Every Saturday night throughout summer, young people gather in Bristol’s historic Castle Park to sit on blankets under the cherry blossom trees, eating ice cream and drinking from cans as reggae, dub and drum n bass rattle through tinny speakers. The music competes with the squawks of the city’s seagulls, the roar of traffic leaving the Galleries mall, and the strumming of a guitar. Teenagers try out circus skills, while bikes whizz along the river towards the bars and clubs of Old Market.
This weekend, the scene was very different.
Gangs of far-right race rioters stormed the park, passing its commemorative plaque to the city’s anti-fascists who fought in Spain in the 1930s. They were joined by those pulled into the far right via a toxic mix of anti-vaxx, anti-LGBTQ, QAnon conspiracy theories. Punches were thrown at a Black passer-by. Counter-protesters insisted that fascists and racists were not welcome here, before moving south to the river to form a human barrier around a hotel housing migrant people, which the mob attempted to attack.
