Tears in the dock, disbelief in the gallery: Inside a Liverpool court processing far-Right rioters

On a quiet Thursday morning, the scars inflicted on Liverpool by last weekend’s riots are easy to spot. Outside B&M in Clayton Square, where rioters propelled fireworks at police and civilians on Saturday night, bricks have been carefully laid back into the cobblestone street. To the left of the store, a set of sliding doors to a shopping centre have been boarded up.

But it’s 10 minutes’ walk away, at Liverpool Crown Court on Red Cross Street, where the real mop-up has begun. Like many across the country, the court is now hearing fast-tracked cases linked to the riots as Britain tries to reckon with the enormity of last week’s violence. On Thursday, in Liverpool, four men were given custodial sentences for their part in the far-Right uproar, which began in the town of Southport last Tuesday – following the killing of three children at a dance club the previous day – before spilling out across the rest of the country.

As Southport’s closest major city, Liverpool was one of the areas worst hit by the riots, which were caused, in part, by “misinformation and racial or religious hatred” online, in the words of Judge Neil Flewitt. His colleague, Judge Andrew Menary, described how opportunists had published social media posts and leaflets that contained “false information about the ethnicity, nationality and religion of the alleged attacker”.

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All this culminated in a “protest” organised around Liverpool’s Pier Head, which began at 2pm on Saturday August 3. Two of the men sentenced on Thursday, Adam Wharton, 28, and his brother Ellis Wharton, 22, had pleaded guilty at an earlier hearing to burglary with intent to steal at the Spellow Lane Library, a building that was set alight on Saturday night, along with the food bank inside it. Adam was jailed for 20 months, Ellis for 11.

William Morgan, 69, from Walton in Liverpool, the oldest person to be arrested in connection with the riots anywhere in the country, was sentenced to two years and eight months in prison for violent disorder and possession of an offensive weapon, while John O’Malley, 43, from Southport, received the same sentence for his part in the riot last Tuesday. O’Malley, said Judge Flewitt, had been at the front of a “baying mob”.

Both Morgan and O’Malley looked unfazed when told that their sentences would be broadcast to the nation as part of the Cameras in Court scheme. But, while O’Malley was no stranger to the criminal justice system, with two prior convictions to his name, the most recent for assault, pensioner Morgan was of previous “good character” and had “no experience of the custodial sentence to come”.

“It is very sad indeed to see someone of your age and character in the dock of a crown court,” said Judge Flewitt.

It was said then and repeated in the afternoon, at the sentencing of the Wharton brothers, that the sentences handed down for rioters are expected to serve as both a “punishment and deterrent”. Prime Minister Keir Starmer is hoping that tough jail terms, along with the live-streaming of sentencing and a potential football-match ban will quell the violence and “guarantee” that all those arrested regret their actions.

Perhaps that will come to be true of O’Malley, but it seemed that his 69-year-old co-defendant was already contrite. Morgan kept his head down as bodycam footage of his arrest was played out, and seemed close to tears as the judge delivered his remarks.

The court seemed to wonder how the widower and father of three had ended up drawn into the events of the weekend. At one point he said “I’m f---ing 70”, the footage showed, and an officer responded: “Well, why are you at a f---ing riot?”. In the public gallery was a tall man with dark hair and angular features like Morgan’s, seemingly his son, who appeared devastated as the sentence was delivered.

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No one arrived to see O’Malley, a gasfitter by trade, sent down. He had watched intently as evidence displaying his role at the Southport riot was shown to the court. The footage displayed the full destruction wrought by the riots: men jumped on top of police vans, smashing up the windows and setting wheelie bins alight, while others destroyed the front walls of houses and trampled gardens.

The footage showed, too, how some of the rioters stopped to film the evidence of the destruction on their own phones, an act which surely helped incite violence across the country but which has also led to the arrest of many involved: several men have been charged after being identified by members of the public on TikTok.

It is no surprise that Liverpudlians and the citizens of Southport felt happy to turn in the rioters. The judge at this first sentencing read out the community impact statement written by Merseyside chief constable Serena Kennedy, who described how her officers had sustained severe injuries including “both legs fractured, teeth knocked out, broken jaws, and many other wounds”. There was also “disbelief that officers had not been killed” in the course of the riots.

Morgan is not the only one whose behaviour at the later riots in Liverpool last weekend was deemed out of character. In ordinary times, the actions of Ellis Wharton would not have merited a custodial sentence, his lawyer argued, given his youth and lack of previous convictions. Police have made almost 500 arrests across the country, surely a reflection of the fact that so many ordinary people were drawn into the violence following lies shared online. Notably missing on Thursday were “keyboard warriors” whose words caused so much damage.

But the Wharton brothers’ case also showed the opportunism of those involved – and served as a reminder that not all those taking part in the rioting were racially motivated, with the judge declaring his satisfaction that neither had been motivated by racism.

Ellis had been at home in bed at his mother’s house when Adam knocked on his bedroom door and asked him to come looting with him. The two packed a mask and a balaclava before heading out to the library in search of computer monitors. Ellis went inside the building alone, with Adam waiting outside, acting as a lookout.

Ellis was confronted by a policeman who he punched in the chest. He was wrestled to the ground and ended up with a black eye. But, although the injuries to the officer were minor, the judge was minded to hand down a custodial sentence to be served immediately, rather than the suspended sentence expected. It was a verdict that made Wharton’s mother, in the public gallery, gasp and then cry.

Throughout the proceedings the presence of the press was never far from consideration: those in the gallery outnumbered members of the court two to one. It was the high profile of the crimes that prompted Ellis’s lawyer – representing him separately to Adam – to advise Ellis to change his plea to the charge of assault from not guilty to guilty.

Adam, too, noticed the press, often peering over at journalists as he waited agitatedly for his sentence – a matter of routine to a man who has 16 previous convictions ranging back to his youth. He tried to get the attention of his brother, who stared ahead fixedly. When the two were sent down Adam waved at their mother, who shouted “love ya” back. Ellis said nothing.

Though the Prime Minister has promised that trials will be held around the clock, this was a day of typical court bureaucracy. It would not be possible to complete more than two trials in a day at this pace, with the judge in the Wharton brothers’ case pausing the sentencing to call an hour for lunch.

What rush there was seemed to have impeded the proceedings. The court was unable to ascertain from a short-notice probationary report whether the elder Wharton brother, believed to have “involved and encouraged” the younger, had ever been diagnosed with a range of conditions – autism, ADHD, PTSD and schizophrenia – or whether these had remained undiagnosed, and what impact such diagnoses might have had on Saturday night.

What was clear was the wastefulness of all this at a time when Merseyside’s forces are stretched thin. Fifty officers have been assigned to investigate the riots, chief constable Kennedy said in her statement, on top of those assigned to the devastating triple killing in Southport. At this rate, those aggrieved by the events of the past week will face a long wait for closure.