On the night of August 7, 2024 in Walthamstow, North-East London, a gathering of over 10,000 anti-racist protestors put paid to a wave of racially motivated riots that had swept the UK for nearly two weeks, targeting Muslims, parts of the asylum system and the police. Similar protests happened in Birmingham, Brentford, Brighton, Bristol, Newcastle and North Finchley.
Unrest had begun in the spread in the north of the country following the horrific murder of three young girls in Southport, and — as well as overt racism and islamophobia — responded to grievances at rising violent crime, failing public services and falling living standards. Until Wednesday 7th, the UK’s more prosperous south had largely been spared violence, but was now threatened at a series of sites related to the British asylum system, including an immigration bureau on Hoe Street, Walthamstow
Warnings issued by local politicians and the police had led shops to close early and board their windows, while large crowds nervously prepared to counter-protest.
A woman began writing ‘Call it what it is’ on a white sign before going for something more direct: ‘Nazis fuck off’.
She was joined by many more.
Yet as it became clear that the threatened riots would not materialise, what began nervously as a counter-protest quickly morphed. The scene soon became a progressive gathering advancing messages of solidarity with Palestine and the student movement in Bangladesh that only that morning had toppled the authoritarian government of Sheikh Hasina.
A street performer unfurled huge prismatic bubbles and an almost carnival atmosphere set in.
While the violence has ceased for now, with hatred flattened by unity and joy, the divisions that caused it — economic, social and in the perceived truth — have gone nowhere.