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The people of Epping are fed up of being ignored

‘We are facing a long, hot summer’, warned a report social cohesion on Tuesday, ‘with a powder keg of tensions left largely unaddressed from last year that could easily ignite once again’. It only took two days for the first sign of this grim prediction coming true.

This time, though, the expression of public fury at migration failures was not in ‘left-behind’ northern towns like Hull or Hartlepool – or even like last month in Ballymena, where tight-knit loyalist communities have a history of kicking off to defend their interests. Thursday’s protests – and later clashes – at an asylum hotel were in the quiet Essex market town of Epping, population 12,000, mentioned in the Domesday Book and a well-heeled part of the London commuter belt at the terminus of the Central Line.

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