How Andrew McIntyre hijacked the death of three young girls in Southport to spread far-right hatred
Condemnation of McInytre's action by councillor who saw disorder unfold on his doorstep in the town
In the hours after three young girls were brutally murdered and several more injured in the most shocking incident to hit Southport in living memory, the town and nation was left in shock and devastation.
The families of those involved were left with a heartbreak and suffering that will remain for the rest of their lives, while those who lived nearby struggled to come to terms with what had happened, completely unaware of what was to come next.
As a town centre rally was organised to bring the shocked community together and pay tribute to the victims of the attack, taxi driver Andrew McIntyre used that same time to hijack the tragedy, playing a key role in whipping up a storm of hatred and the subsequent riots which saw a mosque attacked with missiles and flaming objects, homes damaged by rampaging thugs, a family-run shop looted, and police officers attacked and injured.
He was this week handed a seven-and-a-half year sentence at Liverpool Crown Court after pleading guilty to encouraging violent disorder and criminal damage and possession of a bladed article in a public place.
Southport MP Patrick Hurley, who was elected to office just three weeks before the riots took place, told The Lead he hopes McIntyre ‘stays behind bars for a long time’.
This is the story of how the 39-year-old - who set the time and location for the initial riot - used anonymous social media accounts to ramp up that hatred and disorder; how he had tried to do so previously in Merseyside and would later attempt it across the country; and how HOPE not hate helped to bring him to justice.
The first attempt
In February 2023, a riot broke out in Knowsley, Merseyside, outside a hotel housing asylum seekers. A supposedly peaceful protest turned violent and ended with a police carrier being set on fire and officers injured. It also sparked a string of further anti-migrant protests at asylum accommodation sites across the country.
At that time, McIntyre was working as a taxi driver and while he did not attend Knowsley, he got to work online trying to arrange further disorder using a string of anonymous TikTok and Telegram accounts.
Using aggressive rhetoric and flame emojis within his hateful messages, McIntyre attempted to push people into getting involved in further riots. His efforts were largely unsuccessful but laid the groundworks for the tactics he would use with more effect in 2023.
Far-right politics and online hatred
In the years leading up to the riots, McIntyre was a largely unknown figure but investigations by HOPE not hate have uncovered associations with the banned far-right group Patriotic Alternative and vocal support for Reform UK leader Nigel Farage.
McIntyre, who also had an unhealthy obsession with knives and often recorded himself using a bow and arrow to desecrate copies of the Qu’ran, was an active member of the North West branch of PA in the 2021 before falling out with key members. While his involvement was brief, it did bring him closer into far right circles and in particular led to a hatred of the group’s critics.
Over the next two years, in grudges which HOPE not hate describe as “unhinged and disturbing” even by the standards of the online far right, devoted huge amounts of time to posting abusive message, threats of rape and violence, and staggering amounts of degrading pornography.
On one night in September 2022, he used two separate accounts between the hours of 4am – 8am to post over 400 videos of women being choked and smeared with faeces into various chat groups against which he was pursuing a vendetta.
At around this time, McIntyre was also a supporter of Farage and Reform, leaving supportive comments on YouTube such as “VOTE REFORM” and “WE NEED YOU NOW, DO NOT LET US DOWN” under videos from the party in late 2022 and early 2023.
Following his failed efforts to reignite a riot in Knowsley in early 2023, McIntyre began to participate in offline activities once more, and that summer joined a small far-right pagan grouping in the North West, the “Green Man’s Hearth”, which is itself largely composed of current and former PA members.
By September, he had moved on to the small fascist group Vanguard Britannica, but this again seems to have been a short-lived membership. In February 2024, he also promoted the fascist martial arts training group Active Club North West for a short period. However, it is unclear how actively he engaged with either group, beyond sharing their posts extensively in far-right Telegram chats.
While these affiliations with more officially organised groups were short-lived, McIntyre passion and dedication to his online activities was much more deep-rooted.
A HOPE not hate spokesperson said: “There is a stark contrast between McIntyre’s short-lived efforts to engage with offline far-right groups and the intense energy with which he pursued his vicious online harassment campaigns and incitement to violent rioting.
“The overall picture of McIntyre’s social media use is of a man so consumed with hate and violence that he could find little satisfaction in activities that did not immediately quench his desire for harming others.
“His motivation to spread fear and violence was not an expression of political dissatisfaction or even solely an outcome of his extreme ideology, but a seemingly pathological desire to harass, abuse and cause suffering to others.
“The country is safer with Andrew McIntyre behind bars. HOPE not hate is proud to have provided the evidence against him, and grateful to the supporters who make our work possible.”
Southport ‘Wake Up’
Within hours of the Southport attack, as rumours circulated across all forms of social media, the notoriously unregulated and hard to monitor Telegram platform became central to the organisation of the riots.
Using the “Stimpy”, McIntyre used Telegram to call for a demonstration on St Luke’s Road, Southport, at 8pm the following day. In quick succession, he also created a TikTok account and Telegram channel to promote the protest, calling the latter “Southport Wake Up”.
The location was a short walk away from both the site of the attack and the town centre vigils which were happening the same day but the real reason for this choice was the presence of a mosque.
In an accompanying post, “Stimpy” made his intentions clear, captioning a Google Maps screenshot “time for a 🔥 TIME FOR WAR”
As well as representing Cambridge Ward on Sefton Council, Cllr Mike Sammon grew up in the town and lives on the same street as the mosque. While the knife attack 24 hours earlier felt far too close to home, the riots quite literally came to his doorstep.
He told The Lead: “I was shocked when I received a WhatsApp message warning me that there is going to be a far right riot on my road. I had just got back from the highly emotional vigil for the victims' families outside The Atkinson in Southport town centre. Within minutes the clearly organised attack on the Mosque had begun. I was disgusted as the Muslim people in Southport are a part of our community so it felt like an attack on all of us….
“The violence that broke out in the hours that followed was truly terrifying, especially for vulnerable people and children. My son who was 8 at the time was screaming that he doesn’t want to die and was asking if it was a war like in Ukraine.
“I wish those that joined in and supported the riot could see the horror they brought. I feel it was deeply disrespectful to the victims’ families and also to our brave police officers, some of whom may have been the heroes on Hart Street the day before.”
This would be the opening of McIntyre’s short, but influential, campaign as the earliest instigator of the violence that would grip the UK for the next fortnight. The Southport Wake Up channel gained over 13,000 subscribers in the week that followed, and its content set an apocalyptic and violent tone that would permeate the disorder that followed.
McIntyre did attend this riot and was arrested there after being caught with a flick knife. He was released on bail and used the following days to issue more threats and identify his next target - two mosques in Liverpool, to be targeted on Friday and Saturday evening that week.
Attempts to fuel further chaos
As much of the country recoiled in horror at what had happened and the Southport community rallied together for the second time in as many days, this time uniting to clean up the damage which had been left behind on the streets and properties around St Luke’s Road, McIntyre was using Telegram to praise those who took part in the disorder.
In one post, he wrote: “WELL DONE LAST NIGHT LADS, TO ALL YOU HEAVY HITTERS… ARE YOU READY FOR ROUND 2????”
It was here he identified the next targets and while Friday saw little to no action, Saturday was a different story.
As evening fell and disorder spread across England, a large group who had attended an earlier demonstration in Liverpool city centre began to head up County Road towards the mosque, as McIntyre had directed. The mob engaged in running battles with police, destroyed an Islamic leaflet stall in the city centre, and, ultimately, burned down a library when they were prevented from reaching their target.
McIntyre’s posts during that time included “THE MOSQUES MUST BURN” and encouragement for “protestors” to bring molotov cocktails to use against their targets.
On Sunday, another wave of extraordinarily violent riots upturned towns and cities across the country. This included two attempts to burn down hotels housing asylum seekers in Rotherham and Tamworth, with large mobs attacking the police officers who were attempting to protect the buildings.
The following Monday, McIntyre attempted to take his campaign nationwide. He produced a list of 39 targets across England, mostly the offices of asylum services, to be targeted on the evening of August 7. He posted this list to the Southport Wake Up channel alongside flame emojis and encouraged the prospective rioters to conceal their identity as he rallied, “THEY WON’T STOP COMING UNTIL YOU TELL THEM… NO MORE IMMIGRATION”.
On August 5, a day after two separate mob attacks on hotels housing asylum seekers, he shared a video of the 2019 Christchurch mosque terror attack, coupled with a caption lauding the shooter: “WHITE LEGEND. FUCK ISLAM. FUCK JEWS”.
In reply to another Telegram user who suggested that civil war might soon break out in the UK, McIntyre said: “I say a prayer every night asking only for this”.
Brought to justice
The combination of McIntyre’s determination to spread hatred and his strategies of quickly switching through anonymous accounts fuelled an urgency to track down and identify him.
With little way of tracing Telegram accounts, Hope not hate’s team instead undertook the arduous task of scrutinising the content of every message posted by the Southport Wake Up channel and the accounts he used to moderate the accompanying chat group, searching for anything that we could use as a lead.
While doing so, they noticed that four of the accounts used the word “eiy” which was seemingly used instead of “aye” and was unfamiliar to the anti-facism group.
This discovery allowed Hope not hate to search archived messages from UK-based far-right Telegram chats and identify another eleven accounts belonging to McIntyre, some dating back as far as 2021. This led to further clues such as an unusual spelling of a racial slur and the use of “abaa” instead of about.
While neither were unique to him, they are both used rarely enough that it enabled other deleted accounts to be uncovered. Eventually, 155 Telegram accounts belonging to McIntyre and 13 others across YouTube, TikTok and Twitter were found and older ones contained clues about his location.
Small details and geo-locating backgrounds of photographs enabled the group to track down his exact flat and information was handed to the police one week after the riots. Within a couple more days, McIntyre was arrested.
Devastating result of stirred-up hatred
In the time between the Southport riots and his arrest, McIntyre created the list of 39 locations to be targeted across the UK, predominantly offices of asylum support organisations - which provoked fear and panic. Thankfully, and in part due to anti-fascist mobilisation, none of the sites suffered serious disruption.
However, by this point serious disorder and rioting had spread to numerous cities across the UK, leaving communities terrorised and properties vandalised and torched. Some 300 police officers were injured and at least 1,590 people have been arrested on suspicion of involvement in the riots that followed. In relation to Southport alone, more than 50 officers were injured, while 163 people have been arrested, 121 charged and 90 sentenced.
Cllr Sammon said: “Andrew McIntyre’s or anyone else’s attempts to divide us will only make us stronger. This was proven the day after as we witnessed the greatest display of community action I have ever seen.
“The road was cleaned up and the Mosque wall was rebuilt. Donations flew in for the shop that had been looted and properties that were damaged. These incredibly kind people showed us all what a great and caring community we have in Southport.
“I thank HOPE not hate for their amazing investigation which led to the arrest and for their continued work to stand up to hate and unite communities.”
Hurley, the Labour MP for the seaside resort, told The Lead: “I welcome the sentencing, as should any right-thinking person. It shows there's no room for extremism in this country, no matter what the nature of their radicalisation.
“Successfully instigating a race riot in the next town over from his own was despicable, and I'm glad the police caught him so quickly. Violent, dangerous people like this belong behind bars, and I hope he stays there a long time.”
The Southport Lead to launch
We think it’s crucial there’s in-depth reporting in towns and regions often overlooked in the North of England, that’s why we launched The Lead North with
, , and .This weekend we launch
- in conjunction with , the author of this piece, who lived through the Southport riots and Andrew Brown, editor of Stand Up For Southport and a huge advocate for the town.Please do consider signing up, and let those you know in Southport know we’ll be launching too.
A reminder about our reader survey, it’s important we as editors know how you’re finding our editions in your inbox and what you’d like to see. Please take a moment to fill it in.
Many thanks for reading and we’ll be back in your inbox on Saturday.
Ed, Zoe, Luke, Sophie, Natalie and Leah