Secret agents hunt down far-right rioters

THE country’s most secretive military unit has been called in to help security services crackdown on the sickening wave of violence which has swept across Britain's streets in the wake of the horror attack in Southport.

The Defence Human Intelligence Unit (DHIU) will provide MI5 with vital intelligence by infiltrating far right wing groups believed to be behind much of the rioting since three young girls were murdered at a Taylor Swift-themed dance class last Monday.

It comes as Britain's security services make wider use of covert military intelligence units to combat the far-right elements accused of instigating riots.

Home Office officials are readying plans to call in the Army as part of the Government’s Civil Resilience Plan, if rioting continues to ignite the country and leave overstretched police forces overwhelmed and exhausted.

It was stressed, however, that such a contingency would only be used as a last resort.

The UK Football Policing Unit, which numbers right-wing extremists among the hooligans it targets, is also being repurposed to focus on current events, sources say.

MPs have called for the courts to take the lead from the recent prosecution of Just Stop Oil protestors which saw long jail sentences handed out.

DHIU usually works alongside Special Forces and MI6 abroad, but is also designed to assist MI5 by infiltrating extremist groups at home.

Highly-trained communications teams from the Royal Signals will also be used.

They have the ability to eavesdrop and track mobile phones, and will play a crucial role in determining whether protest plans for any city are genuine.

For the past two decades specialist military units have been operating to keep the UK safe, deploying undercover teams across Britain and Northern Ireland to counter IRA terrorist activity as well as intercepting Islamic extremists.

Its small teams usually consist of a man and a woman who are assigned to follow High Level Targets while other teams monitor their movements in enduring surveillance operations.

“Organisations such as the English Defence League recruit through football clubs and those in charge are increasingly becoming aware of their own personal security,“ said a senior source.

“They are openly posting events on social media and we can use this to our advantage, but if the violence continues to ignite the Home Secretary will be forced to call on the Civil Contingencies Act and use the Army”

The nearest any Home Secretary has come to using the Army to quell rioting was in 2011 following the killing of Mark Duggan on August 4 , when thousands of people took to the streets in Tottenham Hale, London and then across England in a looting and rioting spree which lasted for six weeks.

More than 90 people were arrested after demonstrations organised by far-right groups descended into riots in towns and cities across the UK on Saturday.

There was unrest in Hull, Liverpool, Bristol, Manchester, Stoke-on-Trent, Blackpool and Belfast, with missiles thrown, shops looted and police attacked and injured in some places. One police officvr suffered from a broken jaw.

Other smaller demonstrations elsewhere did not turn violent.

The latest unrest followed days of protests which saw more than 100 people arrested outside Downing Street on Wednesday, and 10 arrests following violence in Sunderland on Friday night which included the throwing of objects at police officers and the setting on fire of a police station.

While some were organised by right-wing extremists, others fall "under a broad anti-multiculturalism, anti-Muslim and anti-government agenda" and have no single organiser, according to the advocacy group Hope Not Hate.

Out of 30 “planned protests” identified by Hope Not Hate as many as a third may be “spoofs”, where intelligence is deliberately planted to divert and split police resources, sources believe.

One example was the planned protest in Dover in Kent, which did not materialise.

The organisation said its researchers did their best to distinguish between genuine and deliberately misleading information.

An extra 70 prosecutors were put on standby this weekend to charge people who set out to cause violent disorder.

Calling for “stiff custodial sentences” former Armed Forces Minister Lord Spellar said: “The police have to take back control of the streets and the courts have to back them by making it unmistakably clear that this disruption of our lives must not and will not continue.”

PM Keir Starmer has announced the formation of a special, highly-mobile police task force that can be deployed across the UK at short notice to counter what he called a ’'tiny, mindless minority" led by the far- right activists.

A similar unit was established by Margaret Thatcher and used to tackle rioting resulting from the Miners strikes in 1984, said former Senior Police Commander Chris Phillips.

“When it comes to those events which are organised by EDL sympathisers, we know who the ringleaders are and I anticipate some will be arrested early," said Phillips, who was head of the National Counter Terrorism Security Office until 2011.

“I also know they will be using the Football monitoring unit - its intelligence unit knows many of these names, and will simply be redeployed to forces on this.

"The new national police seems based on what was done to tackle violence during the miners' strikes - there is precedence."

Last night some experts warned that Britain was now at an inflection point

"This is a dangerous time for all minority groups across the UK, from Jewish communities to Muslim communities and immigrant communities," said Charlotte Littlewood, a former Government counter extremism advisor.

"Reasons range from economic pressures, the increase of globalisation , the live-streaming of war and conflict around the world, the ability to access racial ideas online with ease and the extent to which visual media platforms are being used to spread hate.”

She said that there was a case to be made that many of those involved in the protests are not far-right sympathisers, but added: "The problem is that these so-called moderates don’t seem to be condemning the violence."

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