‘We might be watching you’: Home Office warns thugs plotting dysfunction

The Home Office has warned thugs plotting disorder that ‘we will be watching you’ as Britain braces for a summer of riots in wake of the Southport stabbings.

Flyers are being circulated for rallies in towns and cities including Blackpool, Dover, Nottingham, Leeds and Hull, using social media apps to call on ‘patriots’ to gather and demand ‘enough is enough’.

Today, Home Office minister Lord Hanson told LBC that police are ready to step in and arrest troublemakers. He said: ‘If you are organising this now, we will be watching you.

‘We have powers under existing legislation to stop you organising this now and to take action accordingly.’

Riots have already swept across parts of the UK including London, Hartlepool and Manchester, fuelled by disinformation spread online about the suspect involved an attack that killed three children and injured at least 10 others in Southport.

The attack has stoked widespread disorder after three girls, Bebe King, six, Elsie Dot Stancombe, seven, and Alice Dasilva Aguiar, nine, were stabbed to death at a Taylor Swift-themed dance class.

Two adults were critically injured and eight other children already suffered stab wounds, with five of them now in a ‘stable condition’. 

Last night, Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer slammed ‘outsiders’ who boarded trains and buses to riot, warning that any future unrest would be met with ‘the most robust response in the coming days and weeks’.

On Wednesday night, the Met Police made 111 arrests after a ‘Stop the Boats’ protest outside Westminster. Footage emerged of a 73-year-old woman being handcuffed as she shouted: ‘I’ve got a pacemaker’.

That same night, 12 people were arrested in connection with riots on the streets of Hartlepool, including a boy, 11, on suspicion of arson after a police van was torched.

Asked if he was worried Britain could face a summer of riots, Sir Keir Starmer added:  ‘So far as the far right is concerned, this is co-ordinated, this is deliberate, this is not a protest that has got out of hand.

‘It is a group of individuals who are absolutely bent on violence.’ 

The Prime Minister said extremists were trying to exploit public anger adding that they would face ‘the full force of the law’. 

Now Britain is bracing for further planned rallies that could spill over into violence and disorder in the coming weeks.

Facial recognition technology will be used to curb violent disorder and train ticket sales will be monitored this weekend, the government has said. 

Southport locals – including Elsie’s mother – pleaded for the violence to stop after police vans were set on fire and bricks were hurled in violence that left 53 officers injured on Tuesday.

But her wishes were ignored as yobs took to the street, fuelled by false speculation online that the suspect was an asylum seeker who had travelled to the UK on a boat.

The misinformation is believed to have originated from a Russian-linked fake news website. 

And now as tensions build again, senseless thugs plan protests for areas such as Southport, Leeds and Bristol.

Others are set to take place in Blackpool, Liverpool, Sunderland, Portsmouth and across Northern Ireland.

Fears have also been ignited that protests in popular sea-side towns including Blackpool and Portsmouth, could disrupt summer plans as families descend on the coast for the holidays.

Many adverts for the rallies are loaded with anti-immigrant rhetoric, with protests in Belfast taking place outside an Islamic centre and an advertised ‘mass deportation’ planned to take place outside a mosque in Liverpool. Some appear to be using AI technology to push their cause.

One claims that they are acting against ‘the Christian West under siege’ while others claimed they were ‘patriots’.

Two counter-protests are also being advertised online.

In a highly unusual move, a judge yesterday lifted reporting restrictions to allow 17-year-old Axel Rudakubana to be named as the suspect in the attack on a children’s dance class in Southport. 

Rudakubana, who was born in Cardiff to parents who originated from Rwanda, appeared in court charged with the murder of Alice Dasilva Aguiar, nine, Bebe King, six, and Elsie Dot Stancombe, seven. 

He is also charged with the attempted murder of yoga class instructor Leanne Lucas, businessman John Hayes and eight children, who cannot be named for legal reasons, as well as with possession of a kitchen knife with a curved blade. 

Judge Andrew Menary condemned the ‘idiotic rioting’ and said the ‘exceptional’ decision to name Rudakubana would ‘undoubtedly remove some of the misreporting as to the identity of the defendant’.

He was remanded to youth detention accommodation and will next appear in court in October.

The attack, which happened at a dance class on Hart Street in Southport just before midday on Monday, has sparked incidents of violent disorder in some towns in England.

Thugs attacked a mosque in Southport and fought a pitched battle with police on Tuesday, setting fire to a police van, injuring 53 officers and three police dogs.

More than 100 people were arrested in London on Wednesday night following disturbances at a protest under the banner ‘Enough is Enough’ at which flares were thrown at a statue of Sir Winston Churchill. 

In Hartlepool, a police car was set alight on Wednesday night and officers were pelted with bricks, bottles and eggs.

Cleveland Police have so far made 12 arrests, one of which was an 11-year-old boy arrested on suspicion of arson after a police vehicle was set alight. 

Tense protests also took place in Manchester and Aldershot outside hotels thought to be housing asylum seekers.

Yesterday, Sir Keir said police forces would establish ‘surge teams’ of officers to help out neighbouring forces facing riots.

He paved the way for greater use of controversial facial recognition technology to help identify rioters, and urged police to use powers to ban thugs from travelling to take part in protests in the same manner as football hooligans.

The PM warned social media bosses they had a responsibility to deal with the spread of misinformation online, which has helped fuel this week’s violence.

And he said a new National Violent Disorder Programme would help gather intelligence about potential violent gatherings, including monitoring rail ticket sales.

Ministers fear that public anger over the Southport killings could erupt into violent outbreaks all over the country. One Labour MP in the Greater Manchester area described the mood in his own constituency as a ‘tinderbox’.

Sir Keir urged the public to give Southport residents ‘the space to grieve’ – and warned against actions that could threaten Rudakubana’s trial. 

The PM said Britain was a country which would ‘not allow understandable fear to curdle into division and hate in our communities – and that will not permit, under any circumstances a breakdown in law and order on our streets’.

Reform MP Lee Anderson suggested that Sir Keir had failed to understand public anger over the killings.

In a message on social media, he warned the PM was ‘not reading the room’.

The proposal to roll out the use of facial recognition technology, which is used routinely only in London and South Wales, triggered a backlash from civil liberties groups. 

Silkie Carlo, of Big Brother Watch, said the ‘alarming’ plan would extend the use of ‘dangerously inaccurate’ technology which is widely used in Russia and China but ‘banned in Europe’.

She added: ‘To promise the country ineffective AI surveillance in these circumstances was frankly tone deaf and will give the public absolutely no confidence that this government has the competence or conviction to get tough on the causes of these crimes and protect the public.’ 

Meanwhile, Reform UK leader Nigel Farage had been criticised for posting a video on social media after the Southport stabbings where he insinuated the ‘truth was being held’ from the public as to the identity of the attacker.

Posting to X on Thursday evening, the MP for Clacton warned that recent rioting ‘is nothing’ compared to what he believes is to occur.

He said: ‘We need to start getting tough. We need to use stop and search, regardless of the colour of the skin of anyone that gets stopped.

‘We need tougher prison sentences for anybody carrying a knife. We need folks to get real.

‘Because I’ll tell you what, what you’ve seen on the streets of Hartlepool, of London, of Southport, is nothing to what could happen over the course of the next few weeks.

‘Let’s have proper law and order. But Mr Starmer, just to blame a few far right thugs, to say that’s the root of our problems, doesn’t work.’ 

Liverpool City Region Mayor Steve Rotheram said he was ‘concerned’ that there could be a repeat of the violence that followed the Southport stabbings.

Mr Rotheram told ITV’s Good Morning Britain: ‘We’re always concerned, aren’t we, that there could be a repeat of violence somewhere in the Liverpool City Region.’

He added: ‘I hope that there aren’t further incidents – we’re very much aware of them.

‘I’m speaking to Serena Kennedy, who is the chief police officer in the Liverpool City Region, in Merseyside, on a regular basis.

‘We’ve got the contingencies – we know exactly what we’d need to do to ensure that these things are nipped in the bud.’

Mr Rotheram added it was important ‘that we do something about social media’ because it had ‘whipped up the lies’ about the alleged perpetrator of the stabbings that ‘fuelled some of the disorder that we saw on the streets’.