{"id":16892,"date":"2025-08-21T04:16:46","date_gmt":"2025-08-21T04:16:46","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/?p=16892"},"modified":"2025-08-21T04:16:46","modified_gmt":"2025-08-21T04:16:46","slug":"far-right-anger-over-asylum-hotels-is-destroying-the-very-idea-of-refuge-and-thats-probably-the-goal-zoe-williams","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/?p=16892","title":{"rendered":"Far-right anger over asylum hotels is destroying the very idea of refuge \u2013 and that\u2019s probably the goal | Zoe Williams"},"content":{"rendered":"

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W<\/span>hen the high court ruled this week that the Bell hotel in Epping could no longer be used to house asylum seekers, the triumph of anti-migrant zealots looked a little unwarranted, or at least premature. Nigel Farage hoped loudly that the ruling would provide \u201cinspiration to others across the country\u201d. Tabloids and GB News called it an all-caps VICTORY, while Epping locals popped champagne on the hotel\u2019s doorstep.<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, the ruling itself felt impermanent and technical more than principled. The judge ruled that Somani, the company that owns the Bell, had not notified the council of its intended use; it was hardly an endorsement of the general proposition, memorably spelled out by Robert Jenrick recently, that \u201cmen from backward countries who broke into Britain illegally\u201d pose an active threat to his daughters. And while the victory calls were resounding, there was no answering message of defeat from those who support asylum seekers \u2013 nobody thinks hotels are a sound and humane way to accommodate refugees. Liminal, often squalid, eye-wateringly expensive for the Home Office, they hardly scream \u201cwelcome\u201d.<\/p>\n

Yet the ruling has been seismic, and the victory cries of the right are logical. Within 24 hours, the Home Office\u2019s plans on migration have been put into disarray. It is obliged to house asylum seekers while their claims are being heard, and at the end of March there were 30,000 people living in about 200 hotels. The plan had been to phase out hotels by 2029, a date that made no sense unless its real aim was to kick the whole issue into the next term. Now, the Bell has to be emptied by 12 September. As other local councils follow Epping\u2019s lead, the government will be left scrambling to disperse people into local authority housing at very short notice, with a duty to keep track of them but no obvious way of doing so.<\/p>\n

More than this, the ruling has solidified a sense of legitimate, citizen anger against refugees. Since the Southport riots, there has been a familiar ratchet: hard-right provocateurs generate real life protests, often from great distances, because when you\u2019re organising on Telegram anyone can count as a \u201clocal resident\u201d. Demonstrations and rioters themselves are often explicitly Islamophobic \u2013 when they don\u2019t muster at an asylum hotel, they gather at a mosque \u2013 and are used as proof that this is the natural stance of the average Briton. Commentators parse these explosions as a mixture of hard-right agitating and authentic local feeling \u2013 unknowable what the ratio is, they agree sagely \u2013 and the anger, being dramatic and observable, grows in stature. It\u2019s now impossible to have a debate about immigration without acknowledging this huge wellspring of fury, and it is simply not the done thing to ask whether the rage is justified. Anger, being authentic, never has to explain itself.<\/p>\n

This court ruling is both illustrative of and instrumental in the solidity of fury as a political instrument. The judge granted the injunction after hearing the local council\u2019s complaints that planning law had been breached in changing the site\u2019s use. But underlying this, the council also cited disruption caused by recent protests. The hotel has been at the centre of controversy since an asylum seeker was accused of sexually assaulting a 14-year-old girl and concerns were raised about potential future threats. But the concerns can be self-fulfilling: if your accommodation is regularly surrounded by a small, hostile mob that sometimes wants to set fire to it, it\u2019s probably quite difficult to slot into a normal, law-abiding life, or even know what a law-abiding life looks like, in this country you escaped to, having heard it was civilised.<\/p>\n

Completely absent in this debate \u2013 which apparently we are all too frightened to have, yet we have constantly \u2013 is any sense of a better idea. If the problem with refugees is that they arrive illegally, would it help to have more legal routes? If the hotels are the issue, could we not work towards dispersal in the first instance, and much faster processing of claims? Is there no world in which we could engage imaginatively with the violence and upheaval that people are fleeing, and pull together to support them until they\u2019re legally able to support themselves? That seems to be the reasonable expectation with Ukrainian refugees: if we can\u2019t extend the same empathy to those from Pakistan, Afghanistan, Iran and Bangladesh, can anyone at least explain why? Would a refresher in the political context of those countries help? If the problem is the numbers, can anyone explain how many asylum seekers they would like instead? We currently rank fifth when compared to European nations in the absolute number of asylum claims received, and 17th when numbers are adjusted for population \u2013 should we be 20th?<\/p>\n

Does anyone want to resile from the 1951 UN refugee convention? That would seem to be implicit in Reform UK\u2019s promise to leave the European convention on human rights, but would any party or organisation that doesn\u2019t want that care to explain how it is executing its duty towards refugees, and plans to do so in the future? The problem with anger as a political instrument \u2013 well, one of the problems, alongside the violence \u2013 is that it\u2019s never called upon to be articulate or constructive. It would undermine its own strength if it were.<\/p>\n

There was another element of the campaign that led to this ruling, which is subtle but important: the erasure of the category of refugee and asylum seeker. When you make the focus of your argument a hotel and its planning status, on the surface this is a battle over place. But if you take away the refuge someone is seeking, are they a refugee? If you take away the protection granted to them by the state, there is no asylum to claim. How, then, do we define these people? Without a political definition, do they exist? Even though the issue is very different, it\u2019s not tactically dissimilar to the legal campaign waged against trans people, resulting in April\u2019s ruling that everyone has to use the toilets and other facilities of their biological sex. It doesn\u2019t say you have no right to live as trans; it\u2019s just unfortunately impractical for you to do so unless you stay at home. Do you still exist, do you still have rights?<\/p>\n

The problem with anger in politics is that combustion is the only way to expend the built-up energy. It\u2019s much easier to keep things humane and civilised in the first place. But it\u2019s too late to wish we had done that \u2013 an injection of humanity is the only way to cool things down.<\/p>\n