On Sunday night, the protests in Epping continued. “Make Epping safe again,” read one placard. Another bore the message: “I’m not far-Right. I’m worried about my kids.”
It was the third night of protests in a single week. Epping is a quiet market town where Greater London shades into Essex. It is not normally a tinder box. But it is now the most visible site of discontent with Britain’s asylum system, which has deposited thousands of unvetted migrants into smalltown Britain.
The protests began last Sunday, after Hadush Kebatu, an asylum seeker from Ethiopia, was charged with trying to kiss a schoolgirl on the town’s high street. He had been in Britain for just eight days. Housed inside the Bell Hotel until his arrest, Kebatu had been living alongside an unknown number of other asylum seekers.
