In August 2024, after the Southport stabbings, protests were called all over the country and riots had already broken out in Sunderland and in Southport itself. I went to the one in Hull.
I first saw it advertised by ActivePatriot, who is Alan Leggett. It was organised by John Francis Gilling of Hull Patriotic Protestors and United Hull, and he has links to Hull United and to Patriot Alternative. I went to see for myself whether it really was the far right event the media were calling it, because I have been at enough things I later watched reported to know that is not always a safe assumption.
It was. Within a couple of hours it had turned into a racist riot. People looted shops, set fires, went after Muslims and immigrants and their businesses, and surrounded a hotel that was being used to house asylum seekers. I talked to protesters and to rioters while it was going on, which is the part of this job I think is actually worth doing, because you cannot understand a crowd from outside it.
Then the mob turned on me. I got away with cuts and bruises and I was lucky that was all. The camera kept running for most of it.
The title says it was worse than you thought, and what I mean by that is not the scale of it. It is that the people doing this were ordinary and they were local, and a lot of them went home afterwards and had their tea.