For a week, Britain’s far right had its own way. Then a temporary alliance of police and anti-fascists stood them down.
https://newrepublic.com/article/184691/day-riots-stopped-ukOn Wednesday, a hit list was circulating Britain. Thirty-nine addresses: refugee centers, the offices of immigration lawyers, advice bureaus, a Border Force post. Targets spanned the whole country, from Sunderland to Hastings. Windows were boarded up, doctors canceled appointments. “Mask up,” instructed the list’s author. “Wednesday night … 8PM. They won’t stop coming until we tell them. NO MORE IMMIGRATION.”
For a week, Britain’s fascists (and their fellow travelers) had been having it all their own way. Brickbats, burning trash bins, bottled cops, firebombs. Last Sunday, a 700-strong mob laid siege to a Holiday Inn near Rotherham in South Yorkshire used as emergency housing for asylum-seekers. Two hundred and fifty people were inside. The mob smashed windows, charged a thin line of police, then tried to set the building on fire. More troublemakers tried to do the same to a hotel in Tamworth, near Birmingham. In several dozen towns and cities, more riots, more looting, more burning tires in the street. Anyone who looked vaguely nonwhite near a zone of conflict risked a kicking. The accelerants have been cheap cocaine, racial rancor, and the rabble’s own success.
