Claims that Restore Britain campaigner Lewis Holmes was deliberately “attacked with boiling liquid” during clashes with anti-racism protesters in Camden are not supported by the public evidence currently available. Police have described a significantly different sequence of events; while newly published video raises further questions about what actually happened.
Holmes alleged on Saturday that he had been “attacked by a member of the Stand Up to Racism & Socialist Worker Party with boiling liquid”, saying he had been “scalded” while campaigning for Restore Britain in the Holborn and St Pancras by-election. Restore leader Rupert Lowe subsequently said campaigners could no longer gather without fear of being “scalded with boiling liquid”.
However, the Metropolitan Police account reported by multiple news organisations does not say anyone threw boiling liquid at Holmes. Police said that, in one incident, a man alleged that an unknown person struck his hand, causing coffee he was already holding to spill onto his leg. Officers reported no visible injuries at the time, although the man was taken to hospital as a precaution.
That incident was separate from an assault which police say they witnessed. At around 10.20am on Saturday, officers were present as approximately 12 Restore Britain campaigners and around 30 Stand Up to Racism protesters gathered in Parkway, Camden. Police said a woman was seen punching one of the Restore campaigners and was arrested on suspicion of common assault. LBC subsequently described the campaigner as having been “punched in the face”, although the Met statement reproduced by the outlet says only that the campaigner was punched.
New video adds another version
Stand Up to Racism has now released footage which it says captured the coffee incident involving Holmes. In the short clip, Holmes can be seen holding a takeaway cup while being questioned about Restore Britain’s connections to Patrick McGinnis, who is officially listed as the proposer of Restore candidate Tyler Johnson on the by-election nomination papers. As Holmes places the cup into a street bin, liquid appears to spill onto his hand.
Video Caption: Restore Britain campaigner Lewis Holmes is seen holding a takeaway coffee and examining his hand during the Camden confrontation at the centre of conflicting accounts over an alleged hot-coffee attack. Source: YouTube.com
Just The Facts has independently cross-checked the footage and verified that the man shown is Lewis Holmes, including through Holmes’s own direct response to the same video, in which he refers to his treatment and alleged injuries, alongside contemporaneous reporting identifying him as the campaigner shown. Holmes responded by demanding that Stand Up to Racism release the full video and maintained that he and other campaigners had been physically attacked.
The footage therefore presents an important complication. The visible sequence does not show another person throwing boiling liquid over Holmes, as his initial wording might reasonably be understood to suggest. Nor does the portion released show coffee spilling onto his leg; it shows liquid apparently spilling onto his hand as he disposes of the cup.
There is, however, an important limitation: the short video alone cannot establish that nothing happened immediately before the recorded sequence. It therefore cannot conclusively disprove Holmes’s allegation that somebody had earlier struck his hand, as described in the police account.
Stand Up to Racism has itself paraphrased the police position by saying a “passerby knocked his coffee”. That wording is also stronger than the published Met statement, which says the man alleged that an unknown person struck his hand, causing the coffee to spill. Police have not publicly identified that person as a Stand Up to Racism activist in the statements located by Just The Facts.
What can actually be established?
Two incidents appear to have been conflated
One important detail has become blurred in some social-media discussion. The Metropolitan Police did confirm that a woman was arrested after officers witnessed a Restore Britain campaigner being punched. However, police explicitly described the coffee incident as “a separate incident.”
In that second account, a man (Lewis Holmes) alleged that an unknown person struck his hand, causing coffee he was already holding to spill onto his leg. Police said there were no visible injuries and that he was taken to hospital as a precaution.
The arrest therefore does not, on the evidence currently available, substantiate the separate claim that Lewis Holmes was deliberately attacked with boiling liquid.
The evidence currently available supports three separate facts:
- Police witnessed an alleged assault on a Restore campaigner and arrested a woman.
- Holmes reported a separate incident in which he said his hand was struck and his own coffee spilled onto his leg.
- Subsequent footage published by Stand Up to Racism shows Holmes spilling liquid onto his hand while putting a coffee cup into a bin.
What the available evidence does not currently establish is the more dramatic claim that a Stand Up to Racism activist deliberately attacked Holmes with boiling liquid.
