The Epping unrest proves far-right violence never went away

My heart raced. I kept hearing sounds that weren’t there. Getting out of bed, I peered out of the window, looking for any unfamiliar noise or lights.

Nothing.

I climbed back into bed and stared at the ceiling; while images of people lighting fires and attacking people of colour on the streets flooded my mind.

The UK race riots – which saw thousands of fascists take to the streets to intimidate and attack immigrants – brought on these kinds of feelings in the summer of 2024.  

But this was happening to me last night. My anxiety had peaked and I was terrified again.

Yesterday, I read the news that far right, anti-immigration protestors had taken to the streets in Epping, Essex, outside of a hotel housing asylum seekers and they had become violent. 

Last year, it didn’t take long before the riots that initially began in Southport following the murder of three young girls there, went nationwide, and so, of course, I panicked.

After an immigrant was detained in Epping for alleged sex offences, days after arriving in the UK, which he denied in court on July 10 – protestors gathered outside of the accommodation that they believed housed him for demonstrations over a number of days. 

Last night, anti-racist organisation, Stand Up to Racism, heard about far-right elements in the group and formed a counter-protest, meeting them outside of the hotel with placards. 

Then chaos ensued.

Fireworks were reportedly used in the crowds, eggs were thrown at people and even the police were assaulted.

It was almost a perfect, and chilling, echo of last year’s riots. When stabbings in a Southport dance studio saw the murder of three children and a further ten injured, by 17 year old Axel Rudakubana, far-right agitators organised and caused hell.

Last year, living in Hounslow – a heavily immigrant borough – I was terrified. Reports of riots entering my area came flooding in via social media. 

Friends and family who lived nearby texted me in a panic of misinformation, via forwarded WhatsApp messages. 

One claimed that Hounslow was completely taken over by fascists. Another said local boys were sitting around the town center holding baseball bats. We were all tense.

My anxiety was deepened with the silence that enveloped me in my empty house and I twitched at every creak, as I waited for the windows to crash in with hordes of angry racist mobs not far behind. 

My dad texted me ‘We lived through NF (National Front), same again’, and told me not to leave the house. 

But I felt infuriated. Under the anxiety a stubborn frustration bubbled, and I realised I wasn’t scared of them, but of how they have controlled me.

So I left the house; quietly grinding my teeth, my eyes shifting, sweat forming all over my body. 

And just like that I was back home, triumphant in having taken a bus to the shops. 

But that frustration never really left. Because deep down, I knew things would forever feel terrifying.

A friend confessed to me a month later that she was attacked during the riots and had been house-bound since, too terrified to walk outside. It took months for her to start to recover, but she still looks over her shoulder when she’s alone.

The guise under which the far-right have used to attack migrants – the protection of women and girls – is hypocritical, because it is the women around me who have been hurt.

A year on, I can’t shake the feeling that the far-right are running the exact same playbook.

And they have been emboldened to continue by the action of some politicians, and the inaction of others. 

At least one local Reform councillor joined demonstrators yesterday in Epping, with another quoted as saying ‘they’re trying to dilute the Englishness out of us.’

Meanwhile, the Conservative leader of Epping Council and two local Tory MPs have called for the migrant hotel to be shut down, a key demand of rioters. 

There have been no words on the Essex unrest from Keir Starmer either – instead, he is busy tweeting about how he is actively working to stop migrants from entering the country and how ‘angry’ small boat crossings make him. It was only two months ago that Starmer referred to current levels of immigration as causing ‘incalculable damage’. 

Even after the riots last year, at Labour conference in September, he didn’t make an explicit link between the riots and rising anti-migrant rhetoric – instead, he refuted it, saying he would ‘never accept the argument … that millions of people concerned about immigration are one and the same thing as people who smashed up businesses’.

Meanwhile, many of us are living in fear again. In fact, we never stopped. I look into the eyes of people I walk past in the street and wonder whether they want me gone. I wonder if they would happily attack me, and that no one will save me. 

These riots, I fear, are now becoming common-place. And while people of colour and immigrants have always persisted against fascism, we need our government to support us, instead of adding to the fear.

We can’t live like this forever.

Do you have a story you’d like to share? Get in touch by emailing Ross.Mccafferty@metro.co.uk. 

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