In 2018, small boats began crossing the English Channel from France, crammed with migrants from the Middle East and Africa. They were hazarding the water crossing from France to avoid traditional border controls and reach the UK, with its liberal asylum policies.
Around 37,000 people crossed the English Channel in small boats in 2024, 25% more than the year before but fewer than in 2022, when more than 45,000 migrants crossed. Small boat arrivals increased further in the first half of 2025. As of the end of July, more than 25,000 migrants have landed in small boats, “51 per cent higher than at the same point in 2024, when the figure stood at 16,842, and 73 per cent higher than at the same point in 2023, when it was 14,732,” according to The Telegraph.
Where do you put all these people?
If you’re the government of Great Britain, you put them up in hotel rooms in small cities across the country. The government put up 32,000 asylum seekers in 210 hotels across England. One of those hotels is in Epping, a small city of 135,000.
The troubles began in early July when Hadush Gerberslasie Kebatu, a 38-year-old Ethiopian, arrived “informally on a boat” and claimed asylum in Britain. The migrant propositioned and tried to kiss a 14-year-old girl in a restaurant close to the hotel. Kebatu was charged on July 17 with “three counts of sexual assault, one count of inciting a girl to engage in sexual activity, and one count of harassment without violence.”
That’s when all hell began to break loose.
On the same day Keebatu was charged, about a thousand people showed up in front of the hotel to protest. Most of them were local women enraged at the danger their daughters were exposed to on a daily basis.
“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,” the 14-year-old’s father said in a letter to the town council. “It’s not fair that the Government are putting our children and grandchildren at risk, even their own.”
But the situation didn’t explode until far-left pro-migrant activists showed up. It was a gaggle of the usual suspects: protest regulars such as Stand Up to Racism and the Socialist Workers Party.
The July 17 confrontation turned into a riot. The left fought the locals and the locals fought the police. Fourteen local men, all of them from Essex, were charged. Social media footage showed a policeman in riot gear smashing a local man in the face with his shield. “You knocked my fucking teeth out,” he shouts as masked rioters jump on a police truck.
The Conservative leader of the local town council, Chris Whitbread, warned that Epping was now a “focus and battleground” for outside extremists. The council voted unanimously to ask the Home Office to close the hotel. Epping’s Conservative MP, Neil Hudson, described “a crisis that is boiling over” and backed their call for the hotel to be closed. The Conservatives’ leader, Kemi Badenoch, also an Essex MP, denounced outside “agitators” and defended the locals’ “legitimate concerns.”
Some of the police were very helpful, escorting far-left protesters to the site.
Astonishing that @EssexPoliceUK brazenly escorted far-left thugs to the protest at Epping’s Bell Hotel.
Worse still, they LIED about it‼️😠 pic.twitter.com/VM02zyE0ow
— Peter Lloyd (@Suffragent_) July 23, 2025
Clips of the riot went viral, and last Saturday and Sunday, protests were held in front of asylum hotels in 20 cities across the country.
“It’s been building up,” Louise, a caregiver in Epping, says. The English people “haven’t had a voice” but “England has changed.” She says that poverty is growing, as is the homeless population. “We’re not looking after the people that are here. When people come in and get given a home to live in and food to eat, that really stokes anger.”
Related: The Absolutely, Positively, Worst Campaign of Genocide in Human History
On July 26, the fascist Online Safety Act went into effect. This draconian law, covered extensively by PJ Media, grew out of the riots in 2024 following the stabbing of several girls attending a Taylor Swift-themed party. The Act includes an Orwellian “false communications offense,” which allows for prosecuting anyone who sends a message intending to “cause nontrivial psychological or physical harm to a likely audience.”
British X users couldn’t watch a speech by Conservative Party MP Katie Lam because she talked about the “grooming gangs” and showed footage of the police arresting anti-immigration protesters in Leeds.
“The British state won’t protect children from mass gang rape,” Lam posted. “But it will ‘protect’ adults from hearing about it.”
The protests in Epping continue.
“I just feel I need to say my bit,” says Kelly, a heavily tanned, lightly tattooed 60-year-old with a strong Cockney accent. “This is our country. I work full time. I pay top tax.”
Kelly drove from Colchester, just over an hour away, with her friends Steve and Bob. She was never a “political person” until she took part in an anti-lockdown march during the Covid-19 epidemic. She was “born and bred” on the housing project where she still lives, but now she is scared to leave her home at night because, she says, the government has housed gangs of migrants in the project. “I blame the government for allowing it.”
“I think we’re f***ed,” Kelly reflects. “I think this country is gone. There’s no saving it now. All we can do is support our own kind.”
There isn’t anything happening in Great Britain that the left wouldn’t embrace in this country.
The reaction by “Kelly” is typical. When the government becomes tribal, other tribes will band together in self-protection. They won’t give a fig if others see it as “racist” or even “uncivilized.” If it’s a fight between “us” and “them,” there’s no contest.
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