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The night Britain fought back against riots

The night Britain fought back against riots

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However, Walthamstow’s Labour MP Stella Creasy told POLITICO: “When [protesters] say they’re recreating Cable Street, you think — the point is we never wanted to get to Cable Street in the first place.”

She said what happened on her patch was more complex than simple defiance, with thousands of other residents “terrified at home, or in the mosques, in the churches, worrying about their businesses.” Creasy added that she also had constituents with far-right views, saying: “We need to have a national conversation about what is feeding that toxicity, because that isn’t social media in itself. Social media is just another realm in which it is happening.”

Meanwhile, some protesters in Finchley, a Jewish area of north London, were accused of conflating the race riots with the ongoing debate over Israel’s actions in Gaza, with a leaflet shared online saying “get fascists, racists, Nazis, Zionists and Islamophobes out of Finchley!” The area’s Labour MP Sarah Sackman said on X that she had reported “clearly antisemitic” material to police.

On Thursday Labour moved to suspend a councillor who was filmed telling counter-protestors to “cut all the throats” of the “fascists.”

Justice funding a ‘very live conversation’

Policing Minister Diana Johnson credited the calmer scenes to the tough justice meted out to rioters, including to 58-year-old Derek Drummond, who was given a three-year sentence for punching a police officer in Southport. Government officials insist there is enough capacity to deal with the “thugs.”

Yet police are exhausted after using up leave time, courts are plagued by backlogs and prisoners are having to be released early as jails are almost full. Johnson told Times Radio that funding for the justice system “will be a very live conversation that’s to be had” in the government’s spending review this fall.

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