Thousands of Britons took part in anti-racism protests today after ten days of racist and Islamophobic violence, the worst riots in Britain for 13 years.

The last major clashes between police and rioters happened on Monday night, but police remain on alert this weekend.

The British judiciary reacted swiftly to the racist riots, indicting 300 rioters in a week for a range of crimes, including online posts fueling violence. Over 700 people have been arrested.

Yesterday Friday, a British court handed down the first post-riot sentence of 20 months to a 28-year-old man for inciting racial hatred online, as the British government aims to deter and clamp down on far-right unrest.

A first wave of anti-racism demonstrations took place on Wednesday, and in the following days thousands of people demonstrated peacefully in the streets in many cities against racism and Islamophobia.

The largest demonstration today brought together several thousand people in Belfast, the capital of Northern Ireland, where police last week recorded numerous acts they described as racist.

A mosque in Newtownards, east Belfast, was again the target of vandalism overnight, with police saying they were treating the case as a racist crime.

Gatherings of hundreds of people are taking place across the UK: Newcastle (Northern England), Cardiff (Wales), Glasgow and Edinburgh (Scotland) among many others.

In London, nearly a thousand people rallied outside the headquarters of the anti-immigration and anti-establishment party Reform UK, holding placards reading “no to racism, no to hate”. There were no incidents at this gathering.

“I don’t like it when the far right takes to the streets in my name,” Jeremy Snelling, 64, who took part in a demonstration, told AFP. “I’m in favor of open borders and I think refugees are a good thing.”

“It’s very important for immigrants in this country to see us here, white British people, saying: no, we do not tolerate violence,” said Phoebe Sewell, a 32-year-old Londoner.

The violence, which targeted mosques and migrant shelters, erupted after a knife attack that killed three girls on July 29 in the northeastern English city of Southport.

The fuse behind the racist and Islamophobic riots was fake news and rumors circulating on the internet regarding the identity of the alleged perpetrator.