'A big rise of love' Fighting hate in Liverpool with solidarity and hope

When anti-immigration riots spread across the UK last summer, one of Liverpool’s oldest churches found itself in the crosshairs.

- Josh Halliday

The 179-year-old St Anne’s in Toxteth was one of dozens of properties across the country on a far-right “hit list” shared online. One menacing post showed its historic redbrick tower burning behind flame emojis.

The church itself was not the target. Violent agitators were calling for an attack on one of its tenants: Asylum Link Merseyside (ALM), a charity that for 25 years has supported people fleeing war and persecution.

The threat, said Ewan Roberts, then the centre manager for ALM, felt scarily real: “People had been scoping us out, driving past filming, kids on bikes filming. You think, oh god, is this how it happens?”

Barely a mile away, al-Rahma mosque was also being watched. “You would see people monitoring the area, people on bikes hiding their faces,” said Dr Badr Abdullah, the chair of Liverpool Muslim Society. “At one point we had someone with a machete outside. It did feel like civil war ... The feeling in the community was: someone is going to be killed, the mosque is going to be burned down.”

Across England and Belfast, rioters had torched buildings, attacked mosques, battled police and brought terror to minority communities after the horrific murder of three young girls at a Taylor Swift holiday club in Southport on 29 July.

They singled out Britain’s tiny immigrant and Muslim populations despite debunked claims that the killer - Cardiff-born teenager Axel Rudakabuna - was an Islamist terrorist who had arrived in Britain by small boat.