What do the Epping Protests tell us about 'civil disobedience' in the UK?

0:00Queen Carvania stood haloed by the morning sun. An army hung on her every word. My champions, I have sold my chariot on Carvana. Twas a lovely SUV, an inexplicably queenly offer. They're even coming to the castle to collect it. Tonight we feast! An offer you can feast on. Sell your car today on Carvana. Pick up fees, may apply. This is a Global Player original podcast. All over England, all over the weekend, anti-migrant demonstrations have been held outside hotels housing asylum seekers, be it Wolverhampton, Portsmouth, Norwich, Leeds, Nottinghamshire, Southampton and, of course, Epping, which has kind of been the epicentre for these protests over the last couple of weeks.

0:56I mean, they're just straight into the country, to be honest. If they can't understand that people are here just to demonstrate, to look after their kids because they're frightened of their kids being raped and abused, then I think, well, there's something wrong with them. It is pitting local people against anti-racism groups and the far left, who in turn are attracting the far right. Is it tearing apart our social fabric or is it being much exaggerated? We have a special report from Epping. Welcome to the News Agents.

1:28The News Agents. It's John. It's Emily. And we are going to take you to a story that we have been monitoring on and off for the last two or three weeks. And it all centres round what has been happening in Epping, where, as you've probably become aware, we have seen demonstrators and indeed counter-protesters facing off outside the Bell Hotel. Now, over the last couple of weeks, it's been generally on a Thursday or a Sunday that we've seen these groups start together. Some of them have been local. Some of them have very much been from out of town and have come in to ferment more of a protest. But the protests began around the Bell Hotel, which was housing asylum seekers, migrants.

2:19It has been doing that, I think, on and off for the last four or five years. But the trigger point came when one man originally from Ethiopia, who'd arrived in the UK eight days previously, allegedly accosted a young woman, a schoolgirl, actually on the street outside the hotel, tried to kiss her. And he was arrested. And that process is now going through the court. We can't really comment on that because it's a judici. But this has started a wave of, I guess you'd call it, deep discomfort amongst some locals as to the kind of people that are in the hotel and whether their children or whether their community is at risk.

3:03And actually, this time last week, there were suggestions that it was going to be a massive protest outside this hotel. And it was going to be a clash. And Tommy Robinson was going to be there. And the far right were going to be marching in huge numbers. And it felt like the stage was being set for a kind of repeat of what happened in Rotherham a year ago, where far right protesters tried to burn down a hotel, hostel housing asylum seekers. And that came in the wake of the Southport killings and the dreadful events there and the kind of shock that had in the nation. It didn't turn out like that on Sunday this past.

3:43Well, it has been heavily policed. And we know that it is just one place where protesters have started to gather, I should say, out of town protesters. They've also been at hotels in Wolverhampton and East London, Norwich, Leeds, Portsmouth, pretty much across England. and I think it's important to try and understand that there are both very legitimate concerns going on here. There are people who are deeply worried about the use of the hotel in their midst for people they don't know, for reasons they don't understand, particularly if crimes are being committed. And then there is what we call a sort of astroturf element to this and by that I mean something highly organised, highly manipulated, very well-produced activism, which is landing on these communities and pretending to be grassroots-based.

4:34In other words, the AstroTurf is, you know, the idea of it being grassroots, where actually it's come from on high and it's a top-down attempt to create and disseminate a lot of misinformation, disinformation, and really get people angry and more concerned than they were. And that's coming from the left, and it's coming from the right. But let's speak now to Andy Hughes, who hosts the Crime Agents podcast very successfully and is the crime correspondent for LBC. It didn't live up to the billing that this was going to be a mass protest. Maybe all the far-right, St George's flags-waving protesters were sitting at home watching the lionesses, but I don't know.

5:16But it wasn't that big. No, it wasn't. I mean, listen, the numbers were fairly big. I mean, there was a couple of hundred on each side. When you say each side, Annie, sorry, just to clarify, what does that mean? Yeah, so there was the original protest, which was the anti-migrant hotel protest. That was directly opposite the Bell Hotel. And then just actually not far away, but separated between a big line of police and cages was the counter protest. Now, this was organised by Say No to Racism. and they arrived at the Epping station and they were escorted up by the police which is what the police do when there's going to be a bit of tension and then they arrived a couple of hours after the anti-migrant hotel protest started so they were shepherded in both sides were kind of like shouting at each other and really after about half an hour there was a little bit of trouble one guy saw one guy get arrested a guy from the anti-migrant hotel protest He burst through the line.

6:17He got tackled to the floor quite heavily by riot officers. He was nicked, taken away. So really, it kind of passed without incident. And that's kind of what we've been seeing with this. The interesting thing is, this was kind of billed, is this could be the start of a summer of rioting, like we saw last summer. I mean, that was what Nigel Farage was saying in his press conference this time a week ago. Yeah, exactly. And also Tommy Robinson was putting videos out, telling people to get down there. So why do you think they didn't? I mean, Tommy Robinson didn't turn up, actually. No, he didn't. I mean, someone from Hope Not Hate actually said he was never going to because apparently he was on a stag do over the weekend.

6:57Priorities. Does that mean that the far right stayed away yesterday? No, not quite. So Tommy Robinson originally said, listen, let's all go down there. And then he put a video out saying, actually, I've just had loads of messages from the people of Epping that they don't want me coming because it's going to be a circus and that they want to keep it a local thing. However, I did spot a few members of well-known far right groups there. I actually bumped into a guy called Callum Barker. Now, he is a member of the Homeland Party. The Homeland Party have been described by Hope Not Hate as the most dangerous extreme far right group in the UK at the moment.

7:36So I decided to have a little chat with him, and here's what happened. Excuse me. Hi. Hi, mate. You're Callen Barker, aren't you? Yeah. Hi, I'm from LBC, Andy Hughes. LBC. Yes. Didn't you guys say we were Russian bots or something along the lines of that? No, no, listen. I think that was the article, wasn't it? Why don't we talk about your group, Homeland? I mean, they're kind of anti-fascist groups such as Hope Not Hate. They label you neo-Nazis. Are you neo-Nazis? I think it's absolutely rubbish. I'm a local. I live just over there. I'm here to stand up, make your voices heard. It's not about party politics.

8:09It's not about what you believe. It's about keeping our community safe and protecting our girls at the end of the day. Yeah, so, I mean, the problem is, a couple of your members have been, there's pictures of them. I've got them here on my phone if you want me to show you them. I've done Nazi salutes. What do you say about that? I'm not a fascist. I'm not a Nazi. I'm a local resident. Stand up for it. I believe in those members. They're not here to stay. They're not with us. I don't see the relevance. It seems like you're trying to smear what is a protest, trying to protect and defend a local girl.

8:36you're trying to smear all the local people here. I'm not, I'm not, I'm just talking to you. Why are you bringing it up? Because I'm talking to you. I'm not talking about these people here, I'm talking about you. It's about the girls and getting that hotel closed down. Just tell me, what's the main concern of the people here today? I think the main concern of the people is ultimately looking out for our community, protecting our girls. We've had this hotel here for about, it's been on and off for five years. Everyone's got a story. For people who haven't seen the pictures, you know, who are listening to this, you show the pictures of the Nazi salutes.

9:06The pictures are not of him but his members of the Homeland Party. Which is now a political party. It's now a registered political party as of 2023. And how representative were they of the protesters? I mean, it was very interesting that he was trying to badge himself. Local. I'm a local. I'm just concerned about the girls. You've studied the far right. You know who these people are. I mean, was that who the protesters were? Not at all. He was definitely the outlier. Like, the majority, just all local people. I mean, who just said that they were there because they had concerns about what was happening to young girls in the area.

9:44I spoke to one lady called Kimberly, and here's what she had to say. Spent some time with the counter-protest. They were saying that you guys were Nazis. Well, we're not Nazis. I mean, they're just straighters to the country, to be honest. If they can't understand that people are here just to demonstrate, demonstrate to look after their kids because they're frightened of their kids being raped and abused then i think well there's something wrong with them you know they're either brainwashed or they just got it in their head that we're racist and we're fascists and everything else that they like i guess one of the questions andy is if the law is seen to be doing its job in other words the allegation has now gone to court right the ethiopian man has now appeared in court there is still a concern that what?

10:31That they shouldn't be here at all or that the hotel shouldn't be used or that the law isn't strict enough. Just talk us through that. I think one of the problems you've got here is that members of the far right have been kind of jumping on this as an issue because this is straight out the far right handbook in terms of the online activity that we've seen which is they see a local community which are angry and emotional about this so they stoke the fire So I did a story just before the protest this week, and we found that accounts from Russia, America, across Europe, all neo-Nazi far-right groups were spreading disinformation on X, on TikTok, all over the place, especially on Facebook as well, which is where a lot of the protesters use.

11:21when I spoke to the local people there they actually said we don't want the far right here but then they started repeating some of the misinformation because of course it is perfectly legitimate if you live in a vicinity not to want, kind of where I live there's a talk of a traveller's site being set up and everyone in the locality is very up in arms about it that's what civil society is you can protest. If you can't protest about this in your community then what can you protest about? Sometimes it's all right to have a protest. I think the complexity comes as when certain questionable characters like Callum Barker, who I confronted, get involved.

12:01I just go back a year. You know, I sort of talked about it's a long time since Rotherham. Then Elon Musk was saying civil war was coming to Britain. This doesn't feel like civil war. Is it possible that the right are overplaying their hand? And maybe even the far left who want to confront these people are stoking it too much for their own political ends. Do you know, I think what's happened here is these are two completely different events in the sense that last summer's riots were triggered by the horrific and tragic case in Southport. Whereas this one, this has been a much lower case in terms of seriousness.

12:35And this has been a much more of a slow burner. This is slowly gathered momentums. This is slowly slowly being snowballing in terms of people getting angry in terms of it's being played out online in Southport. What we did, we did analysis. we saw a huge amount of activity from the far right straight away, and then that just stayed. What's happening here is it kind of started off quite a low-level case, and it's slowly, gradually been getting bigger. But the difference is, last summer, the police were completely caught on the back foot. This time, they're more than prepared, and you can see that.

13:09I saw that yesterday. So tell us about the counter-protesters, and who are they? So they are organised by Say No to Racism, and there's many different characters there. And actually, I mean, we went in there. I mean, I was filming with Shane Fennelly, the news agent's camera maestro. And then we went in there and we actually received more hostility there, actually, than we did in the anti-migrant hotel protest, which actually, frankly, was a bit of a surprise. And then we spoke to many of the people there. And I was trying to explain that the people I'd just spoken to, i.e. people on the anti-migrant hotel protest, mothers, grandmothers who were there with their families.

13:48I also mentioned obviously the extreme element as well but they didn't seem really to be having it they kind of labeling them all as far-right Nazi types I spoke to one young lady she didn't give us a name but here's what she said you know you've seen the involvement of Nazi groups coming to Epping trying to use this to build build themselves up and I think we have to stand against that do you think everyone over there is Nazi though I mean is that not a bit of a stretch if you look So for example, it's now been reported in various media outlets that the neo-Nazi group Homeland are very involved in the organisation of the protests.

14:26I've just doorstep one of their main leaders, Callum Barker. Right, so I think anyone who says, oh, you know, I've just got some concerns, you need to think about who you're standing with. And you need to think about who is taking advantage of this to build up their site. A lot of the people over there before, I mean, I was over there, there's obviously lots of women. people from Epping who have they say have a legitimate concern can you see that I think the problem is is that you know the far right and you know they claim to care about women they came to be clear about um protecting women's rights like they're not interested in that they're only interested in it when they can use it to further away gender and again you know I said before about the scapegoating that is another thing where we see this scapegoating we know I mean what you're taking us into is a really difficult story to tell Andy quite frankly isn't it because you can see elements that are really troubling and really horrible on the far right you can see totally legitimate concerns from people who are local and you can see people who think that they're being preemptive and think that they're sort of taking on if you like the nazis but maybe taking on the community itself and i guess one of the things that we're seeing now is this whole question of how the government itself responds because on friday thursday friday number 10 i think it was Angela Aina put out this very strong message about, you know, we've got to stop the sort of social fabric tearing apart because it's being torn apart.

15:46Does that help? If we talk about the social fabric of this country being torn, does that feel correct now? Or does that feel like we're sort of hyping it up? Yeah. Do you know what? I had this exact same discussion with my editor about this. And I was like, are we kind of finding the flames by talking about this? And we did. I did a couple of stories at the end of last week on LBC about this. And it's a really dangerous game to play because you don't want to be kind of fueling the fire. But at the same time, these are legitimate issues that are getting, well, being protester, but the whole country seems to be engaged with this issue.

16:23And it's getting a lot of track. So we have to as journalists. And I was, again, Shane and I walked away at the end of yesterday and we were like, God, this is so complex. this is and we just felt like we were treading on eggshells the entire day so it really is a sticky one and you will have read the stuff that we've all been reading recently which is and again i go back to this astroturf kind of idea which is everyone makes themselves sound local you know i was in bradford at the weekend and i saw the terrible scenes you know over on with muslims and people blah blah blah blah you know and it's all meant to kind of create this sense of like Local people having local issues with a country that has changed beyond recognition.

17:08And once again, you're kind of caught in this place, which is like for some people, they do feel more isolated. You know, they do feel that the places, the streets they grew up on don't look the same anymore. And for others, this is weaponization. This is politicization. This is about a concerted movement to try and get quite often very rich, very entitled, very middle class people talking down parts of the country because they don't like Muslims. You know, the ironic thing about this, the person arrested Ethiopian. I mean, that country, I think the majority is Christian and they're talking about Muslims.

17:46So, I mean, listen, he might be, he might not be. No one knows. That's the point. but it is being weaponised, that term, in this case and it might not even be factually true. And we should say, if you want more of Andy and who doesn't want more of Andy there is a special episode of the crime agents that's coming out this afternoon. There is, yes. We had an interview with Joe Mulhall from Hope Not Hate and they've done a lot of investigative work around the far right who are infiltrating these groups. And in a moment, online safety and the massive petition against some of the measures that have been taken in the act that came into force last week.

18:29This is The News Agents. So, two data points to consider. The first is that the much-talked-about Online Safety Act became law last week, which requires for access to certain websites, pornography sites primarily you have to verify your age and prove that you are 18 and there are various means that that can be done by that's data point number one data point number two is that this weekend saw a rise of people wanting vpns virtual private networks where you can disguise your age by logging on to pretend you're in the united states or wherever it happens to be Costa Rica, the demand rose by 1 ,800 % in the UK of people wanting VPNs, i.e.

19:27presumably people who wanting to disguise in future where they're logging in from. Yeah, so Proton, which is the Swiss-based company, which is behind the top VPN app, said it experienced more than 1 ,800 % rise in just UK-based users. And NordVPN, which many of you will have heard of, including on this show, said they'd had a thousand percent increase in UK purchases of VPN subscriptions just since the rules took effect. In other words, in the last 48 hours. And I love this quote from Proton, which is, we'd normally associate these large spikes in signups with major civil unrest. In other words, the UK, the democracy that is the UK, is starting to give off the same effect as somewhere like Iran or somewhere like the Middle East or somewhere that's actually experiencing a massive uprising of protest and people who are finding themselves blocked from using the internet.

20:26Because the UK has put itself at the vanguard of the changes that are being brought and this whole idea of online safety and understandably trying to protect young people, trying to protect children from seeing harmful content. But the fact of the matter is that whilst there are VPNs out there, you've got an easy way round having to upload a passport photo or whatever it happens to be to prove your age. So let's go back a moment to Friday. And that's when this new legislation started to come in. We are one of the first democratic countries to impose such strict controls on tech companies. And we will essentially become a test case for other countries watching us to see if it works.

21:12And if you listen to what Ofcom thinks of this, the media regulator, they've said the new age checks are primarily designed to prevent children under the age of 18 from accessing sites that could give online harm, right? Whether it's pornography, whether it's self-harm, whether it's eating disorders, whether it's suicide. So this all comes from a place of genuine concern, you know, partly fuelled by some of the dreadful stories we've heard of young people losing their lives to suicide and parents saying this is all the fault of the tech company. So that is kind of your starting point. Are we going to do something about it?

21:48Yes, we are. What are we going to do about it? We're going to try and restrict these sites to people who might be really vulnerable and really damaged by what they see online. The question is, and this is, you know, to come to your second point. We are now just working out where the rubber hits the road. In other words, are we stopping young people being harmed from online material? Or are we sending many more to find a way round the age verification regulations, restrictions that give them exactly what they want to see in a more private way? And we should say that it's not just showing your age, it's showing uploading a picture of yourself it's showing your date of birth it's showing something that's got for example a driving license to show you know that that this is who you are so it does require quite a big investment you know in overriding your own privacy to get onto these sites now yes i don't think you have to do all those things but i think that you know you have to do one or other of these things that will help prove or satisfy the people that control the website that you are over 18 it should also be said that the act has acted like one of those kind of trawling nets that you kind of put along the bottom of the ocean and it just doesn't capture the fish that you're after it captures absolutely bloody everything and so this online petition which has garnered over 300 000 signatures in the past few days is saying that there has to be repeal of the online safety act how many did you say over 300 000 now when i last looked and it It says the definitions in part two of the act covers online hobby forums, which we think do not have the resource to comply with the act.

23:28And so are shutting down instead. We think that Parliament should repeal the act and work towards producing proportionate legislation rather than risking clamping down on civil society, talking about trains, football, video games or even hamsters. Because there was what? There was something. presumably on those forums where the language or whatever i don't know is being used but some of these groups are also being affected by the online safety act and so it goes far wider than just the sort of area of pornography which kind of raises a slightly separate question and the maybe the bigger question for us which is is the state just intruding too much in our lives if you want to go to a hamster forum do you need to prove your age and even if you want to go on to a pornography forum in the privacy of your own home do you need to prove your age and upload a photo upload your driving license whatever it happens to be if you're going to go about that it's a very complicated balance as ever right because the government have done this clearly because there has been so much demand from parents from people who think that their kids are being exposed from from people who think that there is a real menace going on in the online world that is, you know, it's the unregulated Wild West and any kid can access anything and there is nothing to sort of stop them.

24:52But I think, you know, once again, the government's sort of coming up against the impossibility of just getting legislation done without a sort of massive backlash. Now, I don't know whether 300 ,000 represents a massive backlash. Certainly, after a petition has been signed by 100 ,000 people, it has to be debated in Parliament. We've reached out to the Science and Technology Secretary of State today to see if he'll respond to this. Not around today, but I'm sure this is something that will hit his inbox in a big way in the coming days. But I guess the question is, we are being watched right now to see how we carry this out.

25:33If we back down in the face of a petition, then immediately you're sending out a signal that, yeah, you know, once again, the tech chance of one. We should say they face real punitive measures, you know, fines of 18 million pounds if they don't comply with this new online registration. But on the other side, if all people are doing is finding ways of going round, you know, and pretty much anyone can use a VPN, right? The VPN is the thing that basically removes your location. so it gives you a certain amount of anonymity and it puts you in a different place and it means that you can then sign up to whatever sites you want without anyone really being able to find you it also doesn't answer the question this regulation of you know if your kid borrowed your phone i mean not your kids but if you know you had little kids under 18 who borrowed your phone well they don't have to show any of that right any of your devices they can just log on to whatever they want so you're not ever really going to the heart of the person looking at it.

26:32You're going to the heart of the person who's logged on. The other thing that you could end up getting, if people feel that it's too easy to get round, then the call will be, right, we've got to broaden it. We've got to broaden it out and let's ban VPNs as well. You couldn't do that. But it becomes more and more impossible. And so what you've got, for example, in Australia right now, where they've also tried to stop access to online material like this for under 14s you've had tech companies saying well hang on some of this is unfair why are we being affected by it but not others and so there's a potential now that youtube could fall into the remit of that and if youtube don't comply you're banning youtube from australia and then you have got tech companies with the gdp of a middle-sized This developed nation taking on a middle sized developed nation.

27:24And that is quite the fight that is going to come. And you've got Donald Trump as well. We haven't mentioned him in an episode so far today, but now we do. Donald Trump as well saying, I'm with the tech companies here. Of course he's with the tech companies. The tech companies are with him. Exactly. Europe can't do anything that's going to undermine, you know, and you look at the European legislation that they're thinking about and Trump is lined up firmly against that. And so it becomes another kind of vantage. It comes another area, forum, where the fight is fought out between Donald Trump and, you know, America could do what it likes in the world now and other countries that are trying to grapple with these online safety problems.

28:01Well, let's talk now to Chelsea Jarvie. She's just joined us. She is a cyber security expert. And I have to say probably the best qualified person I've seen to talk about this because she's just completed her PhD research on online age verification. Chelsea, it's great to have you on the news agents. From where you stand, does this legislation look like it's going to work? I think the legislation is a step in the right direction with regards to online safety and stopping children from stumbling across inappropriate content. But does it go far enough to make the internet safe for everyone? That's including adults as well who have to give up their identity.

28:42No, I don't think so. So are you saying it should go further or it's gone too far or are you saying it's sort of doing both? No, I think the technology that is available right now to meet the demands of the legislation don't quite align. So as you can see online, there is huge backlash from the adult user population, a massive stakeholder with regards to online age assurance, because they don't trust the tech. They don't feel comfortable giving their face or their their idea away on the Internet in order to get access to legal content. So I think there's a bit of a disconnect where we want better online safety for children.

29:24Yet we have to balance the needs of all stakeholders across the Internet. And it's very, very tricky. It's a very tricky balance. And is it is it just naive to think that you can regulate the Internet? Isn't it by its very nature, I don't think there's such a word, but unregulatable? I think there are controls that we can put in place to have better online safety. So for children right now, there is a huge amount of online harm that can come to children through certain platforms and them not having enough control in place. and things you know we've seen about algorithm content being addictive and us putting the algorithms and eyes on the platform over online safety and mental health and things so I think there is more that we can that can be done to put those controls in place but I think it's also really difficult because the internet has grown into this monster and we're allowing children onto it through education platforms but we've never really designed it with children in mind Yet now they make up a third of all internet users.

30:34So it's difficult now to put the controls in place because it's grown into such a massive platform that we rely on every single day. And COVID, I think, made that even more so with education platforms and more children being online. But I think there are things that we can do, but the technology has to be innovative. It has to be as future-proofed as we can make it so that it does align with the internet that we're all using today. You know, you've just done the online verification four-year PhD, Chelsea. Is there something screaming at you that they should have done that they haven't? Right now, for me, the technology is there and it is effective.