by Tom Slater, spiked
The public will not put up with our deranged asylum system any longer.
In Britain, protest has long felt pointless, performative, the preserve of the perma-smug middle classes. What was once the means through which the (quite literally) disenfranchised would seek to impose themselves on politics has, over decades, become little more than a form of self-aggrandising self-expression, and for very influential sections of society. An opportunity for the great and good to get their steps in and show off their puntastic placards before catching the train back to Tunbridge. That all those anti-Brexit marches ultimately achieved nothing didn’t matter. They had their day out.
Now, for the first time in a long time, Britain is being rocked by protests of a very different kind. Protests manned by those more condescended-to sections of society. The working class, the lower-middle class, the working-class-done-good. Those who are patriotic. The other difference? These protests are actually working.
The people of Epping in Essex have done in six weeks what successive governments have struggled to do for five years. They have closed a migrant hotel. In 2020, the Bell – along with hundreds of other hotels across the country – had its doors flung open to asylum seekers, as the pandemic hit, the small boats began to arrive in their droves, and hoteliers were all too keen to make up for their cratering trade during lockdown by coining it in from the government. This week, a High Court injunction ordered its 140-odd, all-male residents to leave, citing a breach of planning laws and the intolerable fear of crime and discord that the situation had inflicted on residents. While the injunction was formally won by Epping Forest District Council, it was only sought after thousands took to the streets of the town, demanding the Bell’s closure.