Asylum hotel protests are spreading. Who's really behind them?

Protests outside asylum hotels have once again kicked off around the UK. But who’s really behind them?

Far-right activists are “parachuting” into communities to stoke tensions, experts and campaigners alike have warned – just like they did last summer.

“This is not just concerned local mums,” said Samira Ali, national officer with Stand up to Racism. “This is organised right-wing activism.”

Epping is the centre of the current unrest. Multiple demonstrations have been held outside The Bell Hotel in the Essex town after an asylum seeker was charged with allegedly attempting to kiss a 14-year-old girl.

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Initial protests were peaceful, with locals gathering outside the hotel where the man was housed.

But things quickly escalated, anti-racism organisation Hope not Hate reports, with the demonstration co-opted by “masked men intent on violence”. Two Bell Hotel security guards were attacked at a bus stop and hospitalised for their wounds; a total of 14 people have been charged for violence after attacking police vehicles.

The scenes – unsettlingly reminiscent of last summer’s early riots – follow a pattern, Ali told Big Issue. A local incident sparks local concern, then the far-right swoop in to advance their own agenda.

The alleged assault was a “heinous” incident, she adds, “but that’s not what these protests are about.”

What’s happening in Epping?

The Epping unrest culminated on Sunday (27 July), when 400 anti-migration demonstrators were met by some 2,000 counter-protesters.

Among the right-wing signs – boasting slogans like “deport foreign criminals” – were pleas for local support: “Put local people first.”

“Most of the people outside that hotel in Epping weren’t far right or far left,” said Reform leader Nigel Farage, they “were just genuinely concerned families”.

New evidence refutes this claim. While protests began locally, they were rapidly co-opted by far-right agitators.

The Epping Says No Facebook group – the forum on which demonstrations have been organised – is administered by three members of the political party Homeland.

This extremist right-wing organisation is a splinter of the neo-Nazi group Patriotic Alternative; Hope not Hate describe it as the largest fascist group in the UK.

“There are of course some local people there [at the Epping protest] yes,” said Aurelien Mondon, a professor of politics at the University of Bath and the co-convenor of the Reactionary Politics Research Network.

“But what is clear is that far-right organisations have been exploiting these protests and quite often it is their presence that escalates things, and ends up making them turn into violence.”

Epping is not an isolated incident. On Monday (28 July), demonstrations flared in Diss, Norfolk outside a similar hotel. And two weeks ago, loyalists in Northern Ireland burned effigies of refugees sitting on a boat.

Such protests are organised on far-right social media networks, where existing rhetoric inflames existing tensions. Notorious right-wing and anti-Islam activist Tommy Robinson (who has allegedly fled the country after punching a man in London this week) posted excessively about Epping: he claimed that he would attend the protest before pulling out at the last minute.

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Members of Blood & Honour, Britain First, For Britain, the Homeland Party and White Vanguard – all avowedly racist organisations – were present at the Bell Hotel, according to HOPE not hate. Several of these groups have been banned or flagged by authorities across Europe for promoting violent extremism.

“It starts as a local concern and then the mask slips – these people are from a fascist group,” Ali says.

The counterprotests are also largely from out of town, with most coming in from locations across London.

How many protests so far?

The protests have attracted a great deal of political concern.

Prime minister Keir Starmer reportedly told ministers that Britain’s “social fabric” must be repaired, and integration must be improved in areas with high immigrant populations.

Deputy PM Angela Rayner said that immigration was having a “profound impact on society” and generating “real concerns”.

There seems to be a political consensus that these protests manifest the legitimate concerns of local people. But Mondon fears a “legitimisation” of the far-right narrative.

“The responsibility here is not so much in the popularity of the far right, although we shouldn’t deny that – there is a significant minority of people who are espousing these views,” he said.

“I think the really responsibility here is in the role of mainstream actors who have emboldened these politics by legitimising them. There are not more far-right than there were before, but they are more emboldened.”

Keir Starmer’s pursuit of the Reform vote – embodied in the ‘Island of Strangers’ speech – is a key element of this. “This government has been legitimising the idea that people arriving by boat are a threat.”

The summer may yet prove to be another “summer of discontent”, Mondon added: “It’s kind of a powder-keg that could explode very quickly.”

But that’s down to a tiny minority of people who should not be pandered to, he said.

“As soon as the counter protestors organised, the counter protest dwarfed the protest. We need to make clear it is a tiny minority people.

“Most people are either uninterested or against these kinds of of demonstrations, this kind of politics, but the far right is trying to divide us.

“The government shouldn’t focus on scapegoating and should instead look to improve the meaningful conditions of people’s lives. People are right to be angry at a system that doesn’t serve them, but immigrants shouldn’t be the target of that anger.”

Research out this week shows that the decline of public venues – such as pubs, piers and youth clubs – created a social vacuum that allowed “misinformation and hate” to thrive.

“Rebuilding local infrastructure isn’t just about nostalgia – it’s a vital bulwark against division and the dangerous pull of the far right,” said Dr Sacha Hilhorst from the Institute for Public Policy Research (IPPR).

Despite the rise in far-right mobilisation, campaigners say the tide can be turned.

“It can feel like the far right is on the march,” said Samira Ali. “But we have to remember that there is an anti-racist majority in Britain. And when we mobilise, we can push back. We can build a moment of hope and show our strength and solidarity.”

Already, counter-protesters have outnumbered far-right demonstrators in key towns like Epping. With more than 50 far-right events are planned nationwide in the coming weeks – including a so-called “Abolish Asylum Day” on 8 August – mobilisation is urgent.

“Our anti-racism movement can stop this,” Ali said. “We want people to get organised, to get informed, and to show up – because silence only helps the far right.”

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