The damage done by the riots will be felt for years to come

It was heartening to see communities coming together to resist the far-right anti-migrant violence and to clean up some of the damage and mess that had been left in the wake of the riots. For those of us who work with migrants and believe that the UK is at heart, a humane and welcoming society which values compassion and dignity, these acts of solidarity are crucial in rebuilding some confidence which was shattered by the earlier events.

However, as reassuring as the reaction has been, the damage done by the violence and riots is going to be felt, often in less visible ways, for years to come. At Medaille Trust, a modern slavery charity who work with victims of trafficking and modern slavery (many of whom are also in the asylum system), the work we have put in to building the confidence and integration of survivors has taken a massive blow. It will take time to persuade people to go out and take part in community activities, to seek jobs and even attend appointments and meetings in their local area. Many of these people were already traumatised and fearful.

For many the past week will have set them back significantly. The target lists circulated by far-right groups name specific accommodation, advice centres, charities and law firms as places to target. It is not only migrants themselves, but those working with them, who are now seen as legitimate targets of hatred. There was already a chronic shortage of good immigration lawyers and immigration advice out there, it is hard to believe the situation will now improve any time soon. We were fortunate to see none of our places of work specifically targeted this week, but that sense of relief is giving way to anger. Anger, because for years now we have watched prominent commentators and politicians provoke and inflame tensions over refugees and asylum seekers and those who support them.

Any talk of “legitimate concerns” needs a reckoning with the sheer evil and hatred that was seen in the past week. At two separate hotels where asylum seekers are housed awaiting a decision on their case crowds several hundred strong gathered outside to throw missiles and threaten the occupants. There were attempts to set both hotels on fire. A mob several hundred strong attempting to incinerate people hiding in their rooms is not a protest, or even a riot; this was a lynch mob. The targets for violence identified by far-right groups and circulated via complicit and compliant social media platforms are instructive. High on the list were lawyers who represent migrants, advice centres that work with them, and charities that work to support and empower migrants.

Where did these angry men get the idea that lawyers and immigration advice centres were their enemy? Not, though some might like to claim, simply from some online echo chamber of the far right. There is no need to go fishing in such places when you can hear it declared repeatedly by ministers from the dispatch box of the House of Commons, or from dozens of political speeches and repeated lurid headlines in mainstream newspapers, TV and radio. When senior figures decry “lefty lawyers” and “foreign courts” and go out of their way to identify certain organisations as bad faith actors seeking to game the system, it should not be a surprise to anyone that such narratives gain mainstream currency.

The denial of UK responsibility, either legal or moral, to support any asylum seeker arriving in the UK is not only now regarded as acceptable opinion, but something which has been repeatedly legislated for over the past five years. My worry is that the narrative is already becoming set that civil society has routed the fascists and that all that is needed to avoid repeats is a clampdown on social media. That social media has become an increasingly dangerous and fetid space is undoubtedly true, but you don’t need to have been in the darker reaches to have regularly encountered accusations that all asylum seekers are a swarm of frauds, terrorists and sexual predators that the UK should expel by any means necessary. Or to have heard that lawyers, churches and charities are operating conveyor belts of false claims. For that, a person need just watch watch or read certain mainstream television programmes or newspapers to hear and see all the same rhetoric – the same so-called “legitimate concerns” – that we have heard from  rioters who just tried to burn asylum seekers alive.

Ben Ryan is Deputy CEO at Medaille Trust, one of the leading Catholic charities working to counter modern slavery and human trafficking