum, which on Monday published a list of 39 law firms and asylum help centres alongside a how-to guide for arson, grew from a few hundred followers to more than 13,000 in 72 hours.
The result is what police have described as a new and unwelcome dimension to riot control. One senior officer told i: “The speed and reach with which this sort of material can now spread is of a different order of magnitude to what has come before. It is the difference between lighting a fire with a bit of newspaper and pouring on petrol and applying a match.
“You can move from a small organising cell to using a channel as an online megaphone very quickly and, from their point of view, effectively.”
Telegram insisted this week that it had removed far-right channels promoting violence, including the forum targeting law firms.
But as the officer put it: “A new channel can be set up in a few moments on any of these platforms and let’s just say the people posting the material won’t be the ones turning up on the front line. This is pure incitement in a sort of digital wild west.”
What lay behind the riots?
The aftermath of the 2011 disorder brought much debate about its root causes and motivations.
Several studies pointed to distrust of police, social disenfranchisement and poverty as being factors, with the majority of rioters being younger men from across all ethnicities. Suggestions at the time that gangs were key instigators of the violence were later proved to be incorrect – just 13 per cent of those arrested had a gang affiliation.
Thirteen years later, the violence has come grimly freighted with racist slogans, Islamophobia and the pre-meditated targeting of asylum seekers and the immigration system.
The idea that underlying social conditions form a sort of socio-political kindling for civic unrest that is ignited into rioting by a random spark is one often raised by analysts.
But Professor Newburn cautioned against rushing to judgement.
He pointed out that while those involved in 2024’s summer disorder appear to be broadly from a white working-class background, they also share being rooted in impoverished communities with those who took part in the more ethnically-mixed riots of 2011.
He said: “On the surface we seem to be seeing crowds on the streets who are almost entirely white, male and, I would guess, from poorer places. Clearly there are indicators which point to anti-immigration, to racism in various forms.
“But the motivations could more complicated than they appear. What draws the white working class onto the streets is, I suspect, not something which is as simple or unitary as racism. I suspect there are lot of other things about which people are angry, for which immigration is in part a proxy.”
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