Reuters. British Prime Minister Keir Starmer said on Monday (August 5) that those participating in violent protests would feel the "full force of the law" after holding an emergency meeting on public disorder.
Riots have erupted across towns and cities in the last week after three girls were killed in a knife attack in Southport in northwest England, with 420 people arrested so far.
The murders were seized on by anti-immigrant and anti-Muslim groups as misinformation spread online that the suspected attacker was a radical Islamist who had just arrived in Britain. Police have said the suspect was born in Britain and are not treating it as a terrorist incident.
"I've asked for early consideration of the earliest naming and identification of those involved in the process, who will feel the full force of the law," Starmer told reporters on Monday.
Over the weekend riots broke out in Liverpool, Bristol, Tamworth, Middlesbrough and Belfast, in Northern Ireland, with largely young men wearing balaclavas and draped in the British flags hurling rocks and shouting "Stop the Boats," a reference to migrants arriving on the south coast in recent years.
In Rotherham, northern England, protesters sought to break into a hotel that housed asylum seekers.
