The same week that riots set fire to Belfast in Northern Ireland, on 13 June 2026, a far-right group attempted to march through Brighton, UK with some claiming their goal was to reach a mosque. In response, around 4,000 residents of Brighton mobilised to impede the march. They managed to block every route, and even withstood heavy police force deployed against them, included riot police using pepper spray and inflicting physycial blows upon them. The following images depicts the far-right marchers, the counter demonstrations, and the police response.
The following images show some of the far-right marchers.
The far-right group is called the ‘South East Patriots’, with the march also being organised by UKIP leader Nick Teconi. Teconi is also the leader of Turning Points UK and has been documented on film performing a Nazi salute in public.
It was reported that approximately 4,000 counter demonstraters responded to the march. It was a broad coalition, including anti-facist, anti-racist, pro-Palestine, and LGBTQ+ groups. The turnout was overwhelmingly in favour of the counter-protesers who managed to block every route available to the marchers who only moved meters away from the train station from which they intially arrived.
Below shows the counter demonstrators.
Unfortunately, and perhaps unsurprisingly, the police tried to open a path for the far-right march using force. Deployed with riot gear, they inflicted blows and pepper spray upon the counter-protesters.
While I’ve sadly seen this kind of force deployed against protesters before, after being subjected to what I term, a bulldozing, I was still shaken. Below shows some extent of the police deployment.
Some of the police officers seemed conflicted. One officer even came up to me while I was assisting someone who got pepper-sprayed, imploring that we recognised that they were people to. As if we weren’t the ones who had been subjected to physical force.
It was a bizarre interaction. In this pane you can see images in which I photographed two people who had been pepper sprayed.
Further below this section you can see photos of officers who looked as if they were conflicted in addition to one treating someone who claimed that the police had inflicted a blow to his head.
It is almost becoming expected that UK summers will witness some sort of rioting from far-right groups.
I was heartened to see that Brighton took these events seriously and turned out in such force. Especially in light of what occurred in Belfast, along with attacks in Scotland, and with politicians seeming like, at best, they wants to brush off these events, or at worse, wants to appease the forces behind these them. Hopefully, we see Brighton’s spirit spread to other corners of UK society.
