Glyn Guest (60) said he had only gone to walk his dogs that Sunday. Ten days later, on Wednesday this week, he wept quietly in his chair at Peterborough prison. The scene was relayed to his distraught family over video link as they watched from the gallery of Sheffield crown court, where Guest’s fate was about to be decided.
He didn’t just walk his dogs on August 4th. He also joined 500 people at a violent protest at a Holiday Inn Express hotel in the Manvers area of Wath-upon-Dearne, a tidy village 8km north of the Yorkshire town of Rotherham. Guest lived nearby.
“Why did he go?” asked Judge Jeremy Richardson before he sentenced Guest, who had pleaded guilty to violent disorder at an earlier magistrate hearing. “He can’t explain it,” replied his barrister. “It started off as curiosity and he got drawn in.”
It was at the height of the unrest that swept Britain after three girls were stabbed to death in Southport. Right-wing extremist agitators used the killings to stir a frenzy against asylum seekers by falsely claiming the Southport suspect was an immigrant.
After a week of violence, more than 1,100 alleged rioters have been arrested across Britain and at least 650 charged, with more expected. The UK’s worst civil unrest since the London riots of 2011 shocked the nation out of its balmy August holiday torpor.
The hotel, beside an Aldi supermarket among modern, suburban housing estates on the site of an old coal mine, housed 240 asylum seekers. The agitators falsely claimed on social media that male residents were constantly harassing local women.
The crowd descended late that Sunday morning. Up to 200 attacked the property, smashing windows, lighting fires and hurling missiles at the vastly outnumbered lines of police stopping them from storming the hotel to reach the residents cowering inside.
By the time order was restored in the early evening, 60 officers had been injured, along with four police dogs and a horse. Nearby houses had had their fences torn down and thrown at police. The hotel was trashed after it was briefly invaded. No asylum seekers were hurt.
They didn’t yet know it at the time, but many rioters such as Guest had ruined the next few years of their lives – Britain’s judicial system has been harsh on those involved.
Footage from the body-worn camera of a young female officer, PC Clarke, showed Guest at the front of the crowd as he aggressively approached a line of officers five times in succession. On his sixth foray he grabbed at a riot shield, causing an officer to slip down a grassy bank to jeers from the crowd. PC Clarke was “terrified” as missiles rained down.
Guest was in prison briefly 39 years before but had no convictions since 2011 and those before were mostly minor. He lived at home with his partner, who on Wednesday sobbed in the gallery. Two young men with her shook their heads solemnly as the judge lambasted the “racist” rioters.
Guest’s barrister pleaded that his client had anxiety and depression. He had broken his nose in the riot. Prison would be difficult for him, said the lawyer. He could barely read or write as he was dyslexic: “This morning he didn’t even know what prison he was in.”
On the video link, Guest crouched over, hugging himself and whimpering.
“He is the author of his own misfortune,” said the judge, who said he was part of widespread disorder that was “fostered by a form of malignancy in society”, leading to mobs that were “racist in character”. It “cast an ugly stain” on Rotherham and Britain, he said.
The judge sentenced Guest to two years and eight months in prison. His shell-shocked family filed silently out of the gallery as others replaced them. A slew of sentencings related to the Manvers riot were due in the court.
Stuart Bolton (38) from the New Holland area of Humberside and Elliott Wragg (23) from Assembly Way, Barnsley, entered the dock behind glass. Both had pleaded guilty to violent disorder at the hotel, with a maximum sentence of five years. With a third off for early guilty pleas, they faced theoretical maximums of three years and four months.
Bolton, a short, muscle-bound man, also pleaded guilty to driving while disqualified and without insurance. He had driven to the protest with his wife and 15-year-old son. His wife had driven away but he stayed on. Now she was comforted by their daughter as both looked down at Bolton, who mouthed kisses from the dock. He also smirked frequently.
Bolton claimed to have no relevant political views, yet the judge noted he had travelled 50 miles (80km) to Manvers. He was part of a posse of 70-80 rioters who hemmed in a group of police near a wall. He shouted abuse. He told one officer of Asian descent: “Come here, you P*ki, finish it, finish it ... You, you P*ki bastard ... One-on-one I’ll kill you ... You’re a f**king dosser.”
He called other officers “bald bent bastards ... I’ll f***ing wrap the lot of you.” The crowd collectively chanted “Yorkshire, Yorkshire”, as if at a sports match. A separate crowd had chanted “who the f*** is Allah?”
Bolton had a record of violence, including an affray in 2020 in which he chased a man with a baseball bat during a row after Bolton’s child had thrown yoghurt. “He knows he has shamed his family,” said his lawyer. His older daughter would have to try to keep his groundwork business going. Judge Richardson confiscated Bolton’s Mercedes, even though he claimed his wife needed it. The judge noted that Bolton had described himself to police as a small man and as having anger issues as a consequence. He sentenced Bolton to two years and eight months. Six months was due to the racism.
Wragg had never been in trouble before. He worked the same job since he was 16. He has a three-year-old daughter with his girlfriend, who was in the gallery and seemed bereft. She sobbed loudly, covered her face and collapsed in disbelief as the judge sentenced Wragg to two years and four months. Wragg kept his composure but sighed and heaved his shoulders as he watched her distress. His lawyer told the judge he had “no racist views” but he had responded to information on social media. He was part of the same posse as Bolton, some of whom – not Bolton – had pelted officers.
As Bolton and Wragg were led from the dock, laughter could be heard coming from their direction as the doors closed.
Trevor Lloyd (49) of Oak Avenue, Rotherham, was part of a group that pushed officers back as the hotel’s doors were smashed in. He briefly entered the building. The footage showed him wearing a T-shirt with a large Adidas logo. “I can’t imagine Adidas will be happy with that,” said the judge.
Lloyd was calm on video link from prison as he was sentenced to three years for violent disorder. He had 45 convictions going back to 1993. In 2015 he was convicted for carrying an air rifle. His life had been blighted by drugs. The judge said he had shown a terrible example to his youngest daughter, aged nine, as one of his adult daughters wept in the gallery.
Peter Lynch (61) of Burman Road, Wath-upon-Dearne, was distraught over video link from prison as his sentencing was put back due to technical difficulties with the feed. “Oh my God, oh my God,” he said. “When will I know?” he asked, his voice trembling. He will be brought to court next week.
Thirty-one-year-old Billy Pemberton’s lawyer said his client was “utterly dejected”, as he received two years and four months for violent disorder, and for taking a police baton. He later rang a friend, a police officer, to ask what to do with it. His officer friend told him to hand it in.
In the evening after the court hearings, the August sun shone on the Holiday Inn. Locals shopped in the nearby Aldi while the Bluebell Inn pub did a brisk trade across the road.
At least 20 of the hotel’s windows and doors had been smashed in and were boarded up. The entrance was taped off: “Police line – do not cross.” There were no asylum seekers visible – they had been spirited out in the middle of the night after the riot.
Parents told their children not to play on the scorched grass. “There’s glass everywhere,” warned one mother.
A huge union flag was visible in the window of the Aldi: “Championing Great British quality.”
Meanwhile, a small sticker had been placed on the plywood boarding up one window. It was a quote from Charlie Chaplin: “In this world there is room for everyone.”
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