Nearly a year on from anti-immigration riots and demonstrations across the United Kingdom, hotels housing asylum seekers are again the scene of protest and disorder in a number of towns and cities.
In the small market town of Epping, near London, a fifth protest and anti-racism counter-protest was held outside The Bell Hotel, which has reportedly been housing asylum seekers since 2020.
“Illegals, with the illegal migration, coming here via illegal entry, that’s what we’ve had enough of because we’re not checking them. The government can’t… it’s overwhelmed,” James Lawson, who lived in a nearby town, told 1News.
Epping resident Sharon Boughen has lived in the town her whole life and said the asylum seekers made her feel unsafe when she was out and about.
“They go to Tesco’s, they pinch out at Tesco’s all the drink,” she claimed.
When 1News asked her if she had seen stealing occurring, she didn’t answer the question, replying she’d seen migrants sitting outside the supermarket drinking and cheering when she walked past.
While the number of asylum seekers staying in hotels in the UK is slowly declining, the number of people arriving by small boat increased by 48% for the first six months of this year, compared to 2024 figures for the same period. To the end of June, nearly 20,000 people had made the English Channel crossing.
“Stop the boats. Why are we nursing them and they’re not respecting us?” Loughton resident Simone Howlett said.
“It’s wrong and I’m worried about my grandchildren.”
Despite previous concern about the situation, public outcry ramped up recently when a male asylum seeker staying at the hotel was arrested and charged with sexual assault, after allegedly attempting to kiss a 14-year-old girl.
There have been protests outside hotels in a number of English towns and cities since then.
Far right activists have been linked to the demonstrations and misinformation has been a feature.
This included that Essex Police drove counter-protesters to a previous Epping protest, a claim police denied, saying officers created a walking cordon around the anti-racism group as they headed to the site for their safety and transported people from the scene when they were at risk.
Incorrect claims the Epping migrants had been moved to a central London hotel the Government had decided to use for temporary asylum seeker accommodation led to a protest there.
In Epping, Essex Police used metal fencing to separate people protesting the hotel use by migrants, and anti-racism counter protesters. There was a wide area in between both sides where police were on guard and there were a large number of officers deployed throughout the town.
The protest area is in a reserve directly opposite the hotel, which was surrounded by police vehicles and fenced off.
Stand Up to Racism counter-protesters outnumbered the other group.
“We’re here because the far right have formed a camp outside an asylum hotel and repeatedly attempted to attack it and present the narrative that all British people are against giving people shelter when they seek asylum,” co-convenor Weyman Bennett told 1News.
Bennett said the group also counter-protested during last summer’s riots, which were fuelled by misinformation that the teenager that fatally stabbed three girls and injured others in a dance class in Southport was an asylum seeker.
“When they tried to do the same thing. We came out together, all of us, and said no, we will live together in a united community,” he said.
“It’s only demonstrations if it’s black or Muslim so I would say this is racism, not just a demonstration,” he said about the Epping protest.
One Epping resident who 1News talked to outside the train station where the counter-protesters set off from only wanted to be known as Heather.
She said it’s the protest activity from both sides that’s made her feel unsafe and she’s devastated to see what’s happened in her “lovely” town in the past fortnight.
“I’ve never had any problem with the hotel being there. They keep themselves to themselves. You see them walking on the high streets sometimes. No, I mean, live and let live,” she said.
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Heather said there hasn’t been an issue in the town until now and that “people that think there’s an easy solution” for immigration are wrong. She said following the incidents of the past fortnight, asylum seekers should probably be moved from the Bell Hotel.
While the protest 1News attended was largely peaceful, there was anger brewing within some attendees. One person speaking into a camera livestreaming the scene stood face to face with anti-racism protesters, as if seeking to trigger a confrontation with the questions he asked.
Three people were arrested for disorder.
In the past fortnight, there have been 23 arrests in total and 12 charges laid by police.
‘I’m really grateful to the law-abiding majority of attendees at the two most recent protests in Epping,’ Essex Police Chief Superintendent Simon Anslow said in a statement.
‘They’ve got a right to make their views and their voices heard and they’ve done so in a peaceful way. The engagement I have seen has been largely respectful.’
He also rejected claims heard repeatedly at these protests that police treat anti-racism protesters differently.
‘I’ve been consistent in repeating a simple fact – as a police force we aren’t here to take sides, we are here simply to protect the public and maintain law and order, facilitating peaceful protest but also allowing all people resident in Epping to go about their lives with minimal disruption.’
Earlier this month the United Kingdom and France announced a pilot agreement where any asylum claim from a migrant who crossed the English Channel illegally will be considered for ‘inadmissibility’ and if declared so, the migrant will be returned to France.
The situation is legally complicated as migrants can only claim asylum, if they’re deemed to be fleeing danger in the country they’ve come from, when they are in the UK, and there is no visa which allows entry to make the claim.
The UK Government’s aiming to stop the use of hotels for housing migrants waiting for an asylum claim to be processed during this term of Parliament.