Regret, resentment and Reform UK: jailed Rotherham rioters one year on
Men sentenced to prison time for role in violent protests after the Southport murders describe their feelings of injustice
It was a scene that became the defining image of the year for many. Flames licking up the side of a grey breezeblock hotel with balaclava-clad men jostling around, kicking, smashing windows, throwing debris on the fire.
Protests were not uncommon outside the Holiday Inn in Manvers near Rotherham, which housed 200 asylum seekers, but there would be something different about Sunday 4 August 2024, coming after the murder of three young girls in Southport by 17-year-old Axel Rudakubana days earlier.
It was not the first riot of the weekend instigated by the far right but it would be the biggest and it would bring to a close a week of violent clashes between communities and with the police.
The demonstration was supposed to be peaceful – at least, from the point of view of many of those who had gathered there to make a stand, as they saw it, against their town becoming a dumping ground for people the country did not want or know what to do with. But from the very start it was clear there was a contingent who had planned to cause harm, to drive out the asylum seekers at any cost, perhaps even to kill them.
Later, authorities would be reeling from how close the events came to being deadly, with police only just gaining control after rioters smashed their way into the hotel. It was a “dark day”, according to South Yorkshire police’s assistant chief constable, Lindsey Butterfield.
Ahead of the first anniversary of the violence, the Guardian spoke to a dozen men, aged 20 to 64 at the time, who received prison sentences for their part in the riot.
Most lived a few miles away from the scene and none considered themselves to be racist, though most demonstrated a readiness to believe racist lies spread on Facebook about the refugees living in their area raping women or children. And they were quick to take matters into their own hands, blaming all asylum seekers.
Though each of the rioters had their own motivations, there was a common theme of mistrust in authority and the media. Some said they’d seen Rotherham decline steadily over the years. “Everybody’s just fed up aren’t they? You can’t get a dentist, it’s hard work,” said one rioter.
Reform UK is gaining ground in this part of South Yorkshire, with the anti-establishment rhetoric of Nigel Farage having strong appeal.
Perhaps surprisingly, most were eager to talk, glad to be given the opportunity to voice their feelings about unfair sentences and the public misunderstanding of the kind of people they were.
For some, the violence had been a “wake-up call”, with the partner of one rioter saying he had PTSD from going to prison and had “completely changed”. He had been on drugs and alcohol – there were numerous alcohol monitoring tags among the released men – but “he has turned himself around, it was the catalyst that stopped it all”.
Wives and girlfriends spoke of how tough it had been for them, particularly looking after children without the support of their spouse. Christmas had been especially challenging for young children with a parent behind bars.
“It has been the worst experience of my life,” she said. “It was the first time I’ve ever known anyone go to prison.”
Glyn Guest, a 61-year-old retired window cleaner, said he was walking his dog Ollie near the hotel when he was drawn in, having not known there was going to be a protest.
“I heard a load of shouting and bawling and that were it,” he said. He was sentenced to two years and eight months for violent disorder after continually walking up to the police line and being pushed back – getting his nose broken – and at one point grabbing a riot shield. His version of events was that a police officer “lost her footing” but the court interpreted the video as him pulling her over, which she said had left her “terrified for her safety”.
“I didn’t agree with them when they were setting fires and that. I thought that were a bit harsh like, chucking house bricks and that. I didn’t go down for trouble.
“But the judge just wouldn’t listen. It was bad. I can’t weigh it up,” he adds, about the length of his sentence.
He said being locked up was “hard” and he lost a lot of weight – his face looked drawn compared with the mugshot taken when he handed himself into police.
All the men who spoke to the Guardian wanted to make it clear they were not far-right – a label that had made prison dangerous and terrifying, serving their time alongside gangs of non-white offenders who “were after us because a screw grassed us up”.
“They were waiting for us, with the riot – but it was wrong, they got it all wrong.”
Those who were sentenced to two or three years served about a third of their sentence before they were released on licence, wearing ankle tags that require them to be home between the hours of 7pm and 7am.
The scene in Manvers last summer – with lines of officers pushing back groups of men – was reminiscent of another era, when striking miners were subjugated in clashes with police.
“I used to work at Manvers colliery, half a mile underneath the hotel,” said Mick Woods, who was sentenced to two years. “We were on strike for a year and what did British people do? Nowt.”
Unlike the other rioters, all of whom said they had never been to a demonstration before, Woods has spent a good deal of time at protests and on picket lines in his 65 years. He cannot tolerate the way British people, especially the working class, do not stand up for themselves, he said, and is “proud” that he protested.
“My conscience is very clear. Very clear. The people what don’t go down there [to protest], they are proper criminals.”
Though Woods appeared to be anti-immigration generally, his protest had been against “atrocious terrorist acts” in Southport. He had sympathy for the asylum seekers, he said, and had not wanted them to be hurt. “I don’t blame people coming here. We’re sticking us nose in people’s business, all over the planet,” he said.
In footage played in court, he was standing next to a man with a dog and told police officers if they hit him, the dog would get them. He called an officer a “disgrace to society”. But the court agreed there was no physical violence from Woods, nor did he do anything to encourage it from anyone else.
“I was shouting at the coppers saying, ‘You should be ashamed of yersens.’ And I went, ‘You want a bumming by Gary Glitter.’” He laughed.
He’d been a nuisance, but on any other day his behaviour may not have been considered criminal. Others referenced his case as an example of a particularly harsh sentence, though he said prison was on his “bucket list” and he saw himself as a “political prisoner”.
“It wasn’t violent disorder, it was threatening behaviour, and I ought to have not admitted to it,” he said. Almost all of the men said they felt under pressure from their solicitor to plead guilty to violent disorder, a serious offence that virtually guaranteed prison time.
“Post office workers, they did the same to them and some of them took their lives,” said Woods.
“You can say this, that and t’other, and they’ll make people into summat they’re not, and that’s what they did with me.”
At least 100 people have been charged by South Yorkshire police for the riots and 85 of those have been sentenced to a combined 213 years in prison. The force is continuing to arrest perpetrators of the violence.
In reality, for most of those individuals jailed, what they saw as harsh treatment only entrenched their beliefs. The father of two rioters who were sentenced for throwing objects at police, said he had gone down a far-right “rabbit hole” online trying to understand why his sons were imprisoned for seemingly minor crimes. He believed his sons received such harsh sentences because they were “protesting immigration” and that it was the prime minister, “two-tier Keir” Starmer, who was responsible.
“It were all [the] press that got us in jail,” said Jordan Teal, 35, who was identified despite wearing a balaclava, and sentenced to two years and eight months for shouting at police that they were “protecting paedophiles” and ripping off fence panels that were used as weapons. “I hope you’re proud of yourselves,” he said to the Guardian.
In fact, South Yorkshire police had its own evidence gatherers, officers deployed with videocameras, as well as bodycam and aerial footage taken from two helicopters. Largely, though, it was the hundreds of hours of footage posted on social media by the rioters themselves that got them convicted.
Joel Goodman, a photojournalist, refused to hand over any photos from the Rotherham riot, despite legal threats from South Yorkshire police.
Michael Shaw, now 27, has the footage on his phone of the kick against a riot shield that was part of a clash that landed him two years and six months. “They absolutely battered me that day, did the coppers.”
Under the helmets and body armour, and behind the polycarbonate shields on one of the warmest days of the year, there would not be a lot of patience for those who did not do as they were told.
A former soldier from the Yorkshire regiment, Shaw had gone “with no mask or gloves or anything”, there was “no intent” he said.
Like others, he said: “I’m not racist, I just don’t like it when people are raping women and children. It would be exactly the same if it were white lads.”
He left the riot as the hotel was set on fire – did he feel bad for the asylum seekers trapped inside the hotel? “No comment.”
It was clear, he said, the big sentences handed down for Rotherham and the other riots a year ago hadn’t worked as a deterrent: “Just look what’s happening now in Epping.”
So would he do it again? “One man’s not going to make a difference. I wish I’d have stayed in bed.”