The vitriol faced by scouts and charity rowers mistaken for migrants was not an “innocent mistake”, a race equality campaigner has said, as she warned that toxic rhetoric could lead to more vigilantism and violence.
A wave of anti-migrant protests outside asylum hotels in recent weeks has been followed by growing reports of vigilantism, with people facing abuse after being mistaken for migrants.
Police have launched an investigation into an incident at a scout camp in Wales, where children were allegedly filmed and subjected to racial abuse amid unfounded speculation the site was being used to house immigrants.
Last week, Great Yarmouth MP Rupert Lowe – formerly of Reform UK, now an independent – was accused of being part of a vigilante effort after he reported a charity rowing crew he mistakenly thought were possible “illegal migrants”.
“We’re in a really dangerous situation and the government really needs to step up to the challenge,” said Dr Shabna Begum, the chief executive of the Runnymede Trust.
“We’re in quite a desperate place of despair and gloom, and that breeds the division and type of activity that we’re seeing.
“We are looking at a really bleak future where, if the government doesn’t address some of the deep-seated inequalities in the country, we are likely to see more of these vigilante groups, which just breed more violence.”
Reports of a vigilante group in Bournemouth have been met with alarm. More than 200 residents have supposedly signed up to Safeguard Force, which claims it will carry out uniformed patrols in the seaside town to protect “women, children and the elderly”.
Begum said this type of behaviour had been triggered by a “breakdown of the social contract” and a failure of politicians to deal with economic deprivation.
“We know that vigilantism is not regulated, it’s not rational, it is an emotional reaction to a situation where people are feeling desperate and are feeling let down and are feeling angry,” she said.
“And this has implications for all people of colour in this country, because people are not checking people’s migrant status or whether they are seeking asylum before they make their conclusions about whether they belong, whether they are going to be subject to hostility and aggression.”
In an effort to placate some concerns about crime, the Home Office announced on Wednesday it was rolling out 10 new live facial recognition vans to seven police forces across the country to locate wanted criminals.
It also said every neighbourhood across England and Wales will have a named, contactable officer, with dedicated antisocial behaviour leads and new visible patrols in town centres.
Begum said incidents of people being mistaken for migrants were not “innocent mistakes” but happened as a result of politicians and the media pursuing an agenda based on “flimsy or false information”.
“For instance, Rupert Lowe has an agenda, he has a particular position on these things … there are thresholds of accountability and scrutiny and checking that he should have gone through,” she said.
“I do think there’s a deliberate disingenuousness around this, because it’s convenient and easy to focus on migrants and stopping boats. It’s much, much harder to really deal with big structural issues around economic inequalities and misogyny.”
The largest anti-migrant protests have centred around the Bell hotel in Epping in Essex. On Tuesday, the district council applied for an interim high court injunction in an effort to stop asylum seekers from being housed there.
Oliver Coppard, the Labour mayor of South Yorkshire, urged politicians and the media to take a responsible approach over predicting disorder connected to asylum and migration, saying some people were “seemingly trying to will it into existence”.
Coppard’s region experienced some of the worst trouble last summer, when a far-right mob attacked a hotel housing asylum seekers near Rotherham.
The area was, he said, “in a very different place now”, adding: “The last thing we need is politicians trying to talk up the chances of that sort of thing happening again.
“Politicians of all stripes have a responsibility to be measured in their comments, to try to bring people together. And that’s not what we’re seeing from certain parts of both the Tory party and Reform.”
Coppard singled out the Conservative leader, Kemi Badenoch, and the shadow justice secretary, Robert Jenrick, saying they were using asylum and migration “as a political football rather than speaking responsibly on behalf of the whole of the country”.
Badenoch said on Tuesday that she understood why people in Epping were protesting, and alleged women had “stopped jogging in the park because there are men lurking in bushes”.
“The people who I spoke to are having a lot of concerns about safety” she said.
“Mothers told me that they’re worried about their daughters going to school. They’re getting harassed. They stopped jogging in the park because there are men lurking in bushes.
“Communities shouldn’t have to be paying for this. And what I saw in Epping really, really upset me. I can see why many of those people are protesting.”