Politicians should work to \u201creduce and defuse tensions\u201d instead of stoking division, a senior chief constable has said.<\/p>\n
Gavin Stephens, who chairs the National Police<\/a> Chiefs\u2019 Council, was speaking after weeks of demonstrations against asylum seekers being housed in hotels, and counter-protests by those who fear the issue is mobilising the far right and demonising vulnerable people.<\/p>\n Nigel Farage, the leader of Reform UK, claimed in July that Britain was getting close to \u201ccivil disobedience on a vast scale\u201d<\/a>.<\/p>\n Stephens said such claims were \u201cexaggerated\u201d but the intense row over asylum seekers had caused \u201ca climate of increasing tension and polarity\u201d.<\/p>\n He stressed he did not want to speak about any particular politician but said: \u201cI guess what we\u2019re saying today is that anybody in a leadership position should think about how we can reduce and defuse tensions, and not sow division.\u201d<\/p>\n Behind the scenes, his senior colleagues believe some rhetoric from politicians on the right has at best been careless at a time of heightened tensions.<\/p>\n Stephens, who served as Surrey\u2019s chief constable, said: \u201cThere is a climate of increasing tension and polarity in what we\u2019re seeing, and it\u2019s a huge disappointment to all of us that we\u2019ve seen criminality creep into this protest activity.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s clear to all of us that we can see more community tension and more division. And I think we all have a responsibility \u2013 policing included \u2013 to set the tone. We all want to live in places where we feel safe, and I think everybody has a responsibility.\u201d<\/p>\n The national public order centre was notified of 3,081 protests from June to August compared with 2,942 last year and 928 in 2023.<\/p>\n Stephens said police this year were under \u201cchronic pressure\u201d when compared with last year when the worst riots since 2011 placed officers in England under \u201cacute\u201d strain.<\/p>\n He said the need for police to attend protests meant they had been diverted from fighting crime.<\/p>\n skip past newsletter promotion<\/a><\/p>\n Get the day\u2019s headlines and highlights emailed direct to you every morning<\/p>\n Privacy Notice: <\/strong>Newsletters may contain information about charities, online ads, and content funded by outside parties. If you do not have an account, we will create a guest account for you on theguardian.com<\/a> to send you this newsletter. You can complete full registration at any time. For more information about how we use your data see our Privacy Policy<\/a>. We use Google reCaptcha to protect our website and the Google Privacy Policy<\/a> and Terms of Service<\/a> apply.<\/p>\n after newsletter promotion<\/p>\n Stephens, a police officer for 32 years, said: \u201cI can think of a number of points in recent history where tensions rise, where there\u2019s disquiet. The last two summers have definitely felt like that, and this summer has felt like an enduring summer, rather than the sort of acute one that we had last year.<\/p>\n \u201cMy other reflection is that I think we always find a moment as a society, as communities, to sort of reset and come back together again.\u201d<\/p>\n Stephens stressed that peaceful protests must be facilitated by police and said the tensions were only in certain parts of the country and not at the same intensity across the UK.<\/p>\n \u201cThere are tens of thousands of areas across the country where this does not register. My mum lives in rural and North Yorkshire. I\u2019ve been up there for a couple of weekends over the summer. This does not feature in many, in many communities.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Politicians should work to \u201creduce and defuse tensions\u201d instead of stoking division, a senior chief constable has said.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":394041,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,4],"tags":[748,393,4884,1144,712,16,15,1764],"class_list":{"0":"post-394040","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-uk","8":"category-united-kingdom","9":"tag-britain","10":"tag-england","11":"tag-great-britain","12":"tag-northern-ireland","13":"tag-scotland","14":"tag-uk","15":"tag-united-kingdom","16":"tag-wales"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/115139307481184803","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/394040","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=394040"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/394040\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/394041"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=394040"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=394040"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=394040"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}