Academic researchers found that the riots that swept across Britain last summer compared to the racial riots in Nottingham and London's Notting Hill in the 1950s, compared to the chaos that broke out in 2011.

The violence broke out on the streets of Southport for the first time in the murders of three young girls. Perpetrator Axel Rudakubana was later sentenced to at least 52 years in prison.

The riots began on July 30, a day after the attack, with false information about the attack claiming that the attacker was a Muslim asylum seeker. The claim was launched by far-right social media accounts.

The disease then spreads across England and Northern Ireland, rioting in cities and towns such as London, Manchester, Hartlepool, Sunderland, Liverpool, Blackpool, Rotherham and Belfast.

It ended after dozens of frequently large counter-demonstrations across the country.

Although the riots are often referred to as "far-right protests," researchers found that the situation on the ground is actually more complicated.

The pre-print paper examined three case studies - Bristol, Hanley and Tamworth of Trent Stock. It uses interviews and multiple secondary sources to understand what is going on and who is involved.

"Some people call these protests far-right protests.

"Well, they didn't take the usual form of protest," he added. "I mean, maybe you might call them some kind of direct action."

"Our evidence suggests that the participants in these three riots formed a "racial" majority (i.e., white people) who tried to attack minority groups.

“So these riots are different from the wave of urban riots in the 1980s and 2011 in the UK (involving ethnic minorities against authority).

“It can be argued that the summer riots of 2024 have more in common with the 'race' riots in Notting Hill and Nottingham in 1958 and the riots in Liverpool and Cardiff in 1919.”

The violence in the summer of 1958 began in the St Ann region of Nottingham, followed by a similar disease in Nottingham, which was exacerbated by increased migration in the Caribbean.

White groups carried out violent attacks, using weapons against black people. Black houses are also targeting arson attacks.

In a time of post-war shortage of work, among another group of violent obstacles in the spring and summer of 1919, minority communities in port cities including Glasgow, Cardiff and Liverpool were targeted for racist attacks.

The paper says, “The incident largely includes attacks rather than protests”, noting that “the length of collective action, the relative lack of protest instruments and the unwarranted nature of violence, which involve at least half of the anti-immigrant participants.”

The researchers also found that those participating in various "protests" were not only "far-right activists or people affiliated with the "risk" group of football, but also non-affiliated persons, anti-immigrants, anti-political people, and "villains" as well as bystanders who see or record exciting events there or play exciting events spontaneously or engage spontaneously.

Although data on these three riots are common, it is "hard to estimate the proportion".

"There is not enough evidence that the anti-immigrant population is homogeneous, or that all those present are equally committed to violent racist attacks," the researchers said.

"This sentence has been used for these incidents," Drury said, but he added: "It could be a step from that time to say they are all racists."

Drury said making assumptions about those involved could lead to the policymakers “assuming the same mitigation policy is effective for everyone.”

“I think that’s what the government started to do, like they made a lot of assumptions in 2011, who they participated in and why they participated, and quickly developed policies that were found to be invalid and inappropriate.”

He gave examples of the then-government’s troubled family initiative, which was misinformed and imagined that everyone who attended “had some sort of problem with their family growth”.

Drury also warned: "Put them all on all the labels, just as they are the most correct ones, may actually expel them to the far right."

The study also found that at least four different political parties were involved in these activities - anti-immigration participants, police, counter-protesters, targets of the action (asylum seekers and Muslims), and local “community defenders” also appeared in Hanley.

“I think these three are the differences between three (Hanley, Bristol and Tamworth),” Drury said, with varying degrees of violence and different counter-protest scales.

"I think it's a surprising thing," he added. He said while “we might talk about them as all kinds of events”, not understanding the nuances can lead to future prevention and decision-making problems because “in fact they are actually completely different”.