UK fears new summer of unrest, year after anti-immigrant Southport riots
Eighteen people have now been arrested since protests flared last week outside a hotel housing asylum seekers in the town of Epping, northeast of London and seven people have been charged, Essex police said late Thursday. In one demonstration, eight police officers were injured.
The unrest was "not just a troubling one-off", said the chairwoman of the Police Federation, Tiff Lynch. "It was a signal flare. A reminder of how little it takes for tensions to erupt and how ill-prepared we remain to deal with it," she wrote in the Daily Telegraph.
During the demonstrations, protesters shouted "save our children" and "send them home", while banners called for the expulsion of "foreign criminals."
Cabinet minister Jonathan Reynolds on Thursday urged people not to speculate or exaggerate the situation, saying "the government, all the key agencies, the police, they prepare for all situations. "I understand the frustrations people have," he told Sky News.
The government was trying to fix the problem and the number of hotels occupied by asylum seekers has dropped from 400 to 200, he added.
The issue of thousands of irregular migrants arriving in small boats across the Channel, coupled with the UK's worsening economy, has triggered rising anger among some Britons. Such sentiments have been amplified by inflammatory messaging on social networks, fuelled by far-right activists.
Almost exactly a year ago on July 29, 2024, three young girls were stabbed to death in a frenzied attack in northwestern Southport.
The shocking killings stoked days of riots across the country after false reports that the killer -- a UK-born teenager whose family came to the country from Rwanda after the 1994 genocide -- was a migrant.
Nearly 24,000 migrants have made the perilous journey across the Channel so far in 2025, the highest-ever tally at this point in a year.
The issue has become politically perilous, putting pressure on Labour Prime Minister Keir Starmer's centre-left government, as the anti-immigrant, far-right Reform UK party rises in the polls.
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