This article is remarkable and I highly recommend reading it. Three notable paragraphs from it are very telling:
Sheffield crown court heard that Birley, a painter and decorator from Swinton, was involved in many of the worst incidents on that Sunday afternoon, including adding wood to a fire in a large industrial bin that had been pushed against an exit, and helping to place another bin on top of the one ablaze.
Birley was also filmed throwing missiles at police, squaring up to officers while brandishing a police baton and throwing a large bin that crashed into a line of police with riot shields.
He is the first person to be sentenced for arson with intent to endanger life after the 12 hours of violence in Manvers that left 64 police officers, three horses and a dog injured.
It’s incredible to what lengths this racist and his cohorts went to bring harm unto others. Notably, immigrants who gave up all they had because of great desperation.
Imagine if you will, going from one hell and entering another where people like Thomas Birley placed flaming bins by the hotel exit door. Subsequently adding wood to fuel the fire further.
And if this doesn’t go far enough to demonstrate the trauma he and his fellow racists wrought, the hotel staff’s reaction might lend some insight on that:
The judge Jeremy Richardson KC heard how 22 staff in the hotel barricaded themselves into a panic room using freezers and “thought they were going to burn to death”.
