The Bell Hotel in Epping has been a focus of far right protests (Pic: Guy Smallman)
Judges overturned a court injunction on Friday that would have blocked refugees from being housed at the Bell Hotel in Essex. It is a defeat for the Tories who brought forward the initial court case. But overturning it will be seized on by the racist right.
Epping Forest District Council had sought the injunction after weeks of far right protests targeted the hotel. It would have meant asylum seekers being forced out of the Epping hotel by 12 September. But the Home Office and the owner of the hotel have successfully challenged that ruling.
The right haven’t hesitated to use the decision to whip up racist hatred.
The fascist Homeland Party, which has been organising the protests in Epping, claimed, “The Home Office, and now the courts, have firmly sided with migrants over their own people in Epping. The rights of our people should always come first, no excuses, no exceptions.”
Reform UK leader Nigel Farage said on X, “The government has used ECHR (European Convention of Human Rights) against the people of Epping. Illegal migrants have more rights than the British people under Starmer.”
Former Reform UK MP Rupert Lowe went further. He said, “No more appeals, court cases, or debates. We must deport the illegal migrants. Not some of them. Not most of them. All of them.”
Tory leader Kemi Badenoch described the ruling as a “setback” and urged Tory councils to seek similar injunctions against hotels housing refugees.
This vitriol will boost the fascists and racists on the ground who are targeting asylum seekers and seeking to sow racist hate into our communities.
The Court of Appeal judges described the initial court decision as “seriously flawed”. They also argued that the court injunction could lead to more far right protests by showing that they can have success.
But anti-racists can’t rely on the courts to stop the far right protests. Any answers to the surge of fascist and far right violence won’t come from the Labour government. It pushes racist policies that help fuel the far right.
Relying on the state reduces the role of working class people, telling them they are at best a sideshow to the main enforcers of anti-fascism.
A decision from a court won’t win the argument that migrants and refugees are welcome in Britain.
And leaving refugees in dismal and crowded hotel accommodation rather than living and working in the community is hardly a victory for anti-racism.
To beat back and undermine the far right, it will take anti-racist campaigning in the streets and in the workplaces.
That is why the whole working class movement needs to throw its weight into the anti-racist mobilisations organised by Stand Up To Racism this weekend. And it makes the 13 September demonstration against fascist Tommy Robinson a key flashpoint.
Racism first developed as a justification for enslavement
