The battle to reclaim Epping

0:00This is The Guardian.

0:08Today, what happened after the Battle of the Bell Hotel?

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0:56Well, I think Epping has a lot of the hallmarks of the Essex that I know, the Essex of aspiration, of people moving out of East London. Tim Burroughs has literally written the book on Essex. It's called The Invention of Essex, and it's available in all good bookshops, as they say. Recently, he's been spending a lot of time in one particular part of Essex, just north of Greater London. You know, instead of moving by the estuary, which is the Essex I and you, they moved by the forest. And it was to go somewhere leafy, but also it's quite, you know, a historic place. On the face of it, Epping is a small 13th century pretty market town.

1:39But Tim found that there is a lot going on beneath the surface. It's affluent. I mean, if you go to the estate agents, you're looking at semi-detached houses with not much change from a million pounds, you know, the obligatory gales on the high street, but it's not the whole story. And like a lot of places in the UK, it is suffering under the cost of living crisis. But just, you know, in the past year, it's been known for something else. And And watching that from afar sort of intrigued me. That's something else that Tim is talking about, is the anti-immigrant protest that kicked off in Epping last July, outside a hotel housing asylum seekers, quickly spreading across England.

2:24Tommy! There we go, Tom. What started as a local response to an asylum seeker sexually assaulting a 14-year-old girl quickly snowballed into a global battle, where even the richest man in the world felt he needed to issue a call to arms. And Elon Musk replies, every village in Britain will become epic unless the people of Britain take action.

2:58So one year on, how has the small community managed to recover from the protests that divided it? From The Guardian, I'm Helen Pitt. Today in Focus, the battle to reclaim Epping.

3:13Tim Burrows, welcome to Today in Focus. Great to have you here. Thanks for having me. So you've told us about Epping as a place, but what about the people who live there? It's definitely still, you know, predominantly white British, but it's definitely also part of, you know, the London mix. I mean, certainly I talked to people who'd moved there who felt comfortable about moving there, who weren't white or weren't from the UK originally. I'm British Bangladeshi. I wasn't born here, but I've pretty much been British since birth, really. My parents were British. So Aisha is someone I spoke to in Epping who moved there 12 years ago with her partner.

3:54She'd grown up in the East End of London. Her family had come from Bangladesh. And they felt comfortable moving to Epping. And then we came to Epping like everybody else for a bit more space because it was a bit cheaper. And they had a happy life there. She commuted back into London for her job as a teacher. It's that funny thing of being English, maybe, is that the biggest compliment you can often make is, you know, everyone keeps themselves to themselves. But, you know, it's that thing of like she didn't notice anything. But it's just me and the man in the hardware shop and some waiters in the Indian restaurant and I felt like I stuck out.

4:35At the same time I felt it was a very friendly town. But you know by the time I'd spoken to her you know her life had changed dramatically. So Aisha which isn't her real name you say her life changed really dramatically and that of course is because of the Bell Hotel and everything that happened there. Tell me about it. it's a 16th century coaching in i sort of like to imagine you know the kind of highwayman myths of your you know dick turpin maybe kind of stopped there to have a drink you know but in recent times you wouldn't have gone there for your honeymoon it wasn't like a five-star hotel it was quite a perfunctory hotel and in 2020 during the pandemic uh the government needed to solve a crisis, basically, of processing migrants, and they turned to using hotels.

5:26But so many people I spoke to said they never even knew it was being used. And then that all changed, didn't it, last year in 2025, because of the actions of one man. Tell me what happened. What changed in Epping was, very specifically, a series of crimes committed over two days in July 2025. by a man called Hadish Qubati. And he was seen on the high street on the 7th and 8th of July approaching a group of school children who were 14 years old. And in particular, he committed sexual assault by touching the thigh of one of the school girls. He was also accused of touching another young woman who was over 16.

6:15and this came to a head when he was arrested on on the 8th of July it's now 1715 I'm arresting your suspicion of sexual assault on a female under 16 years old so you didn't have to say anything he was a resident of the Bell Hotel he hadn't long been in the UK he'd crossed the channel on a boat and I think there was some rumor about what had happened going around but there's certainly nothing much that's traceable that's obvious out there until the leader of the council chris whitbread makes a statement the events in epping on tuesday evening were deeply disturbing this cannot continue the bell hotel must be closed immediately once this is out there on youtube it's kind of spreads and one thing that happens that's really interesting on the same day is a Facebook group called Epping Says No.

7:10But it's not created from nothing. It actually had an innocuous name. I think it was Epping Residence Group. But the names changed. And Epping Says No was kind of used to drum up protest. So it's certainly true that there was local unrest and there was local worry and concerned parents. It's something that is alarming. You know, the crime is something that is worrying. But what's certain from the get-go is that you do have people trying to manipulate that worry. But if you're just an ordinary resident in Epping, you're on Facebook, you see this group, you know, you feel powerless, you're worried about your kids.

7:52What happens next? What happens next is it just explodes. It just explodes online. And why should leafy suburbs like Epping have to put up with foreign men, dangerous foreign men in many cases, walking amongst their children and their school children, their wives, their mothers and their sisters? People want something to be done. And so there is a protest for the following weekend. There were members of the far right there, such as Callum Barker. I'm here with Callum who's been called the Lion of Epping we're just outside these civic offices right now it's been fantastic come rain or shine Epping will turn out to protest Epping will turn out to protect our girls Epping will come out to stand up for our community who at that point was a member of Homeland which Hope Not Hate described as a fascist political party that splintered from Patriotic Alternative the UK's largest neo-Nazi group so a couple of your members have been and there's pictures of them.

8:53I've got them here on my phone if you want me to show you them of doing Nazi salutes. I'm not a fascist. I'm not a Nazi. I'm a local resident. Stand up for it. Those members are not here to stay. They're not with us. It's about the girls and getting them at a hotel closed down. It's not about me. And Julian Leppert, who was a full Britain councillor for Orphan Abbey and formerly of the BNP, it was advertised as a peaceful protest. Who is it? Who is it? Who is it? Come on!

9:25However, later that day, two security guards of the Bell Hotel were attacked and the police described the attack as racially aggravated. It's kind of kept under control and it's just, it's the following protest on the 17th of July where all hell breaks loose, basically.

9:53I want to look back to that time. I think it was that second protest that really caught my attention because of the level of violence. Tell us how it kicked off, what happened. You know, the police were receiving kind of information that people were planning to mask up and bring rage. It's something that, you know, seems to have been premeditated. What in hell would you allow it to happen? Feelings are running high. the violence left eight police officers injured. We will always facilitate peaceful protest. What we will not tolerate is those random acts of violence that we saw last night. And so the council's reaction is, you know, they just want to stop this unrest.

10:36And the best way that they can think of doing that is to get the bell shut down. And so they seek an injunction from the High Court, but then that's overruled by the Court of Appeal. And then it really does kick off then because who enters the fray? Elon Musk. Of course. Who has a really quite strange obsession with England already, but it's a kind of perfect populist story to tell. So that's what he decides to magnify. It starts in London, but it will spread to every town and village in the country, and no one will have any peace. And so that's what makes sure that this doesn't end anytime soon.

11:22Yeah, and he was tweeting all the time about it. I've got some of his tweets in front of me. So he tweeted, as goes Epping, so goes all of England. He also sort of issued a call to arms that said, every village in Britain will become Epping unless the people of Britain take action now. Do you think that was quite influential? I think it was completely influential. And in Epping, it was visible and it still is visible in a way, in the way that people don't trust each other's narrative. You know, you have this one crime and you have the mess up as well. Rearrested in North London this morning, the end of a manhunt for Haddish Kabatou spanning three days after the migrant sex offender was released from prison accidentally.

12:06Here in the UK, the Home Office has confirmed that Hadoush Kebatu has been deported from Britain to Ethiopia. Fast forward to this summer, you've been back to Epping to speak to people on both sides of this protest. Why did you go back? What I found interesting is Epping is a place that really tells the story of the changing face of global media. And this is where it really gets murky to me. I went to visit one of the protesters. He lived just off the high road. His name was Lee Robinson. He said he was very concerned about his children and granddaughters and just people in the local area. He had a picture of Churchill in his hallway.

12:49He didn't like what had become of Epping. He told me he was convinced that insurrection might be the only answer to the problems. he had really outlandish ideas about why they'd come in the first place you know lots of the people who'd come to seek asylum are coming from war zones he was having none of that he thought it was George Soros who had kind of you know convinced people to come over to to basically weaken uh the country and and I said where where did you read this and he said well he saw it on YouTube so it's that chaotic nature of the online world where so much misinformation can just like sweeping to our lives it was very evident about some of the reasons people were protesting but not only about the Bell Hotel he didn't like the fact that it was you know wasn't as green as it once was so there was a lot of nostalgia about the place and you know in Britain which has been through austerity that's not untrue I mean I think we have to be careful sometimes to not throw the baby out with the bath water on this and so you know some someone like Lee although Lee seemed very influenced by misinformation there is a core of truth in some people's feelings about you know this country is in decline but it's just they're blaming the wrong people

14:20and i know that you've spent a lot of time talking to people um in epping and you've told us already about aisha how did these protests affect people like her well aisha had to change her commuting route she said they didn't really go out so much we don't go out shopping to the high street we use the restaurants less i don't call my family around like my family who are bangladeshi i don't call them and to go and eat out like i used to she also said her family life got harder and it got harder to speak to people about what she was afraid of and she's got white in-laws hasn't she well this is it so she'd sort of go there and talk about you know what was happening and how she felt.

15:08It has split my family apart, to be honest. Oh, really? We're having a really hard time. I've been a part of their family for nearly 30 years. Yeah. And they are reading GB News. Yeah. I've noticed how all the headlines, the word Muslim, Islamist is interchangeable. That's where I get affected. I'm brown. So, yeah, I feel very much under the umbrella of hatred, which is a generalized hatred. Once received wisdom changes like that, it's kind of really scary to live through. And that's why she told me that she felt this was worse than the 1980s when the National Front were marching through the East End.

15:53When she was seeing flags, she was even seeing swastikas. It's gone from a kind of niche, crazy, far-right group thing to being openly acceptable to say racist things in the press, which 10 years ago nobody would have said.

16:16you mentioned already the counter-protest that took place that summer i was always curious how many locals were among that number how many locals were against the violent protests and and how many of them were against the fact that the residents of this hotel were essentially besieged inside there i think this is the thing with stories like this it's really easy to despair from the outside but most of the time there are people doing quiet work to try and counter these things and they're often not the people going down with placards so when I went to Epping I found a group there called Epping for Everyone and they'd been set up by a group of women two of whom I spoke to Jane and Amelia and they'd been set up in the wake of the protests with a sort of like righteous anger kind of propelling them to do so.

17:09Absolute anger. The anger that these men primarily turn up in our town and speak for me, speak for women, and talk about us as all women and girls, and do it in such a violent, sojournistic, abusive, aggressive way was beyond anger. I didn't want to do it myself to counter that. Essentially, these protests were about a crime against the young girl and you know they said that most women would have experienced something similar but you know this is not the way to deal with it so they got together and they just started organizing and i think about 30 people come and meet in a park what i actually think is if you're only concerned about the violence that's committed by men of color then you don't actually really you care about racism, immigration, whatever you want to call it.

18:06So I think a lot of them maybe think that they're doing the right thing, but actually they're focusing in the wrong place because every statistic will tell you that they've been... And so people started going in to volunteer. There were English lessons offered. There were just people going in to look out. And so the fact that this group started to go in and befriend and help the asylum seekers who were still waiting for their claims to be processed. How was their kindness viewed by those who had been protesting against the hotel? They'd get things shouted at them. When I go into the hotel as volunteering, it's not uncommon for people to drive past and shout, I'm waiting to be let in.

18:50I've dropped people off there before and I've got, dear Paul, dear Paul, there's people that drive. Sounds fair. And there's a really, really, really dark edge for people who aren't white, definitely. And who else did you meet? So when I went to Epping, I went to an Epping for Everyone event that was supposed to be a picnic, but it rained and rained and rained. And so it's moved inside to a local Quaker meeting hall. Coach, don't you? They all call me coach. Okay, coach. and one of the guys i met who was part of epping for everyone was a guy called don and he was a local football coach um and the first thing he said to me was how that's what he felt he could do with these guys we said quite early on about two or three weeks if we were given the time and space we could make a team out of these guys no doubt about it there's some really really capable players in now and it's you could tell they used to go and play football before all of this so you've got these guys who are sitting there doing nothing and not being able to do anything so Dom yeah not allowed to work are they not allowed to work so Dom decided to shape a football team and so I think he kind of managed to get them to train in a fairly small courtyard in the back of the hotel.

20:15But they started training every day of the week. So the guys that we got together seemed out there every day. Just in the courtyard? Just in the courtyard, just organising stuff themselves, organising drills, little games, learning each other. But what happened after a while is there was a football tournament organised by the charity Care for Calais and Bell FC, who they became, were invited. It was in Clapton. the local club in East London and they lost the first game they were really despondent but they found something within themselves one of the residents who was in the stands Ali started banging a drum he found started chanting bell hotel bell hotel and they found strength within them and they won the tournament and they just got better and better and better as the thing went on and it was yeah it was it was really satisfying let me see if i can find some pictures for you and so the thing i really found when i started talking to people at the epping for everyone event is how much they wanted to tell the story and it's it was almost like they everything had been bottled up many people said that in in a way obviously not completely but in a way they were glad this happened because they'd found a kind of new side of the community that they didn't know that was there

21:47coming up the bell hotel is finally shut to asylum seekers at least but that's not the end of the story

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22:41and at the time we're talking the bell hotel is no longer housing asylum seekers tell me when did that happen when i started writing this story there were still residents at the bell hotel not much had changed there were still protests going on every sunday to get them out but the sort of rug was pulled under me a bit actually um a week before my second trip the residents of the bell were moved out um during the night i think uh and i was called by one of the members epping for everyone to tell me that they'd been taken they didn't want to tell me where they'd been taken to another part of the country they're sort of i think it was a bigger center i was talking to dom the football coach and he he was really cut up about it and it's a shame actually because football is such a leveler that's as you know that's how i got involved in the first place yeah it felt like epping was being used yeah it seems that every summer at the moment there's an incident that makes it kick off big time so many people stood up to help because of what was happening but um it does push a good response from a lot of people he kept in touch with them all but um it was emptied under the guise of there being fire regulations that weren't being met but then it seemed quite apparent that the the whole the whole country was seeing some version of this like Labour had decided to empty uh these hotels if they could and so Epping was was one of them.

24:14I mean Labour had to be fair to Labour they had been elected on a manifesto to close those hotels and most people involved on all sides of this debate would agree that the hotels are not an ideal place for these people to be kept. And what does Epping feel like now? Well, this was my question on my last visit because I went to Epping with Harry, who's a great photographer. And we walked around and we'd spent a long time. I spent a long time talking to local people. And it was obviously still very divided. Since the protest, Callum Barker has moved from being associated with more extreme politics to now you know he's wearing the insignia of restore as well go on mr callum barker callum how are we doing today i'm doing quite fine thank you the energy here is fantastic fantastic sorry online he still is a very toxic kind of figure who kind of relays these horrible deportation fantasies on his ex account i'm here to spread the word of re-migration to the people as we know Tommy Robson isn't 100 % on board with re-migration and our ideas somewhat are well yeah Rupert Lowe has said if it needs to be millions of people so that would be second generation immigrants maybe third generation immigrants as well then so be it he said that's one thing that really alarmed me about casual conversations I was having with people you know similar type people from Essex who I know uh from you know having grown up in South End who might just throw in something about that.

25:49I would never have imagined deportation to be on the political agenda, which goes to show, I think, when you make the political messaging more extreme and more available, these sorts of things become normalised.

26:06And on that last trip to Epping, you went back to the Bell Hotel and protesters were still gathering there every Sunday what did you find there this time um so the protest wasn't very big that day but there was a kind of gaggle of people who turned up like a ritual there was Prosecco drunk sometimes you know there were marquees um you know it was a kind of English fair gone wrong sort of vibe but on this particular Sunday there was you know probably just a handful of people by the side of the road opposite the hotel and i approached them well one thing they were saying was they didn't believe that the hotel was empty they thought it was just a a trick have you come down here just to check if they're still in here just to check not lots of protests because we were told that they went yeah no one's seen any coaches gone so they all got out But then they said, you know, some people have gone round the back of the Bell Hotel to kind of make video content to try and find out the truth.

27:15And so me and the photographer, Harry, decided to kind of go. We saw maybe six or seven people. There's no one in there. There's no one right. There's no security in there. Yeah, right. So why don't they get to an empty building? We haven't got to do that to anybody. Then there were these three young women. They had juicy couture hoodies and shiny sliders. And one of them was filming it. They sort of like crept up to the window. And it was like a scene from a weird kind of, I don't know, silent movie, like almost the Marx Brothers or something, where one of them had this stick that they'd found in the woods.

27:58She was sort of sticking it through the window and opening the curtain. to see in one of the bedrooms to see if there was a migrant there. And as we walked away, one of the young women was holding a football and they'd sort of found one of Bell FC's footballs, which I just found like such a weird sort of poignant image really. You know, you have Dom and Epping for Everyone who kind of like really sought a community solution to this. And then you have this very sort of isolated and isolating online culture, sort of like just taking the ball and taking it home.

28:46And that's all for today. This episode was produced by Tom Glasser and Ivor Manley and presented by me, Helen Pitt. Sound design was by Ross Burns and the executive producer was Danielle Stephens. We'll be back in your feeds this afternoon with the latest.

29:04This is The Guardian.

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