It’s been a fair while since I’ve been quite so consumed with rage as I have this week, so you lucky readers get to read my rant about what’s been going on in our local town. If you’re a right-leaning, Reform-voting person who uses the actions of one person to launch a sanctimonious ‘we’re-not-racist-we-just-want-to-protect-our-children’ protest then you may wish to go and read something else. Perhaps the Daily Mail or the Express. The Torygraph probably has too many long words, though I concede that they do have a good crossword. Anyway.
I have written before about the experiences I have had with refugees and asylum seekers through my previous job and at my local primary school. I met many children from Somalia and Angola when I was first teaching in London: a significant number of whom had no idea (as four and five year olds) whether their parents were dead or alive as their parents had sent them away with an aunt or a friend to give them a chance to grow up. I’ve met more people recently through a work project.
Without exception every single one of them has been friendly, open, grateful to have reached somewhere they might feel safe and where they are ekeing out survival. One thing that’s been made clear to me through many conversations is that leaving their homes and putting their own and their families lives in mortal danger was not a choice they made lightly. Can you imagine being in a position where your only choices were certain or uncertain death and what it must cost you to make that choice?
In our Essex village there is a contingency hotel where families seeking asylum have been housed for several years now. Prior to that it was being used by Redbridge Council as emergency housing. It’s an old Travelodge and even when it was being used as a ‘proper’ hotel it was getting one-star reviews. Five star it aint. An asylum seeker set fire to it a few months ago. There was a crowdfunder started by a local secondary school to help the children housed at the hotel find accommodation close to the school so their GCSEs weren’t disrupted, and it was very well-supported. The accused arsonist tried, a week or so later, to set a similar fire in the Bell Hotel, Epping (this one has 2.7 stars) and he was arrested.
The Bell Hotel, Epping, has been used to house single male asylum seekers for about the same amount of time and under the same conditions. One of these asylum seekers – just one, although that’s more than enough – tried to kiss a teenage girl in Epping, and attempted to do the same to a woman. He’s been arrested and remanded in custody. This is right, as no one has the right to assault girls or women or men or boys or anyone else. It’s also probably saved him from serious injury at the hands of the locals, who have used this occurrence as an excuse for two violent protests and some vandalism and abuse in the ten days since, under the banner of ‘Epping has had enough’, with another one planned for today. The actions of one man are being used as an excuse to target and uproot the lives of hundreds of other people at these two hotels.
Well, I’d had enough when my teenage daughter was assaulted by the owner of a local business a couple of years ago and no one* felt the need to riot and protect the women and children of North Weald….but then the only border he’d crossed in the past few years was the one between Hertfordshire and Essex. Perhaps that made a difference?
Last Sunday there was a ‘peaceful protest’ at the hotel in Epping, which caused all sorts of traffic issues. Peaceful, that is, being a relative term: I’m sure the two hotel security guards who were beaten up and left with severe injuries when they got off the bus to start their shift might disagree. On Thursday there was another protest which most certainly wasn’t peaceful. Here’s the callout which went on Facebook:
The ‘leftys’ and ‘antifa’ they mention were a contingent from Hope Not Hate – not well-known for inflicting ‘violence and anger’ as far as I am aware unless smiting the enemy with well-reasoned research-backed arguments and workshops counts. And of course the far right element turned up, including known members of Far Right groups travelling from wider Essex and East London, and the ‘peaceful protest’ degenerated. Eight police officers were injured. These ‘peaceful protesters’ in balaclavas were attacking police vans and throwing things. They were using fireworks. Presumably these balaclava-sporting thugs are the same people who object to women wearing hijab. It strikes me that if you’re going to attend a protest for peaceful reasons, you probably ought to be brave enough to show your face and not be carrying, say, a blunt instrument and a smoke bomb or two.
The head of the local council has organised a petition to get the hotels shut down. Local councillors – including the execrable one from Ongar who was ejected from the Tories, became independent and is now in Reform – hand delivered a letter to the Home Secretary saying much the same. The local MPs are burbling away on the subject – Tory, of course, since a monkey in a blue suit could stand for parliament round here and get elected. The only time I have ever queued at the polling station was for the Brexit referendum, and look what happened there.
Apparently it’s all Keir Starmer’s fault, even though the Home Office have been using the hotels for the same purpose for more than five years. Social media is full of people complaining that these asylum seekers are supposed to seek asylum in the first safe country they arrive at (this is not the case – neither the 1951 Refugee Convention or international law require a person to claim asylum in the first safe country they reach, although the UK government would prefer it if they did); that they’re living in five star hotels (patently not the case) at the expense of local people who can’t get housing; and so on and so forth.
Social media is also full of people choosing to post anonymously. People going on about women and children not feeling safe on the streets of Epping. People claiming that all the violence was the police’s fault for not sending the ‘leftys and antifa’ back on the train and, in one case, giving them a lift to the hotels in their van. People accusing the police of ‘treason’ for throwing ‘the flag of Britain’ in a hedge. It was the St George’s flag so presumably the poster failed geography at school and also hasn’t been informed that old Georgie-boy was a resident of the Middle East and never set foot in England. Accusing the police of a hit and run, as they allegedly drove into a protestor who was sitting in the road.
Well, the only time I haven’t felt safe on the streets of Epping was this week, quite honestly. I lived in Epping for 12 years and we’ve been in North Weald for another 12. I walk alone for literally miles and have never felt worried. On Sunday I had to wait for a connecting bus home and wasn’t happy about that as we’d just come past the Bell on the rail replacement bus and had seen the police presence. On Thursday we were held on the train at Theydon Bois while the police dealt with an incident on the station, and I was reassured to see the heavy police presence on the station. I was less reassured – quite pissed off, in fact – to see the fear on the faces of the family who got on the bus with me. There’s a look about the people coming to the hotels: nervous, worried that they’re getting on the wrong bus, small scared children hanging onto one parent or other, a buggy laden with bags of possessions. Their fear makes me angry.
I feel terribly sorry for the teenager and the woman who were assaulted in Epping, of course I do. I am angry, however, that their experience is being used as an excuse for racism and violence against an equally vulnerable section of society. The people of Epping, if they genuinely want to make the streets safe for women and children, should perhaps volunteer for a rape crisis charity, or for Shelter, or for an organisation that does some good instead of allowing themselves to be allied with thugs and scum.
*except me, obvs. And my friends.
Things that did make me happy this week (yes, there were some)
- Crocheting Prince for one of my oldest friends
- Crocheting a long-eared bunny
- Going to the monthly Dog Swim at Redricks with Sue and the Bella-Dog. Quite honestly the most joyous event ever. All the humans in the water and the dogs occasionally fetching a ball to humour them
- The blackbird in the garden who sings the first six notes of Elton John’s ‘Passenger’
- Baby badgers bumbling in the bushes
- Our second access panel meeting
- A lovely evening at the Quentin Blake: Ninety Drawings exhibition. I got to chat to Axel Scheffler who is a delight.
- Day two of WXSP – less hot!
This week Thing 3 breaks up for the summer holidays, which he is pleased about. So am I.
Same time next week, gang!
Kirsty x
What I’ve been reading:
Rosemary and Rue – Seanan McGuire
Blood Debt – Tanya Huff
Stone and Sky – Ben Aaronovitch (and Amongst Our Weapons/Lies Sleeping/False Value/Rivers of London on Audible)
Between The Stops – Sandi Toksvig
What Kirsty did next 