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The asylum hotel policy could be a parable for all that is wrong with the British state. The Conservatives under-resourced asylum claim processing. Channel crossings rose despite government promising the reverse. Ministers commandeered much-loved venues at short notice, cancelling wedding receptions and birthday parties. And this was all contracted out to private providers such as Serco, costing the taxpayer \u00a315bn. It is a tired tale of cuts, broken pledges, neighbourhood neglect and poor-value outsourcing. But a subplot fraught with rumour and racism is darkening the story. Reporting around England in recent years, again and again I have encountered the same fears: that these newcomers might assault women and girls.<\/p>\n
Riots in Southport and Ballymena over the past two years had the same trigger: charges of attacks on young girls. The Best Western Brook Hotel in Bowthorpe, Norwich \u2013 a site of recent protests \u2013 was home to a man now imprisoned for raping a woman, and another for asking a 14-year-old boy to send naked pictures. At Epping\u2019s Bell Hotel, there have been both violent clashes and peaceful protests after one resident, now in custody, was charged with sexual assault for allegedly attempting to kiss a 14-year-old girl (which he denies).<\/p>\n
Such cases have led to the demonisation of young male asylum seekers as potential criminals and sex offenders. The memory of working-class white girls groomed by British-Pakistani gangs pulses through these suspicions. Victims then were ignored by authorities, partly down to political correctness \u2013 a fact that emboldens some people to voice Islamophobic generalisations about the attitudes of certain men towards women.<\/p>\n
Police National Computer data suggesting Afghans and Eritreans are more than 20 times more likely to be convicted of sexual offences than British citizens are widely shared. Officials warn, however, that this data neither accounts for gender nor for how much younger these ethnic groups are than the British average (young men generally are more likely to commit crime), that it is \u201cnot reliable for nationality\u201d as it omits dual nationals and that it doesn\u2019t reflect the number of repeat offenders.<\/p>\n
After violence outside the Bell Hotel, where officers were injured and 17 protesters arrested, Keir Starmer warned of a second summer of riots. Unrest last year followed the murder of three girls in Southport. The perpetrator, born in Britain to Rwandan parents, was falsely said to be a Muslim asylum seeker who had arrived on a small boat \u2013 disinformation that led to rioters attacking a mosque and setting an asylum hotel on fire.<\/p>\n
Anger is not just confected online in bad faith. At one Epping protest, I was struck by the dissonance between mums waving suffragette flags and grandmas Sharpie-ing \u201cProtect Our Kids\u201d on to M&S bags for life, and the presence of ex-British National Party councillors and a member of Homeland, a far-right splinter group of the neo-Nazi Patriotic Alternative.<\/p>\n
Wearing a T-shirt with the slogan \u201cSave Our Children\u201d, the vice-chairman of Reform UK\u2019s Epping Forest branch, Orla Minihane, described this wave of protest to me as a \u201c#MeToo moment\u201d. \u201cWomen won\u2019t go out for runs, they\u2019re getting their husbands to pick them up from the station, they\u2019re scared to walk their dogs,\u201d she said. \u201cI\u2019m sure most of the men in there are good, decent people \u2013 but we don\u2019t know.\u201d She waved a suffragette flag among the rippling St George\u2019s Crosses.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen we walk past a woman with a child, she pulls the child behind her as if we are going to take them \u2013 it is so painful to see,\u201d said Khadar, 20, a Somali asylum seeker living at the Bell Hotel who crossed the Channel three months ago. \u201cWe are not here to hurt you. It was very good here before the incident. Now we feel uncomfortable and there is a lot of tension; people treat us like we\u2019re criminals and say insulting words.\u201d<\/p>\n
Another young Somali man at the Bell Hotel, who preferred not to be named, had been chased by a group of men while shopping. Even as warm sunshine soaked the tree tops of Epping Forest opposite, he pulled a thick black jacket around him and glanced around as we spoke. \u201cI was very scared.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cSexual violence and crime impacts all communities and involves perpetrators of all races,\u201d said Georgie Laming, of the anti-fascist campaign group Hope not Hate. \u201cIt\u2019s clear from Epping how an arrest, an allegation or a rumour can quickly take hold, be whipped up and racialised by the far right.\u201d<\/p>\n
Rumours were ripping through the protests outside the Bell Hotel. I was told repeatedly that Essex Police had bussed anti-racism activists towards the demonstration \u2013 a story the force denies but which is all over social media and has been repeated by Nigel Farage. Numerous protesters also told me hotel residents were shoplifting from Tesco, but the police had no reports of this, and the local Tesco had no knowledge of it either. Since 2020, the year asylum seekers moved into the Bell, instances of rape, reports of antisocial behaviour and the number of robberies have dropped in the area.<\/p>\n
There is also misapprehension that the hotels are five-star experiences for their new guests. \u201cThey\u2019re fed and watered, have hot showers, for free,\u201d said an Epping local of 45 years. \u201cBut for us living here, the town has gone downhill.\u201d In Diss, the school worker I met said: \u201cWe\u2019re working our arses off and they\u2019re given a lovely hotel, clean sheets every morning, it\u2019s plush.\u201d<\/p>\n
In reality, those with knowledge of the Park Hotel talked of breakfast running out, children going hungry and women asking for donations of buckets and mops because of uncleanliness. At another hotel, I\u2019ve seen a four-year-old scarred from bed-bug bites and families falling sick from undercooked chicken. I\u2019ve also heard of young people forced to share rooms with adult strangers. The children\u2019s commissioner for England, Rachel de Souza, found a \u201ctroubling\u201d lack of safeguarding at these hotels.<\/p>\n
Such details don\u2019t resonate, though, when the world outside the hotels is one of low wages, housing shortages and a crumbling public realm. \u201cYou\u2019ve got to look after your own first,\u201d said the factory operative. \u201cWe need stuff given to English people, they haven\u2019t got houses themselves,\u201d said the school worker. \u201cThis town is empty, it\u2019s dead; people haven\u2019t got money to shop anymore. I worry about my future grandchildren: life is shit now, what will life be for them?\u201d<\/p>\n
Deprivation and social dislocation, not levels of immigration, were the most common factors in riot-hit areas last summer, according to a report shared exclusively with the New Statesman that has been read in No 10. \u201cThis Place Matters\u201d, by Citizens UK, UCL Policy Lab, and More in Common, finds no consistent correlation between high immigration to an area and low social cohesion.<\/p>\n
Rather, integration is what counts. The constituencies that experienced unrest all have populations where more people feel \u201cdisconnected\u201d than \u201cconnected\u201d. While financial insecurity is one of the strongest predictors of disconnection, the report identifies other alienating trends: neglected high streets and town centres, the decline of in-person socialising, and a loss of \u201cassociational life\u201d \u2013 fewer communal spaces where people interact, remote working and even self-checkouts.<\/p>\n
In a town of shuttered shops and fly-tipping \u2013 where children\u2019s centres and social housing and the municipal fireworks display are just a memory \u2013 it is little wonder you look up less from your phone. And when that screen is full of lurid innuendo, shared by politicians and activists who have no beguiling slogans for public service reform or community renewal, it only takes a spark to light the tinder.<\/p>\n
\u201cIn Somalia, I couldn\u2019t work because I was in a rural area ruled by militia. I wanted to come to England for a better life, to contribute, not to depend on government, and it took ten hours on the boat \u2013 so long and painful with people suffocating,\u201d said Khadar of the Bell Hotel. \u201cI thought England was a good place, more welcoming than Europe, and would help a lot. Now it feels like a hostile land.\u201d <\/p>\n