A year after violent anti-immigration riots rocked Rotherham, residents living just steps from the chaos say the memories still haunt them.
Paris and Josh, a couple who live just 200 meters from the Holiday Inn Express where asylum seekers were being housed, vividly remember the night the riots erupted, News.Az reports, citing foreign media.
“It looked like a modern-day lynching,” Paris recalls, describing the masked crowd, flames, and the fear of witnessing someone being dragged out or thrown from a window.
The August 2024 violence came just days after a knife attack in Southport left three schoolgirls dead—an event that ignited already simmering tensions about immigration across the UK.
“They had ski masks and bags full of alcohol,” said Paris. “It felt like they were going to a festival.”
Josh added: “What is England coming to? What is going on?”
They watched the chaos unfold over six hours from their home, after moving their car to a safer street. The Holiday Inn was stormed, vandalized, and set on fire in one of the worst anti-immigration riots of that week.
Though the hotel has since reopened as a regular business, the unease hasn’t gone away.
“I still see all this hate being spilled online,” Josh said.
“It could happen again,” Paris added. “That’s the faith I have in this country, really.”
South Yorkshire Mayor Oliver Coppard said the violence could easily have led to deaths if the rioters had succeeded in their actions.
“Migrants, police, or hotel staff could have been killed,” he told Sky News.
“The real issue is deep poverty that feeds grievance, and politics is failing to properly address community cohesion and the asylum system.”
Courts have since handed down lengthy prison terms to many involved, but debates continue over whether those sentences match the severity of the crimes.
In Rotherham’s market, local residents say they still feel the impact.
“I don’t think it has been solved,” said Josh, 23, a scaffolder. “It makes people angry. People want to riot again.”
Gabriel, 38, who was born in Rotherham, said the social aftermath continues to affect daily life for minorities.
“I couldn’t see anybody smiling at me like they used to,” he said.
“Now, every minority is being put in the same box.”
A local woman, who declined to be named, added:
“The backlash is going to happen — government against the people, people against the government. It’s not right.
We all bleed the same blood, breathe the same air.”
Protests at other migrant hotels in recent weeks indicate the unrest of last summer was not an isolated incident but part of a wider national tension.
As political leaders debate how to handle immigration and asylum policy, residents like Josh and Paris are left with a lingering fear: that the riots of last August could easily return.
