The people of Epping have a message for Tommy Robinson: stay away. The far-right activist is currently mulling joining protestors in Essex who have taken to the street outside a hotel used to house asylum seekers. While there have been violent clashes between police and demonstrators – and a number of arrests – many of those who have gathered have done so peacefully. They deserve to be listened to. Yet the arrival of Robinson would make it easy for politicians to cast these locals as far right – and ignore them.
The people of Epping have a message for Tommy Robinson: stay away
Even Robinson doesn’t seem able to make his mind up about what to do. On Sunday, he tweeted: ‘Hear you loud and clear, I’m coming to Epping next Sunday ladies and bringing thousands more with me’. By lunchtime on Monday, Robinson appeared to have had second thoughts, posting a video in which he appeared to backtrack. The far-right activist said that, despite people asking him to go to Epping, he thinks it ‘may not benefit the cause’. He went on to describe the Epping protests – which erupted after the arrest and charge of an asylum seeker last week on suspicion of alleged sexual assaults in the town – as involving ‘local families, local women, local mothers, local children’. He noted that his presence might give the authorities an ‘excuse’ to ‘label it a different way’. Robinson might be desperate for attention, but he isn’t stupid.
Many locals in Epping would certainly prefer Robinson stays away. Monday night’s peaceful protest began with the striking sight of a line of women holding hands and chanting ‘protect our kids’. They waved hand-made signs with slogans such as ‘Make England safe again’, ‘I’m not far right – I’m worried about my kids’ and ‘deport foreign criminals’.
Orla Minihane is one local mum who is worried. A Reform council candidate, she found herself giving an impromptu speech on Thursday, as violent clashes were beginning between locals, counterprotestors from Stand up to Racism, and police. Speaking through a megaphone, Orla described the crowd as ‘good, local, taxpaying people’, who ‘don’t want trouble, don’t want fights’, but who oppose the presence of hundreds of strange, threatening men in their community.
When I spoke with Orla she made it clear to me that the community’s concerns are not about race: ‘I wouldn’t care if they were from Iceland, blonde, blue-eyed and Christian. At the end of the day, they’re strange men who nobody has checked’.
She described increasing fears in the Epping area over the past year, as women have reported being followed home and blatant shoplifting has soared. There have been reports of men approaching young girls outside schools. Yet the authorities seem reluctant to provide specific details about the men involved, adding to the suspicion and distrust felt by the local community.
For many locals, the arrest and charge of an asylum seeker this month was the final straw.
Reform leader Nigel Farage has said that most of the protestors in Epping are ‘genuinely concerned families’, before warning that politicians shouldn’t ‘underestimate the simmering anger and disgust…that we are letting in every week hundreds of undocumented young males from cultures where women and girls are not even treated as second class citizens’. Farage went on to say ‘I don’t think anybody in London even understands how close we are to civil disobedience on a vast scale in this country’.
Perhaps Tommy Robinson won’t turn up in Epping. Or perhaps his love of the limelight will draw him there. If he does attend next Sunday though, it would likely mean significantly more violence. Stand Up To Racism have already announced a ‘No to fascist Tommy Robinson’ protest to begin in Epping next Sunday afternoon. If they, and Robinson’s followers, attend in large numbers, large-scale disorder may be inevitable. This would be in no one’s interests, and would harm the local campaign, likely allow the government to paint all opposition to migrant hotels as ‘far right’ and do nothing to make the women and girls of Epping safe. Let’s hope Robinson stays away, and the peaceful, local voices are heard.
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