Are we facing a summer of riots?

Nearly a year after the Southport riots, tensions are rising again as violent protests followed the alleged sexual assault of a teenager in Essex.

More than 100 people gathered on Sunday evening outside The Bell Hotel in Epping, which is believed to house asylum seekers. The protests began on Thursday, peacefully at first, after a 41-year-old asylum seeker from Ethiopia, Hadush Kebatu, was charged with three counts of sexual assault, including allegedly attempting to kiss a 14-year-old girl. He denied all the charges when he appeared at Chelmsford Magistrates' Court on Thursday.

Protesters chanted "Save our kids" and the demonstration descended into what police later called "mindless thuggery". Six people were arrested and eight police officers were injured.

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"We are going to have a summer of riots," a "parliamentary veteran" told Newsnight's Nicholas Watt. "You can just feel it. It is a tinderbox. My constituents feel they are losing control."

What did the commentators say?

The scenes in Epping were "almost a perfect, and chilling, echo" of last year's Southport riots, where far-right agitators stoked unrest after 17-year-old Axel Rudakubana murdered three children and injured 10 more, said Sharan Dhaliwal in Metro. "Last year, living in Hounslow – a heavily immigrant borough – I was terrified" as reports of rioting came "flooding in" on social media. Now, many are "living in fear again".

Sara Khan, a former government adviser, warned that she "didn't doubt" there could be more unrest this summer, saying lessons hadn't been learned from the Southport riots. "I mean I think it's a really good time to ask the government: what have you been doing post-Southport?" she told ITV. "What are you putting in place to make sure that we don't see a repeat of what we saw last summer?"

A government-commissioned report published in March 2024, authored by Khan, found that Whitehall is unprepared for rising threats to social cohesion. The report warned that extremists are exploiting local tensions, disinformation is spreading rapidly online, and worsening poverty is "feeding anger and fuelling division".

Many of the reports on this subject suggest that "much of the polarisation around immigration and asylum could be solved by sanitising the conversation", said Rakib Ehsan on UnHerd, as if "the situation would be improved if there were greater opportunities for forms of 'civic participation' which could cultivate a 'shared sense of belonging' between Britons and foreign newcomers."

But "only fundamental reform of the UK's lax immigration regime and dysfunctional asylum system will improve social cohesion", he said.

The ongoing small boats crisis in the Channel – "made up of predominantly young male migrants from countries with vastly different cultural norms" – is "placing tremendous strain on social cohesion". And even the best community projects "would struggle to compensate for treating some of the most deprived parts of the country as dumping grounds" for asylum seekers.

And while "parts of the press" label the protesters as far-right, many appear to be "ordinary locals who are simply fed up with being ignored by the political class", said Laurie Wastell in The Spectator. "We're good, local, taxpaying people," said one protester, a mother-of-three, as she made a speech on a van draped with St George's crosses. She isn't worried about being smeared: "if she's 'far-right' for standing up for schoolgirls' safety, she says, 'then so be it'".

What next?

Tensions in Epping remain high and there are fears the situation could be "further inflamed" next weekend, if the far-right activist Tommy Robinson "makes good on a promise to show up with thousands of supporters", said The Guardian.