Across the UK, a growing number of mothers are stepping forward as the frontline of outrage against government-backed asylum policies they say are endangering their children, according to an Aug. 4 article in The Free Press.
Article author Dominic Green reported that the spark was lit in Epping, a town northeast of London, where protests erupted after a 14-year-old girl was allegedly sexually assaulted by a newly arrived Ethiopian migrant housed in a taxpayer-funded asylum hotel.
The suspect, Hadush Gerberslasie Kebatu, arrived to the country “informally on a boat,” according to his lawyer, and was placed in the Bell Hotel just days before the attack. He now faces charges including sexual assault, inciting a minor to engage in sexual activity, and harassment.
On July 17, the day he was charged, more than a thousand locals gathered outside the hotel chanting “Save our kids.”
In the days that followed, far-left counterprotesters, including those from groups like Stand Up to Racism and the Socialist Workers Party, gathered in town, leading to clashes with local residents. Green reported that the scene turned violent, describing how “the left fought the locals and the locals fought the police.” He reported that 14 local men from Essex were later charged, and footage captured a police officer smashing a local man in the face with a riot shield.
Meanwhile, the father of the 14-year-old girl who was allegedly assaulted by Kebatu wrote to the town council in protest.
“I just want the hotel to be moved, not only off our streets, but away from making any other family feel how we’re feeling right now,” he said. “It’s not fair that the Government are putting our children and grandchildren at risk, even their own.”
Frustration in Epping is mounting not only over public safety but also over what many see as a top-down immigration system that ignores working-class families, according to Green.
“England has changed,” one protester, Louise, told Green. “We’re not looking after the people that are here.”
According to Home Office data cited by The Free Press, 32,000 asylum seekers — most of them men — are being housed in 210 hotels at a daily cost of over £6 million ($8 million). While the government promises to phase out asylum hotels by 2029, families like those in Epping say they can’t afford to wait.
“When you’re a mum of daughters, it’s just about protecting them,” a woman named Julie told Green. “The lioness in you comes out.”
Green said that the protests have since spread to more than 20 towns and cities across England and Scotland. Though many participants are ordinary mothers and fathers, the government has labeled the movement as “far-right” and pursued criminal charges, including a 31-month sentence for “a single tweet’ one mother posted, as Zeale previously reported.
“The mothers of Epping may have started a nationwide revolt,” Green noted. “What happens next may be beyond anyone’s control. Given the latest restrictions on free speech, it may also be beyond the British people’s description.”
The protests, Green said, are growing despite government efforts to suppress them.
“Across the country, the English giant is awake and on the streets,” he said. “No political party, old or new, left or right, has a serious plan for how to placate it and restore the social contract. The language of censure can no longer silence it. The recourse to censorship will enrage it further.”