Epping's 'Epping Says NO' campaign: Asylum seeker hotel sparks far-right protests and xenophobia

When Sherzod* moved to Epping in 2025, he was dreaming of a little garden, long dog walks in the forest and more space to breathe. At 20, he had moved from Uzbekistan to the UK to study law, then lived in north London for decades. In his mid-40s, after establishing himself in a media job, he began visiting the forest – 5,900 acres of green lung saved by the Epping Forest Act 1878. The pretty shops of the old south-west Essex town delighted him. “I just liked the high street, I liked the people,” he says. “The people were really friendly.”

Epping was created by the canons of Waltham Abbey in the 13th century as a market town on the road from London to Cambridge. Its high street is still thriving. There is a Gail’s bakery and an M&S Food shop; the four-bed semis in the estate agents’ windows are listed at just shy of £1m.

Sherzod settled on an area overlooking the rolling hills of west Essex and kept his eye on property sites “like a hawk” for years. Finally, in early 2025, a house came up in the exact spot he was hoping for. On moving day, in early August, he headed along the high road into town to buy some lunch. As he walked, a driver lowered their car window and shouted: “Go home.”

Sherzod froze. At first, he wondered if he was the intended target. He looked around, but couldn’t see anyone else the abuse would have been aimed at. A few days later, something similar happened. A motorcyclist rode very close to him and sounded his horn to the rhythm of a football chant: “Do-do, do-do-do, do-do-do-do, Eng-land!” There was no tournament on at the time. By the winter, Sherzod had bought a long raincoat to protect himself from the drivers who deliberately drove too close to the pavement, through potholes, to soak him.

These provocations filled Sherzod with dread, but he wasn’t exactly surprised. Just after he had paid the deposit on his new house, there had been a flurry of protests against a hotel for asylum seekers situated a few minutes’ walk away.

The Bell hotel began life in the 16th century as a roadside inn on the edge of the forest, serving merchants travelling in and out of London and farmers taking livestock to market. More recently, it was a low-rent hotel, before being repurposed in 2020 by the Conservative government to house asylum seekers. During the Covid crisis, passage to the UK via road and air stopped and the numbers of asylum seekers arriving by small boats grew.

Initially, the most vocal opponents of the hotel’s change of use were two local far-right politicians: Eddy Butler, formerly the elections chief for the British National party (BNP), and Julian Leppert, then a For Britain councillor in Waltham Abbey. (Leppert once said he “ideally” wanted to keep Epping for white people only.)

According to one neighbour of the Bell, Steve*, most locals were “never really concerned” about the asylum seekers next door. “I’ve got two daughters,” he says. “They’ve never had any problem walking past the hotel or into the high street.” In the summer, the Bell residents used to have their dinner, then head to the cricket ground nearby. “I’d go over in the morning and walk my dog,” says Steve. “There was no rubbish or anything. You wouldn’t even know they’d been there.”

But in July 2025, the largely cordial relationship between Epping and the asylum seekers ended abruptly.

Hadush Gerberslasie Kebatu had entered the UK on 29 June, travelling nearly 6,000 miles from Ethiopia, through Sudan, Libya, Italy and France, before crossing the Channel in a small boat. He was transferred to the Bell hotel on 7 July and on the same day approached a group of 14-year-old schoolchildren, seated on a bench near the local Domino’s. Kebatu asked if he could have some of their pizza.

Although the children had told him they were 14, Kebatu proceeded to tell the girls that “they were pretty [and] that he wanted to have babies with them”, then invited them back to the Bell hotel, according to a court document recounting the events of that day. Kebatu followed the teenagers around Epping; at one point, he tried to get them to drink alcohol and attempted a kiss.

One witness told the court that Kebatu had asked the victim to “come back to Africa and [told her] that she would make a good wife”. A witness “recalled that at one point after [the victim] had refused to let the defendant kiss her, he tapped his own cheek as if for her to kiss him”. Kebatu was challenged by another victim, who was over 16 and had been touched by him on the thigh already. She called the police, but he ran away.

The next day, 8 July, the same group of children saw Kebatu sitting on a bench on the edge of the high street. This time, he encouraged the two 14-year-old girls to kiss. He also asked one of them to sit down with him and put his hand on her thigh. Later that day, he was arrested. On 4 September, he was found guilty at Chelmsford magistrates court of two counts of sexual assault, one of attempted sexual assault, one count of inciting a girl to engage in sexual activity and one count of harassment without violence.

The day after Kebatu was arrested, the leader of Epping Forest district council, Chris Whitbread, a Conservative, broke the news that the suspect in this case was from the hotel. The story exploded. Here, according to some, was exactly what the far right had warned of.

Whitbread asked local residents to “stay calm”, but his statement was criticised for providing fuel for a potential fire. “Epping Forest district council has consistently opposed the use of the Bell hotel to house asylum seekers,” he said. “It’s totally unsuitable. It lacks the infrastructure and support services required, putting both residents and asylum seekers at risk.” Whitbread ended his statement by asking residents not to “rely on Facebook chatter or social media chatter”. It was too late.

In August 2024, an innocuous-looking local Facebook group had been set up called Epping Forest Residents Group. On the day of Whitbread’s statement, its name was changed to Epping Says NO. Three of the admins – Callum Barker, Adam Clegg and Andrew Piper – were members of Homeland, described by the anti-extremism organisation Hope Not Hate as “a fascist political party that splintered from Patriotic Alternative, the UK’s largest neo‑Nazi group”.

They were joined by Craig Kitts, an Epping local who then ran a vehicle-recovery business and calls himself “the Flag Man”. As part of the Raise the Colours campaign, which began last summer, he helped adorn the streets of Epping with St George’s cross flags. When I visited Epping last month, a new round of union flags and St George’s crosses had been put up by the same campaign group, disguised as workmen.

The ringleader of Epping Says NO was Barker, who describes himself as the “Lion of Epping” and seems ambitious about how far his extreme political beliefs can travel. (Like many on the far right, he has recently thrown his weight behind the party Restore Britain.)

“I don’t want integration, I want entire communities gone,” Barker wrote recently on X, in a typical post. Epping Says NO presents itself as the voice of Epping. But its focus, rather than being on the town itself, seems to be far-right talking points about “migrants” who commit crimes – particularly rape – and how these justify the deportation of entire communities on ethnic grounds.

Through this local media hub, far-right organisers planned a protest for Sunday 13 July 2025. Despite the organisers saying the event would be “peaceful”, two of the hotel’s security guards were assaulted at a bus stop and had to be treated for serious injuries after an attack described by the police as “racially aggravated”. Far-right activists, including Barker and Leppert, were at the event – as were counterprotesters from the group Stand Up to Racism – but most were local people unaffiliated to any political movement.

Another protest was planned for the next Thursday, 17 July, the day of Kebatu’s appearance at Chelmsford magistrates court. Police were informed that attendees had been advised on group chats to “mask up” and bring “rage”. A pitched battle between protesters and the police ensued, with projectiles thrown by masked children, among others. The unrest left the high street blocked off for hours.

Ch Insp Terry Fisher said: “In my 20 years of policing, I have never witnessed disorder of this scale in Essex, and certainly not in a town like Epping.” Razia Sharif, a Liberal Democrat councillor who now serves as the mayor of Epping, had her fence kicked down by protesters and broken beer bottles strewn across her driveway.

The men who lived at the Bell were trapped inside. Ali, an Arabic-speaking Kurd from Syria, arrived there about 10 days before Kebatu’s assaults. At first, he says, “we were happy, our lives were stable, each of us waiting for our papers. But after he committed that heinous act – of course, this is unacceptable to anyone – protests began. We would stay in our room as if we had committed a crime. We couldn’t study or go out.”

Ali communicates with me by social media, as he doesn’t trust his English (which seems to be very good). He came to the UK to flee Syria, which he describes as “almost completely destroyed”. Before he left, he was an IT student facing mandatory military service. “I left Syria because it is difficult for me to kill and fight,” he says.

Live ammunition passed over his head as he entered Turkey. He went two days without food while hiding inside a truck. When he finally reached the Channel, he was at sea for six hours in a small boat carrying 68 people – men, women and children – until the British police arrived. “Anything could have happened; we could all have died,” he says. “I will not allow my family to take any illegal route, because it is a dangerous route; you will see death with your own eyes in the sea.”

His father, mother and brother remain in Syria. He cannot talk to them often, as they don’t have electricity or the internet. “Our lives were filled with worry,” he says of being barricaded in the hotel during the protests. “We feared for our families, who were in the war and had no means of comfort, and we worried about our own fate.”

The association of the protests with violence and hooliganism alarmed some campaigners, including Orla Minihane, a financial services consultant who insisted they should be led by local mothers rather than masked men. She made her case through the social media channels of Adam Brooks, a local pub landlord turned hard-right citizen journalist. Minihane formed the Pink Ladies, a group named for the colour of their uniform.

Minihane wasn’t just a concerned local mother, though: she had become the vice-chair of Reform UK’s Epping Forest local branch in late 2024 and was selected as a candidate for the 2025 local elections (which were subsequently suspended). She has since defected to Restore Britain, becoming its spokesperson on women’s and girls’ safety. Her first foray into frontline campaigning at the Bell led her to share a stage with the then Homeland member Barker at an early protest. “We are not happy with these men in this hotel because we fear for our children,” she told the BBC. “If that makes me far right then so be it.”

The protests took place on Thursdays and Sundays for the rest of 2025. They increased in intensity, particularly after the council took the government to court, applying for an interim injunction to stop asylum seekers being housed at the hotel. This was seen by some as a populist David versus Goliath battle between the local people and the national government. Protests outside asylum accommodation spread across the country, leading to unrest and scores of arrests.

Aisha*, a 51-year-old British Bangladeshi who grew up in east London and moved to Epping in 2012 with her husband, who is white, had to start commuting from Chingford rail station to avoid the protesters arriving at Epping station. “We have made a bit of a cocoon for ourselves,” she says of life since the protests started. “We never, ever go out; we don’t hang around Epping on the days of the protests.”

When Aisha was a child, the National Front and the BNP were active. She remembers her mother hurrying her away as racist taunts were shouted from passing cars. The atmosphere feels even more unpleasant to her now. “Having flags up, it’s like going back in time to the 80s, except it’s worse. In the 80s, whether somebody put up a flag or painted a swastika, you knew that generally these were horrible people and the politicians condemned it, the media condemned it. You knew they didn’t have the public on side.” She points to local Reform UK support for the Raise the Colours initiative.

The town was the centre of a dark and volatile moment in Britain in 2025. Fireworks were shot towards the hotel as the asylum seekers tried to sleep; dogs were brought to jump menacingly at the fences. A video posted on TikTok on 19 July 2025 shows a white man chasing a hotel resident, scaring him to the extent that he runs into the high road, to the laughter of those standing outside the hotel. When schoolchildren made a banner in late July that read: “Epping welcomes all … except racists. There’s no place for hate here!” it was taken away and burned in a fire. Another then member of Homeland, Kai Stephens, posted a picture with a caption that read: “SUCCESSFUL HOMELAND PATRIOT PATROL IN EPPING, LEFTY PROPAGANDA SENT TO HELL.”

One protester I speak to says the only way to sort out the “migrant problem” may be insurrection. Lee Collinson, a 68-year-old retiree who has recently taken up bodybuilding, lives in a penthouse apartment on the high road featuring a novelty waterfall and portraits of Horatio Nelson and Winston Churchill (the MP for Epping from 1924 to 1945). Collinson says he went to the protests to protect “daughters” and “granddaughters” from people he says were sent to the UK by the investor and philanthropist George Soros to destabilise and take over western countries. Collinson says he has read a lot about it. When I ask where he gets his information, he replies: “YouTube!”

In August 2025, campaigners celebrated when Epping Forest district council was granted an interim high court injunction to temporarily block new arrivals to the Bell hotel and allow the removal of its occupants. The decision was soon overturned by the court of appeal – and all hell broke loose. “As goes Epping, so goes all of England,” wrote Elon Musk on 29 August. Musk is known for his preoccupation with English politics, but the intensity of his interest in Epping still felt bizarre. The next day, he tweeted his latest call to arms: “Every village in Britain will become Epping unless the people of Britain take action now.”

When Kebatu was accidentally released from jail in October, it only added to the hysteria. Epping’s WhatsApp groups pinged with panic when a rumour spread that an asylum seeker had entered the grounds of a school while