Early on Sunday afternoon at the Epping Bean Café, where a cutesy sign hangs from a wall reading ‘Coffee makes everything better’, a man is enjoying a roast dinner as the staff prepare for violence. Chairs and tables are moved inside, and a tall flagpole for advertising the café, which could be a very effective spear, is removed too. ‘Just in case we need to close down,’ says a waitress sweetly to the man. Epping isn’t used to days like this.
The protests started on 13 July, after Hadush Kebatu appeared in court for the first time. Kebatu, 38, from Ethiopia, had allegedly tried to kiss a 14-year-old girl and a woman in the town. He had been staying in asylum accommodation at the Bell Hotel in Epping along with 140 other men, after crossing the Channel illegally a few weeks before.
Many protestors and a few counter-protestors went to the Bell Hotel. Over the next few days, there were more demonstrations, and some people attacked police and their vans; 16 were arrested. More trouble threatens today. A group called Stand Up To Racism is coming to Epping, and Tommy Robinson has said he might attend too, bringing ‘thousands’ of his supporters with him.
Just after 2 p.m., Stand Up To Racism (a few hundred people) assemble in the car park of Epping train station. A fully grown woman sits on the tarmac cuddling a teddy bear – I think she’s rocking – and nearby a man stands in fatigues, black boots, sunglasses and a helmet. Quilted war flags mark regiments from the Socialist Workers party, the Homerton hospital branch of Unison and the Queen Mary University arm of the University and College Union. Weyman Bennett, a co-convener of Stand Up To Racism, tells the group that they are about to come face-to-face with ‘Nazis’ and ‘the followers of Mussolini’. A sign in the crowd references Cable Street. They want today to echo in eternity.
The opposition is also a few hundred people who are already at the Bell Hotel, standing quite calm in the metal pen allocated to them by police. ‘We Are the Champions’ plays from a large speaker. There are a couple of guys from the nationalist Homeland party, and perhaps five supporters of Tommy Robinson who have come from the pub up the road, but they are outnumbered by children and babies. Most people are locals. I was at the riots in Ballymena last month: this is not that, and these are not Nazis.
‘This is leafy Epping,’ says an old woman sitting in a camping chair inside the pen. ‘When you start putting outsiders, far-far-away people into that community, it just dissolves the structure. The last five years they’ve been putting them in the hotel. It’s just fell apart. I can’t get a doctor’s appointment where I am and I’ve got a lot of illnesses.’ She nods at the hotel. ‘I see NHS vans pulling up outside and a load of doctors going in there.’
Hailey, a mother of two daughters, aged nine and ten, says she is part of a group of parents who organised patrols of the Epping parks after girls said they were being filmed by residents of the Bell Hotel. She wants the migrants to be tagged with ankle bracelets.
Hailey says her family might just leave Britain, and behind her, one of the many ‘new media’ journalists who have been crawling over Epping since the protests began – TikTok streamers, YouTubers and online personalities who are big on X – dances and cartwheels gormlessly on the grass. It appears that it was her team who brought a speaker, and now they’re playing ‘This Charming Man’ by the Smiths. One of her colleagues takes a protestor and slow dances with her. These guys came seeking trouble, views and fame. Without that, they’re plain bored.
When Stand Up To Racism arrive in their pen opposite, the confrontation is short. The two sides are kept far apart from each other, and there are so many police officers between them that it cannot escalate. They shout at each other, but after about 50 minutes Stand Up To Racism leave. ‘From this town, to the sea, Essex will be fascist-free!’ they chant as they walk away. They’ll be back in London in time for dinner. The TikTokers leave soon after; the locals stay.
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