The 2007-2008 economic recession hit the economically and socially disadvantaged groups hardest. In the midst of their trouble, a group of young people formed and attempted to build a resistance movement, hoping to bring change to their situation. Though they initially worked with the nonviolent movement, a faction broke away in late 2015 and began a series of violent attacks as a means to an end.
The breakaway faction included preachers who had been working within grassroots to sway the disenfranchised youth of communities towards a radical new approach to politics. The group believed the methods used by nonviolent protesters were futile and that the political system needed to be dismantled in order to achieve their equality, meaning that working within the system wasn’t an option.
The group’s first public attacks (joint bombings in Manchester and London( killed 72 people and injured another 583. Following the attack, a media group affiliated with the movement put out a video of a group of six people wearing masks, claiming responsibility for the attacks. Two of the perpetrators escaped police crackdown and leaft the country, where they continue to radicalize through social media and from writings, which are put together from their base of operations in Ireland.
The movement dubbed itself “Liberation Soldiers” and has a grassroots foothold in several towns in the United Kingdom. They have a secret central operating base in London, where most of the movement’s members lived at different points in their lives and were discriminated against by higher ability classes, and a known operating base in a secret location in Ireland. The ideology of the group exploits the experiences of discrimination to alienate young people and make them more prone to attack by offering them a sense of belonging and meaning in life by giving up their lives for the cause.
The group prefers political violence such as assaults, kidnappings, assassinations, and bombings.
In June 2017, the group assassinated a prominent Sentinel MP. Two members of the Soldiers were arrested and sentenced to death in the first revival of capital punishment in the United Kingdom. This was exploited in LS propaganda to show their marginalization and mistreatment due to ‘lower class abilities and social status’ and the hypocrisy of the government for bringing back the death penalty.
The group largely consists of class C and class D abilities. Their numbers have grown since the government imposed curfew on those with C and D abilities, which is used as evidence of systemic discrimination and violation of lower class people’s rights. Members of the movement use this to call on others to join them.
Recently, the group has begun to encourage leaderless violence. “Amateaur” attacks are encouraged (also known as lone-wolf attacks), and Soldiers are asked to carry out operations in smaller groups, as it would be harder to intercept communication and track the cells. It is possible to be a member of the resistance without meeting anyone from the group personally, as most of the radicalization takes place online and offers toolkits for making bombs at home or how to carry out attacks.
Recruits are sometimes sent to camps abroad to become “professional” terrorists in order to infiltrate government institutions or to carry out large attacks. These camps are in Ireland.