Today's protests

[Hewlet]

Is your city/town affected by the protests today? I'm concerned by them and wondering if I should participate in a counter-protest.
But the other part of me feels that this will all descend in to male violence on both sides and I should stay clear.

We need politicians to listen and allay our fears.

It doesn't matter what anyone says,the racists will continue to blame everything on people not White British. Plenty of people tried to explain before Brexit that it wasn't having immigration from the EU that caused their woes. Loads of Eastern Europeans left after Brexit and did it make any measurable difference to anyone else's life? Just as setting fire to mosques or smashing windows on asylum hotels won't make any difference. These people have a fixed mindset - they don't listen to reason.

I saw one of them today. It definitely wasn't a 'hate' Vs 'peace' type thing. It was 30ish young angry men shouting across a line of police officers towards another 200ish young angry men, with a handful of women with peace type placards looking nervous.

I'd honestly say let's leave them to it, as pp's have said, they're not protests/counter protests. They're bored young men in a heatwave looking for a reason to start trouble

Did I somehow imply anywhere on here that it was? Forgive me, I'll remember not to pass comment in future in case my words get misconstrued by randoms online. Ffs wind your neck in.

And I was talking about what specifically happened in MY hometown, not stoke.

Two guys got hit with a hammer, well all I can say is if they were general public that's not good. If they were rioting, you play silly games, you win silly prizes.

Proud of our city today. The counter protesters far outnumbered the racists.

Police did a good job too. A few feeble attempts at violence from the EDL types was very quickly quashed.

It's nice to see communities pull together, humanity doing what it does best when shit storms like this happen. Common sense and compassion will prevail.

Women and children at the front?

Only 1 person turned to the one in my city. However my nephew has got stranded as all trains to where he lives have been cancelled it's so bad.

I'm staying the hell out of the way of all of it. Both violent protests and peaceful anti fascist supporters have taken over my city centre today, it has been a nightmare, police everywhere, vehicles set fire to, bottles thrown at police.

Most importantly I'm not putting myself at risk of harm and secondly the police have asked people to stay away from the area.

Yup. Because these guys are just classy like that.

It'd be hard to be close to Southport if I wasn't!

I'd hazard a guess we are in the same town by what you've said.

Are you an expert in policing crowds and theories of rioting?

Those who are would suggest that the police behaved in the best way to de-escalate the situation in Harehills.

27 arrests (and more to come) and no further trouble reported. I'd say the police did a good job.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c4ngn12qz4zo.amp

I suspect the very different tactics that the police used in Harehills, as compared to Whitehall during the poll tax protests that led to riots, will be used in future as a model for policing localised community disorder much as the poll tax response is used as an example of what not to do.

rallies protests

These are riots, criminal behaviour of mindless thugs. No surprise the right wing press like The Mail are calling them 'rallies'. They have stirred this mayhem up and enjoying the chaos.

I hope every one of these criminals gets their pictures in the paper, named and shamed and stuck behind bars and forced to pay compensation to the victims of their thuggery.