I regret taking my son to a riot following Southport attack, says stepmother

“I have no answer for it other than I’m an idiot, stupid, got caught up in the moment,” says Amy Hodgkinson-Hedgecox.

She is trying to explain how she – a mother to two children who lives in Tamworth, Staffordshire – attended a riot with her son, then aged 11.

Hodgkinson-Hedgecox is one of thousands of people to have been involved in violent protests that erupted last summer. The rioting followed the murder by a teenager of three young girls in Southport – Elsie Dot Stancombe, seven, Bebe King, six, and Alice da Silva Aguiar, nine.

Eight other children and two adults were also injured.

A wave of misinformation, half-truths and lies on social media, including false claims that the killer was a Muslim asylum seeker, sparked riots in towns and cities across England and Northern Ireland. More than 1,800 people were arrested, and 698 were convicted of crimes such as violent disorder and assaulting police.

A year on, angry protesters are once again gathering at hotels where asylum seekers are housed.

BBC Panorama contacted hundreds of people who took part in riots last year to ask them how they account for their actions. Many would not speak to us, saying they did not trust mainstream media; others were too ashamed or scared.

Only a few agreed to talk. But while Hodgkinson-Hedgecox told Panorama her actions had been impulsive and she regretted them, another was unapologetic – defending his online calls to sink small boats and refusing to condemn rioters who set fire to the hotel where he was protesting.

Hodgkinson-Hedgecox, 38, is wearing an electronic tag around her ankle at the house she shares with her partner Charlotte and their two children. Sentenced to two years and three months in jail after pleading guilty to violent disorder, but now released on licence, she cannot leave the house between 19:00 and 07:00.

“It was really exciting,” she says. “The adrenaline was just… it was crazy. It was a real eye-opener that I would never do again.”

With her distinctive short cropped hair, Hodgkinson-Hedgecox is easily identifiable in the reams of footage from that evening outside the hotel. She did not throw any missiles, she had no part in setting any fires, but she was standing in front of police lines shouting abuse at them, and making obscene gestures at the asylum seekers living in the hotel.

Brady, now 12, had seen the protests on TikTok and repeatedly asked Hodgkinson-Hedgecox to take him there. She agreed.

She says she went there because she believed social media posts which said asylum seekers had been filming young girls at a park close to the hotel, near the centre of Tamworth. But Hodgkinson-Hedgecox acknowledges the claims may not have been true.

“I did swear. I was just shouting to the police, like, how would you like it if your child has been videoed by them? There’s a level where you should be sticking up for us as well as them,” she says.

“I was frustrated, I was really frustrated. Everybody’s got an opinion on what’s going on right now.”

The former factory worker, with Brady at her side, stayed there as the violence escalated.

“When they started smashing the windows, they were throwing fireworks through the holes and they were going bang in the building, I thought, something bad’s going to happen here,” she says.

“As soon as I seen the lighter go on that petrol bomb I thought, oh my God, this building’s going to go down. I was really concerned for [the people inside]. I thought, wow, this is gonna go up in flames, gonna kill them all. And it’s not right, it’s wrong. It’s so wrong.”

Hodgkinson-Hedgecox has been jailed several times. Until the riots, her last conviction, for battery, was in 2009. She says she has turned her life around since and is totally focused on her family.

“I accept that I was wrong for being there. I should never have been there. And I accept I should have never took a child with me either,” she says. “Massive regret, huge regret. It’s bad parenting.”

Patriotic Alternative, a far-right, anti-immigration group run by former BNP activist Mark Collett contacted Hodgkinson-Hedgecox’s partner Charlotte after she was jailed.

It offered her £1,000, saying it was providing financial support to the families of some of those convicted for their role in the rioting, describing them as political prisoners. Charlotte, who told us she was in a bad place after her partner was convicted, says she now regrets accepting the money.

In Rotherham, Ross Hart took part in a protest outside another asylum hotel. The 30-year-old says he was angry about the number of people arriving in the UK in small boats.

“All these migrants coming over, they get the hotels, they get their food,” he says. “They get everything they need to get set up. That comes out of taxpayers’ money.”

The protest began peacefully, but as it escalated, Hart was filmed joining men rocking a police van.

It was “adrenaline”, “a heat of the moment thing”, he says. “Just show them that we’ve had enough and you need to listen to us.”

Hart was also filmed vandalising one of the hotel’s air conditioning units. “At that time basically, only thing people cared about then were making sure they left that hotel. Long story short: get them out.”

Just as in Tamworth, rioters set fire to the hotel. Hart was not involved in the arson but he stood by and watched. And he admits to giving little thought to the plight of those trapped inside.

“I don’t think none of that came into nobody’s mind because enough’s enough. No, I wouldn’t say I wanted them to die, I wanted them gone.”

Hart was jailed for two years and 10 months after pleading guilty to violent disorder. Like Hodgkinson-Hedgecox, he had been jailed as a teenager. Two years ago, he was also convicted for assaulting a woman.

Hart, who is unemployed, has anxiety, depression and borderline personality disorder. He says he was not taking his medication in the run up to the riots, but doubts it would have made much difference to his actions.

“I do believe if I’d have had my medication, I probably would have still been there,” he says. “But I don’t think I have done anything at all, to be honest.”

Ross Hart, like Amy Hodgkinson-Hedgecox, has been released early on licence, but his views on asylum seekers have not been affected by his jailing. We showed him a social media image which appears to show migrants on a boat heading to the UK. It features a comment he posted: “Sink the lot dirty rats”.

When challenged about the offensive post, he says: “There’s nowt racist about that. To me, there’s nowt wrong with that, what I’ve put there.”

The anger over the housing of asylum seekers in hotels has not gone away. At least 12 people were charged after violence broke out at a protest outside an Essex hotel last month.

“Social media has got a lot to answer for and personally, do I think it’s gonna happen again? Yeah, absolutely I do,” says Hodgkinson-Hedgecox. “Would I attend? No, definitely not. Do I believe everything that I read on social media now? No. I really, really don’t.”

“I’m a quiet person now, I’ve got a quiet life. I just wanna move forward from this, learn from my mistakes, and just go back to being the family person that I am.”

One target of the 2024 riots – Southport Imam Ibrahim Hussein, whose mosque was attacked – says he has forgiven those rioters who have written to him to apologise. But Mr Hussein says the fear has not gone away for many Muslims like him.

“I’m afraid it’s like if you crack a big piece of glass, it’s very hard to put it back,” he says. “It is a scary time when you are labelled for what you believe.”

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