File | Brexit, 10 years later | The United Kingdom torn apart by immigration (3 articles)

Welcome to Epping! Under an opulent appearance, the small town is the epicenter of the demonstrations which have shaken the United Kingdom for months because of the hotels which house asylum seekers. The community tries to calm things down.

Epping — The Bell Hotel looks more like a prison than a palace. All around there are metal fences to keep the demonstrators at bay. Banners, fireworks… Every Sunday, the establishment has been stormed by protesters since a sad event ignited the situation.

Last summer, an asylum seeker staying at the hotel was found guilty of sexually assaulting a 14-year-old schoolgirl. The affair created a national commotion, especially since the attacker was released from prison by mistake, before being caught and deported.

“Quickly, we had demonstrations for which the police were really not prepared. There was a degree of violence and vandalism, people climbing on roofs, arrests…,” district councilor Jon Whitehouse told me.

The peaceful community of 13,000 inhabitants, on the outskirts of London, has become the epicenter of the protest movement against hotels which house around 30,000 asylum seekers across the United Kingdom.

In Epping as elsewhere, anti-immigration groups are fueling discontent.

Week after week, the Pink Ladies encourage women across the country to demonstrate, all dressed in pink. Anti-Islam activist Tommy Robinson organized a march which brought together more than 100,000 people in London last September.

Bad for everyone

Hotels are a bad solution for everyone.

It costs the state billions, three times more than expected according to an independent audit. Asylum seekers are poorly accommodated. And it is extremely unpopular with the population who have the impression that asylum seekers sleep in five-star hotels, while ordinary mortals struggle to pay their rent.

Only private companies that rent disused rooms are winners, believes Sophie Watt, professor at the University of Sheffield.

“They accumulate a lot of government money without necessarily investing in reception structures. So, we end up with hotels which are very often dilapidated, food that is really very unsuitable. “It creates very complicated living conditions,” she says.

Asylum seekers are trapped. They do not have the right to work while waiting for their file to be regularized. However, the increase in requests since the pandemic has caused processing times to explode. One in three times, the decision takes more than a year.

This destabilizes the small communities where asylum seekers are housed. Faced with popular pressure, the district of Epping sought, at great legal expense, an injunction to ban asylum seekers from the Bell Hotel. The request was rejected.

Calm down the game

Residents of Epping try to calm things down: march for peace, petition to remove the flags of England hanging without permission from the lampposts on the main street which leads to the Bell Hotel…

These flags with the cross of Saint George are seen across the country as part of Operation “Raise the Colors” which is a symbolic way of saying that England does not want foreigners, non-whites, non-Christians.

But those who want to calm the situation get into trouble on the Internet. “We were intimidated a lot,” laments Alice Marcolin, of Epping for Everyone.

The young mother arranged to meet me at the public market. She is accompanied by her friend Sarah Fulbrook, who does her best to build bridges in the community. Every Saturday morning, she volunteers at the Bell Hotel.

It distributes clothes and toiletries. She helps asylum seekers with administrative questions.

Brexit didn’t help

Iranians, Afghans, Iraqis, Syrians, Sudanese… Since the pandemic, a wave of migrants has crossed the Channel in small boats to seek asylum in the United Kingdom. In 2025, a near-record number of 41,000 asylum seekers will arrive on British shores.

Ironically, the country is less well equipped to return them to France since Brexit.

When the United Kingdom was part of the European Union, it was covered by the Dublin agreements which allowed migrants who entered its territory illegally to be expelled to the European country from which they arrived.

“With Brexit, the Dublin agreements are no longer valid for the United Kingdom. And that, obviously, no one talked about it at the time of Brexit,” relates Sophie Watt. The UK must now make its own agreements with each country. This is what he did with France, but the logistics do not work. Migrants crammed into poverty camps in France are ready to do anything to cross.

Today, the British are more against immigration than ever. Alice Marcolin perceives it in all kinds of small gestures. Of Italian origin, she has lived in England since 2008. People make comments to her when she speaks to her children in Italian, because she wants them to be bilingual. “I’ve never experienced this before,” she laments.

It’s as if all the negative rhetoric sold during the referendum campaign has exacerbated public resentment. Ultimately, Brexit has amplified the tensions it promised to reduce.