Immigration concerns persist in riot-hit UK city

“It was terrifying,” Clive Wingate, who lives near the now-infamous Holiday Inn Express, told AFP. “What were their intentions when they were setting fire to the bins to push them into the building, where people were inside?” the 66-year-old pensioner asked. The scenes from Rotherham were among the most striking of recent riots in England and Northern Ireland. Hundreds of men, some draped in Union Jack flags, gathered outside the hotel chanting “kick them out” as outnumbered police were fired upon with stones and flaming objects. The nationwide riots – the worst in the country since 2011 – were sparked by a knife attack that left three girls dead at a dance class on July 29 in Southport, another northern town. False rumours that the suspect was a Muslim asylum seeker spread on social media and, although police corrected the record, anti-immigration riots broke out for more than a week, leading to more than 1,000 arrests. Signs of fire damage and plywood covering doors and windows remained indicators of the violence. ‘Very angry’ The greenbelt a few kilometres (miles) from the city centre is usually peaceful, residents said, adding that the asylum seekers housed there while their applications are processed were not a major problem. The rioters “deserve jail time, they are idiots,” said Charlotte Bedford, who was walking her dog. “If you want to protest, protest peacefully,” the 34-year-old added. Several rioters received heavy sentences, including three years in prison for a 19-year-old who threw rocks at police officers and two years and eight months for a 60-year-old man who pulled an officer to the ground. Phil Fletcher, a 65-year-old who worked in property maintenance, criticized the violence but was not surprised by the riots. “There are millions of people who have had enough of immigration. It’s not our country any more,” said the pensioner, who voted for the anti-immigration Reform UK party in a general election won by Labour in early July. Nearby, a woman added: “18,000 have arrived since the start of the year,” referring to the number of migrants arriving in south-east England on small boats after crossing the Channel. “That’s too many. Immigration has to be the priority for this government,” she added. Supporters argue that Brexit would allow the UK to regain control over its borders. But legal and irregular immigration, including via the small boats, have since reached record highs. Natalie Jackson, a 28-year-old teaching assistant, told AFP that the UK was “a small island”. “We’re overcrowded. We can’t even get a doctor’s appointment any more,” she said. Caroline Roberts, a 66-year-old seamstress, added: “Nobody listens to people who complain. If you say anything, you’re called a racist. “It makes people very angry. The help they (migrants) get, our own children don’t get. “We’re short of money here,” she added. ‘Frustrations’ Rotherham, with a population of 265,000, grew during the Industrial Revolution but suffered decades of economic decline as local steel mills and mines closed. The town also faced a notorious child sexual exploitation scandal between 1997 and 2013 that still reverberates today. Gangs of men with Pakistani roots abused around 1,400 girls, mostly white and from disadvantaged backgrounds, raping and sexually exploiting them, according to watchdog reports into the scandal. The official report severely criticised authorities for failing to tackle the abuse, attributing it to issues of race, class and religion, and fears that the ethnicity of the perpetrators would invite accusations of racism. This has only deepened distrust of immigration and institutions in the town. “There was always going to be more anger here,” Riaz Ayaaz explained, referring to the legacy of the abuse scandal. The 29-year-old Muslim, born in Rotherham, said his mosque had asked worshippers to “look out for each other”, not to “react” to potential provocations and to “trust the police”. He said “a lot of people” were using the deaths of the three girls in Southport “as an excuse to vent their frustrations”. He called for a focus on “wider scale issues”, particularly the economy, “which affects everything else”.