Southport residents clean-up streets amid protest ‘heartbreak’

Another man, whose son is a police officer, broke down as he told BBC Radio Merseyside: “What does this have to do with those little girls?”

He said men in balaclavas had streamed towards the mosque.

Broken glass and a few tattered placards covered with handwritten slogans have been left scattered around the area.

People have been out with brushes to sweep up in the aftermath of the violence, with rubbish and debris being dumped from trucks into skips.

One man stood on a bridge watching the disorder from the night before said he saw a protest filled with people “intent on trouble”.

“They were running through the back gardens pulling bricks off the walls,” he said, adding many of those involved he had “never seen before in my life”.

“It’s just wrong, totally wrong, those police officers were trying to do a job, it’s horrendous.”