Labour must confront the uncomfortable causes of immigration protests

Spectator

3 days ago

That sound you hear is the penny finally dropping in Downing Street. Having spent the year since the horrific post-Southport riots blaming unrest over migration and asylum solely on misinformation and far-right groups, Labour appears to be realising the rot runs much deeper.
Government officials, reports the Times, have warned the cabinet that Britain is 'fraying at the edges', after more protests outside of asylum hotels in Epping, Diss and now Canary Wharf (of all places). Angela Rayner is said to have told colleagues that immigration was having a 'profound impact on society', insisting the government needed to acknowledge 'real concerns' about rapid social change, twinned with a decaying economy.
Indeed, the way Tory and now Labour governments have up to now dealt with the asylum issue would only make sense if it were designed to generate social conflict. The brunt of the small-boats crisis has been borne by some of the most poverty-stricken communities in the UK, purely because the hotel rooms there are cheaper and the glare of the London-based media is miles away. Then, locals' fears about the violent and sexual crimes committed by some of the men who have arrived illegally and unvetted are ignored, up until the point they spark a protest. Or worse.
We've seen this time and time again. In Knowsley, in Merseyside, in February 2023; in Epping, now. A migrant is accused, or indeed charged, of sex crimes, leading to a protest, which then descends into mindless violence. In the case of Epping, the Ethiopian asylum seeker – whose arrest triggered last week's protests outside the Bell Hotel – was charged with three counts of sexual assault, one count of inciting a girl to engage in sexual activity and one count of harassment without violence. He'd racked up these offences after just eight days in the country.
The protests in Epping – a leafy, prosperous Essex market town, populated by the old East End working-class-done-good – show this is clearly not just about poverty, either. There is now a deep sense of unease bubbling across society, about an asylum and migration system that has become an affront to common sense and a menace to public safety. And those who haven't imbibed the metropolitan multiculturalist script, which insists we all ignore the evidence of our own eyes, are now increasingly emboldened to voice their opposition.
For a year, the government has refused to walk and chew gum at the same time on this issue. There is, of course, nothing that justifies the violence and racism we saw after Southport, or following otherwise peaceful protests since. Those on the right who cannot summon the minerals to condemn this bigotry, even when masked men are trying to push a flaming wheelie bin towards a Holiday Inn which has migrants inside, are engaging in their own form of moral cowardice. But only condemning this racism, or painting it all as some concerted 'far right' insurgency, as the government has, is clearly not enough, either.
Whatever else you might say about them, the peaceful protests outside of that hotel in Epping are clearly not mini BNP rallies. Even the mainstream media have begun to concede this, with Sky News noting that Sunday's big demonstration was made up of 'families sat on the grass, multigenerations of them, kids playing in the sunshine'. 'Residents are simply angry about events that have unfolded here in recent weeks.' In voxpops from the demos and the town, residents seem ever-keen to insist they are not 'far right' and condemn the troublemakers who have also, inevitably, shown up looking to clash with police, attack hotel staff and abuse migrants in the street.
By ignoring legitimate public anger, and the catastrophic policy failures that have produced it, the government has only created more space for those who want to leap on the asylum issue for their own despicable ends. The Labour government now has a choice. It can double down on decades of failed orthodoxies, while mumbling something about 'reasonable concerns', or it can rip them up those orthodoxies for the good of the country. Locking up rioters and condemning the uglier side of this unrest is the easy bit. Now is the time to end the mix of uncontrolled illegal immigration, govenment-compelled multiculturalism and official neglect of communities that has brought us to this precipice. Tough on riots, tough on the causes of riots.