“It was terrifying,” Clive Wingate, who lives near the now-infamous Holiday Inn Express, said.
“When they were lighting the bins to push into the building, where there were people inside, what were their intentions?” the 66-year-old pensioner asked.
The images from Rotherham were among the most striking of the recent riots across England and Northern Ireland.
Hundreds of men, some draped in the English flag, gathered outside the hotel, chanting “kick them out” while outnumbered police came under fire from bricks and burning objects.
The nationwide riots — the worst in the country since 2011 — began after a knife attack that killed three girls during a dance class on July 29 in Southport, another northern town.
False rumors that the suspect was a Muslim asylum seeker spread on social media, and although police corrected the record, anti-immigration riots erupted for more than a week, leading to more than 1,000 arrests.
At the Holiday Day Inn in Rotherham, an economically deprived town in South Yorkshire, a police cordon still marked it as a “crime scene” this week.
Signs of fire damage and plywood covering doors and windows remained as indicators of the violence.
The leafy area several kilometers (miles) from the town center is usually peaceful, residents said, adding that the asylum seekers housed there while their applications are processed were not a major problem.
The rioters “deserve jail, they are morons,” said Charlotte Bedford, who was out walking her dog.
“If you want to protest, protest peacefully,” added the 34-year-old.
Several rioters received heavy sentences. They included three years in prison for a 19-year-old who threw bricks at police officers and two years and eight months for a 60-year-old man who pulled an officer to the ground.
Phil Fletcher, a 65-year-old who worked in property maintenance, criticized the violence, but was not surprised by the riots.
“There are millions of people fed up with immigration. It’s not our country anymore,” said the pensioner, who voted for the anti-immigration Reform UK party in the general election in early July, won by Labour.
Not far from him, a woman added: “18,000 arrived since the beginning of the year,” referring to the number of migrants arriving on small boats in southeast England after crossing the Channel.
“That’s too many. Immigration has to be the priority for this government,” she added.
According to its supporters, Brexit was supposed to allow the UK to take back control of its borders.
But legal and irregular immigration, including via the small boats, have since reached record levels.
Natalie Jackson, a 28-year-old teaching assistant, said that the UK is “a small island.”
“We are overpopulated. We can’t even get a doctor’s appointment anymore,” she said.
Caroline Roberts, a 66-year-old seamstress, added: “Nobody is listening to people that are complaining.”
“If you say anything, you are called a racist.
“It’s making people very angry. The help they (migrants) get, our own children can’t get it. We are short of money here,” she added.
Rotherham, which has a population of 265,000, grew during the Industrial Revolution but suffered decades of economic decline as the local steelworks and mines closed.
The town also experienced a notorious child sexual exploitation scandal between 1997 and 2013 which is still reverberating today.
Gangs of men with Pakistani heritage abused around 1,400 girls, mostly white and from disadvantaged backgrounds, whom they raped and sexually exploited, according to watchdog reports into the scandal.
The official report severely criticized authorities for a failure to address the abuse, attributing it to issues around race, class and religion and a fear that the perpetrators’ ethnicity would trigger allegations of racism.
This has only increased the distrust of immigration and institutions in the town.
“There was always going to be more anger here,” explained Riaz Ayaaz, referring to the legacy of the abuse scandal.
The 29-year-old Muslim, born in Rotherham, said that his mosque had asked worshippers to “look out for each other,” to not “react” to possible provocations and to “trust the police.”
For him, a “lot of people” used the deaths of the three girls in Southport “as an excuse to vent out their frustrations.”
He called for a focus on “wider scale issues,” particularly the economy, “which impacts everything else.”
Prime Minister Keir Starmer warned Friday that UK authorities must “stay on high alert” for more far-right riots, as courts issued the first jail sentences for online incitement during the recent disorder.
While England has had consecutive nights of relative quiet, disturbances have continued unabated in Northern Ireland where police have blamed pro-UK loyalist paramilitaries for fueling nightly violence in Belfast.
More than 1,000 anti-racism protesters massed in the Northern Irish capital on Friday amid a large police presence.
Several dozen anti-immigration demonstrators also showed up.
Starmer told reporters during a visit to the London police headquarters that “swift justice” handed out by courts was helping deter more disorder in English towns.
“But we have to stay on high alert going into this weekend because we absolutely have to make sure that our communities are safe and secure,” Starmer added.
A judge in Leeds, northern England, jailed a 28-year-old man for 20 months after he admitted publishing Facebook posts that met the criminal threshold for stirring racial hatred.
In the first case of its kind linked to the disturbances, a judge sentenced Jordan Parlour for posts last week encouraging people to attack a hotel in the city housing asylum seekers and refugees.
The hotel manager had to put the building into lockdown Saturday due to disorder in the city, and at least one window was broken after stones were thrown at it.
In Northampton, central England, a judge jailed 26-year-old Tyler Kay for 38 months after he called on social media for hotels housing asylum seekers to be set alight.
Speaking before the sentences — but after both had been convicted — Starmer said they were “a reminder to everyone that whether you’re directly involved or whether you’re remotely involved, you’re culpable.”
Social media executives and users should be “mindful of the first priority, which is to ensure that our communities are safe and secure.”
“We’re going to have to look more broadly at social media after this disorder but the focus at the moment has to be on dealing with the disorder,” Starmer said.
Police in England said nearly 600 arrests have been carried out linked to the unrest since July 30 and around 150 charges had been filed.
The disturbances, sparked by a July 29 knife attack in which three children were killed, have seen mosques and migrant-related facilities attacked alongside police and other targets.
Officials say false information spread on social media about the suspected perpetrator fueled the disorder.
Courts across England have started sentencing participants in the disorder, with about a dozen people jailed on Thursday.
In Northern Ireland, a number of Belfast businesses and libraries closed early on Friday after more disorder overnight and the latest protests.
Police there said 23 people have been arrested so far in Belfast following the disturbances, and 15 charged.
Officers have been granted additional powers to stop and search suspected troublemakers and ask them to remove face coverings, while additional manpower is being sent from the UK mainland, according to reports.
Britain’s monarch, King Charles III, praised the police and emergency services “for all they are doing to restore peace in those areas that have been affected by violent disorder.”
He hoped that the “shared values of mutual respect and understanding will continue to strengthen and unite the nation,” a palace spokesman added in a statement, his first reaction to the unrest
French President Emmanuel Macron offered his support to Starmer in a phone call with the prime minister Friday, said a statement from the French presidency.
Offering condolences to the families of the victims of the July 29 stabbing, Macron “firmly condemned the violence and disorder” in Britain in his conversation with Starmer, said the statement.
While England has had consecutive nights of relative quiet, disturbances have continued unabated in Northern Ireland where police have blamed pro-UK loyalist paramilitaries for fueling nightly violence in Belfast.
More than 1,000 anti-racism protesters massed in the Northern Irish capital on Friday amid a large police presence.
Several dozen anti-immigration demonstrators also showed up.
Starmer told reporters during a visit to the London police headquarters that “swift justice” handed out by courts was helping deter more disorder in English towns.
“But we have to stay on high alert going into this weekend because we absolutely have to make sure that our communities are safe and secure,” Starmer added.
A judge in Leeds, northern England, jailed a 28-year-old man for 20 months after he admitted publishing Facebook posts that met the criminal threshold for stirring racial hatred.
In the first case of its kind linked to the disturbances, a judge sentenced Jordan Parlour for posts last week encouraging people to attack a hotel in the city housing asylum seekers and refugees.
The hotel manager had to put the building into lockdown Saturday due to disorder in the city, and at least one window was broken after stones were thrown at it.
In Northampton, central England, a judge jailed 26-year-old Tyler Kay for 38 months after he called on social media for hotels housing asylum seekers to be set alight.
Speaking before the sentences — but after both had been convicted — Starmer said they were “a reminder to everyone that whether you’re directly involved or whether you’re remotely involved, you’re culpable.”
Social media executives and users should be “mindful of the first priority, which is to ensure that our communities are safe and secure.”
“We’re going to have to look more broadly at social media after this disorder but the focus at the moment has to be on dealing with the disorder,” Starmer said.
Police in England said nearly 600 arrests have been carried out linked to the unrest since July 30 and around 150 charges had been filed.
The disturbances, sparked by a July 29 knife attack in which three children were killed, have seen mosques and migrant-related facilities attacked alongside police and other targets.
Officials say false information spread on social media about the suspected perpetrator fueled the disorder.
Courts across England have started sentencing participants in the disorder, with about a dozen people jailed on Thursday.
In Northern Ireland, a number of Belfast businesses and libraries closed early on Friday after more disorder overnight and the latest protests.
Police there said 23 people have been arrested so far in Belfast following the disturbances, and 15 charged.
Officers have been granted additional powers to stop and search suspected troublemakers and ask them to remove face coverings, while additional manpower is being sent from the UK mainland, according to reports.
Britain’s monarch, King Charles III, praised the police and emergency services “for all they are doing to restore peace in those areas that have been affected by violent disorder.”
He hoped that the “shared values of mutual respect and understanding will continue to strengthen and unite the nation,” a palace spokesman added in a statement, his first reaction to the unrest
French President Emmanuel Macron offered his support to Starmer in a phone call with the prime minister Friday, said a statement from the French presidency.
Offering condolences to the families of the victims of the July 29 stabbing, Macron “firmly condemned the violence and disorder” in Britain in his conversation with Starmer, said the statement.
