When the news broke of stabbings at a children’s dance class in Southport this summer, a palpable sense of grief, horror and anger rippled across the country.

From the collective anguish brought on by the incident in which three young girls died, variations on the same question emerged: “Who would do such a thing?”

Fabricated internet rumours claimed to have the answer: the man to blame was an asylum seeker who had arrived in the UK illegally last year and was on an M16 watchlist.

There was one big problem: none of it was true.

Once lit, the touchpaper of disinformation burned quickly. Although the rumour was roundly debunked, within a week riots led by the far right and fuelled by anti-immigrant hate had swept across many parts of the country, from Southport to Liverpool, Manchester, Sunderland, Hull and Leeds. In Rotherham, rioters tried to torch a hotel housing migrants.

Soon, almost 30 racially motivated “anti-immigration demonstrations and riots” erupted in 27 towns and cities in the UK. In France, the Libération newspaper called Britain a “Disunited Kingdom”. Australia, Nigeria, Malaysia and Indonesia issued travel alerts; Elon Musk declared civil war “inevitable”.

Within days, the same question asked of the Southport attacks was being asked of the riots that left members of minority communities fearing for their lives: who would do such a thing?

Competing claims have been made about the nature of the rioters, from racists and terrorists, to left-behind communities whose legitimate anger has been warped by the far right.

The Guardian has scrutinised data that provides insights into the lives of those accused of taking part in the unrest.

Using court filings we have tracked the cases of almost 500 alleged rioters and cross referenced their personal details with other publicly available data.

The findings provide the first comprehensive picture of those who took part in the riots – and challenge some of the assumptions made in their aftermath.

The myth of the ‘out-of-town’ rioter

The morning after the first riots at the scene of the Southport attacks, residents awoke to devastation on their doorsteps. The community quickly mobilised, wielding brooms. Nearby walls that had been torn down and used as ammunition were rebuilt.

Among the early-morning volunteers was Norman Wallis, the chief executive of Southport Pleasureland, who voiced a common sentiment: the people piecing the streets back together were the true residents of Southport, whereas those who had ripped it apart in the first place were others, from elsewhere.

“Those people from out of town – they came in buses and cars and had changes of clothes. They just started to riot and do this,” he said.

It was a view echoed by the Labour MP for Southport, Patrick Hurley, who told the BBC Radio 4’s Today programme the next morning that the unrest was “led by people from outside the town”. It was a tempting conclusion to draw for those living in riot-hit areas. But it was not true.

Data gathered by the Guardian on more than half of those charged to date shows that to be untrue. The majority of people charged in connection with the unrest were local to the disturbances in which they were accused of taking part. Analysis of the home addresses provided by those charged found that three-quarters lived within a 5-mile radius.

According to Marcus North, a researcher at Hope Not Hate, this reflects the fact that the British far right is more atomised, with political parties such as the British National party or street movements such as the English Defence League no longer dominating the scene.

“While it may be comforting to believe that the riots and disturbances were primarily driven by out-of-towners, most of those involved appear to be locals who are plugged into far-right networks online,” he said, adding that this reflected the “post-organisational” nature of the modern far right, posing “new challenges”.

The longest distance between a riot and a defendant’s home address in our dataset was that of George Coldicott, aged 28. Coldicott, of Leominster, was involved in the unrest in London on 31 July where he threw a metal fence panel at a police officer. He then also took part in disturbances in Bristol on 3 August.

Deprived, in bad health and out of work

Head north-east out of Manchester, on the road towards Oldham, and you will pass through a neighbourhood called Miles Platting. The site of slum clearances in the 1950s, the estate has had substantial recent investment to regenerate the area. The local pool closed more than a decade ago but community hubs remain: a community library, the local park, a nearby theatre – all located in the shadow of Manchester City’s Etihad Campus.

But Miles Platting is also the neighbourhood with the highest rate of people charged for taking part in the riots. At least six people from this estate have been prosecuted so far.

The area has levels of deprivation higher than the average for both England and Manchester. Close to two-thirds of households are considered deprived, substantially above the average. It is a common trait across the neighbourhoods from which the rioters hail.

Well over half of those charged with offences – most commonly violent disorder – came from the most deprived 20% of neighbourhoods.

But social deprivation is not the only commonality. Using census figures, the Guardian found that suspected rioters were also far more likely to live in areas with high levels of poor health. More than a third (36%) came from the 10% of neighbourhoods with the worst self-reported health levels. In the Hendon and Docks area of Sunderland where at least six residents were charged, almost 12% of people said they were in bad or very bad health in 2021, compared with 5.4% across England and Wales.

More than a quarter (29%) of rioters came from the 10% of neighbourhoods with the lowest levels of qualifications. Areas that have the most residents with no qualifications or a level 1 certificate as their highest include Hendon and Docks as well as Bolton upon Dearne. There was also a correlation between where rioters lived and high proportions of people not in employment.

Dr Stephanie Alice Baker, a reader in sociology at City St George’s, University of London, has advised the UK parliament on online radicalisation and extremism. She observed that people who followed populist influencers expressed feeling “left behind” as well as displaying a growing distrust in institutions.

“Decades of austerity, a cost of living crisis, the pandemic, inflation, rising rents, mortgages and energy bills have intensified collective grievances,” she told the Guardian.

“At the same time, there has been an erosion of institutional trust that was accentuated during the pandemic. People have lost faith in the system. This has resulted in many turning against the system and putting their [faith] in alternative sources of authority. It provides the conditions for social unrest.”

The politics of division

As the riots raged on, the highest-profile new MP in the UK parliament, Nigel Farage, attracted criticism for “amplifying false information”.

Indeed, analysis of the addresses of rioters charged shows that those areas tend to have higher levels of support for Farage’s Reform UK party: a third live in the 10% most Reform-voting constituencies in the country. In those constituencies that house five or more people charged, close to a quarter (22.3%) of the electorate voted Reform compared with 14.3% UK-wide.

For Baker, this was not a surprise. She said: “Reform UK presents the narrative that Britain is broken and needs reform. The party speaks to some people’s fears of inequality, rising immigration and the changing demographic of the country – and provides a solution in the form of Nigel Farage. At the same time, Farage’s populist politics feeds these sentiments.”

But anti-immigrant sentiment predates the party, founded in 2018 as the Brexit party before a 2021 rebrand. As North pointed out: “The riots did not emerge from a vacuum but were fed by years of anti-migrant and anti-Muslim rhetoric and campaigning from the far right, from mainstream politicians and the reactionary press.”

No surprise, then, that in the days and weeks that followed the Southport incident there have been attempts from some of these quarters to legitimise the actions of those involved in the riots.

Stephen Yaxley-Lennon – who underwent his own rebrand to become Tommy Robinson – said in an X post that the Southport rioters were “justified in their anger”; Andrew Tate, joined the chorus of those who wrongly claimed the attacker was an “illegal migrant” and called for people to “wake up”; GB News quoted the political commentator Matt Goodwin as saying: “I think what is happening for a lot of people is protest. They are protesting illegal migration, the collapse of our border and being lied to.”

Immigration: perception v reality

An often repeated claim is that the riots were, in part, a rejection of the country’s policy on immigration. But if those people charged in connection with the riots were protesting against the presence of immigrants or asylum seekers, they did not appear to come from areas with appreciably high levels of either.

Analysis of the neighbourhoods with a higher concentration of alleged rioters shows asylum seekers and Afghan and Ukrainian refugees made up 0.43% of the population, compared with 0.38% in the rest of the UK as of June.

In areas with a smaller number of rioters, there is practically no difference between the proportion of asylum seekers housed by the local councils in which they live (0.37% in June 2024) when compared with the national average (0.38%).

The perception of high numbers of migrants coming to the UK is one that research suggests is often skewed. A report by British Future and Ipsos published this week found people thought asylum made up more than five times as much of UK immigration as was actually the case.

On average, the public think people seeking asylum represent more than a third of total immigration (37%) when in reality it accounts for only about 7%.

Angry adults – and an 80-year-old – more than errant youths

This summer’s riots were inevitably compared with the disturbances of 13 years earlier, when widespread rioting broke out in London after the police shooting of 29-year-old Mark Duggan.

As in 2024, the initial Tottenham riot triggered similar disturbances in cities around the country. In both riots, the vast majority of those charged were male (only 7.5% of the 2024 sample are women).

One significant difference, though, is the age profile of those who took to the streets: this time around, those rioting were significantly older.

In 2011 a Ministry of Justice analysis found that only 5.6% of those brought before the courts were over the age of 40 (reflective, in part, of the fact that London is the youngest region in the UK).

By comparison, more than a third of our sample of the first 500 rioters charged in 2024 – 34.6% of defendants – were in that age category.

The oldest person charged so far in the Guardian’s data was 81. Keith Edwards, charged in connection to protests in Nottingham, pleaded not guilty to using threatening, abusive or insulting words or behaviour during the protest. His solicitor said he had no involvement and was actually trying to help police arrest someone else.

One in eight people captured in our sample are minors – significantly lower than in 2011 but still a substantial minority.

Whereas the average age of rioters charged in 2011 skewed younger (although reports differ, the consensus is that they were in their early 20s) the average age of those captured in our 2024 sample is 32.

The youngest person charged – who cannot be named for legal reasons – was just 12.

The evolving role of social media

Social media played an important role in amplifying disinformation and in the organisational sense of spreading word of flare-ups. But there is a marked difference between the online dynamics of the disturbances of the past and this summer’s events, according to Baker.

“In 2024, the internet ecosystem has changed. We now have a series of influencers and prominent public figures who have built large online followings around grievance-mongering and sowing division,” she said.

The role online commentary has played is reflected in the charges brought this time around. As of 10 September, 38 charges had been brought in connection with online activity relating to the 2024 riots, including the distribution of visual images intended to stir up racial hatred or the use of abusive words causing harm to another person.

“Inciting violence and encouraging mass disorder online are incredibly serious offences,” a spokesperson for the National Police Chiefs’ Council said.

“Online crimes have real-world consequences, and you will be dealt with in the same way as those physically present and inflicting the violence. These crimes are deplorable, and we will do everything in our power to bring offenders to justice.”

It is expected that more charges related to online offences – investigations that tend to take longer to complete – will be made in the weeks and months to come.

Additional reporting by Zeke Hunter-Green and Zara Qureshi