I’ve lived my whole life in the Cheshunt and Waltham Cross area, where I’m proud to serve on Broxbourne Borough Council. I will defend my town endlessly against those who talk it down, but that’s not to say we don’t have our problems. During the 2020 Black Lives Matter protests, a counter-demonstration just up the road in Hoddesdon made national news; I was there as abuse was hurled at a crowd of anti-racist demonstrators, made up of mostly young women and girls. It still pains me that the image of my area shared thousands of times online was of a racist shouting, ‘Go back to Africa.’ 

As recently as 2019, the BNP polled 15 percent in Cheshunt South and Theobalds, winning more votes than the Liberal Democrats. Many veteran anti-racist activists only know the name Cheshunt for the ‘Broxbourne Against Racism’ movement that followed the election of a BNP councillor in 2003. The party’s successful campaign focused on the town ‘filling up with asylum seekers’, claiming that services were strained, and local people couldn’t get housing because of refugees. There were even accounts of a hotel full of asylum seekers. However, there was not a single asylum seeker living in the area at the time: perception created a political outcome despite being divorced from reality.

Asylum seekers are indeed housed in a hotel in Cheshunt today, a symptom of the previous Conservative government’s reckless dismantling of the resettlement system. I’ve been acutely aware since the hotel opened that it would likely become a flashpoint for protest — these now take place weekly. (We’re just a short drive from Epping, where serious accusations against an asylum seeker sparked demonstrations which have boiled over into violence.) I speak regularly with people who are outraged that the Cheshunt hotel is brimming with ‘fighting-age, single men’. At the time of writing, the building is home to predominantly women and girls, including over 100 children. These facts are absent from people’s perceptions, and just like in 2003, local anger is being fuelled by falsehoods. 

Across the country, similar protests are taking place. In some areas, hotels do house mostly adult men, a reflection of the specific challenges women and children face in fleeing conflict or persecution. There is, of course, a far-right element, with its leaders deliberately stoking tensions for their own gain. But it would be foolish to pretend that years of demonising asylum seekers has not seeped into swathes of the population, particularly outside major cities. Refugees are painted uniformly as a threat to women and girls by a right-wing media and political establishment incapable of addressing the real crises this country faces — instead, punching down at the most vulnerable and voiceless in our society.

There are increasing efforts to frame violence against women and girls as an apolitical issue and a vehicle to push anti-migrant racism. This derails actual conversations about women’s safety — prosecution rates for sexual assault fell to horrifying lows under the last government — and props up the totally false idea that the biggest threats to women and girls are strangers. The Chief Executive of Refugee Action commented: ‘There is no clear or credible evidence that people seeking asylum commit more crimes, and any data suggesting that must be viewed in the context of systemic bias, including in policing.’ Despite this reality, the belief that asylum seekers are essentially predators, while not universal, is widespread, so it is sadly no surprise that demonstrations are happening. We must peel away those drawn in by lies from the hardened fascists. This is a task for us, within our communities: the facts are on our side.

That is not to excuse or downplay the real impact of scapegoating asylum seekers for society’s ills. It is a strategic recognition that while the ‘smash the fash’ war cry of years gone by was well-suited to confronting the Nazi National Front, it feels ill-fitting in localised struggles to defend migrant communities today. Some of those I have seen protesting in Cheshunt, including those hurling abuse and threats toward me, are not part of any political movement or affiliation. There are people who have bought into scapegoating yet would be appalled to find themselves shoulder-to-shoulder with filth, like the Homeland Party, which has been involved in protests in Epping and Cheshunt — its associates question the Holocaust and perform Nazi salutes.

This does not mean anti-racists should dilute our message. Not an inch should be given to those who seek to divide us. But far more energy must go into myth-busting the false claims on which division is built. The young age of many of the anti-refugee protestors also underscores the need for an information-led approach fit for our social media era. It’s more than depressing that Cheshunt children are potentially shouting ‘send them home outside the bedroom windows of their terrified classmates. Frances Ryan made the point recently that it would be simple for the Home Office to clarify the truth around asylum seekers’ supposed criminality, but, still, it chooses ‘ambiguity and outright radio silence’. This is short-sighted and will only proliferate the views fuelling unrest. This strategy has echoes of my experience in Cheshunt. I pleaded with Broxbourne Council ahead of planned protests to publicise that the hotel was majority women and home to young children, asking them to break down disinformation and defuse local tensions; they refused.

Our society is slipping backwards in what is considered acceptable. Back in 2003, Broxbourne’s Conservative MP (no progressive by any measure) joined Broxbourne Against Racism. Fast forward to today, and Tory-led Broxbourne Council’s behaviour is odious, opportunist, and utterly disgraceful. Where Broxbourne’s previous Conservative representatives at least upheld the illusion of the old cordon sanitaire between their party and the far right, the newly elected MP, Lewis Cocking, is at ease courting extremism. He publicly supported a lighter sentence for Lucy Connolly, who pleaded guilty to inciting racial hatred with her sickening call to ‘set fire to all the fucking hotels full of the bastards for all I care’. Cocking has demonised refugees as coming from ‘barbaric cultures’ and labelled all asylum seekers ‘illegal immigrants’, demanding they be deported. Of course, dog whistle racism isn’t a new phenomenon for the Conservative Party, but it seems to no longer even attract controversy. The language of the BNP is now fair cop for home counties Tories.

The experience of political activism is usually one I find uplifting, joining friends and comrades in doing what I feel is right — demonstrations of thousands of people, marching through city centres, unified by a common purpose. It’s a lot more jarring in the place where I grew up. On the other side of the police lines are familiar faces from pubs, school or football. That’s a hard square to circle in your hometown. But I’ve also experienced the strength of a Left approach to anti-racism, rooted in community organising, and honesty about why working-class people feel poorer year on year. Those most receptive to my arguments are those with whom I already have developed a reputation or relationship. It’s far easier to be heard, not dismissed as ‘not putting your own first’, if you’re known for your casework, street litter picking, or workshop for kids at the local library.

The case for community organising couldn’t be stronger. I’ve personally reflected on the vital need for more of this sort of work, for the benefit that joined-up, pro-community work delivers for local people. If I, and our wider labour movement, had invested more time and resources in embedding ourselves in the communities rocked by neoliberalism, we’d now be in a much stronger position. There’s a genuine contempt for establishment politics, and even from those I haven’t convinced, a shared understanding that Conservative austerity and a crisis of inequality, where the super-rich get richer at everyone else’s expense, is harming all of us.

The Joseph Rowntree Foundation has found that a year into the Labour government, low-income families are no better off. The upcoming budget must be an opportunity to change this. Without an improvement in living standards, I fear the legacy of this government will be to open the door to Farage and Reform. The moral urgency of measures like scrapping the punitive two-child benefit cap or introducing a wealth tax on the super-rich to tackle rampant inequality is matched by their political sense. Let’s build a left-populism rooted in uniting the working class in all its diversity and exposing Reform for what it is: a bosses’ party, squarely on the side of the super-rich.

I’m conscious not to let recent protests, or the bigoted words of Lewis Cocking, paint a distorted picture of the place I live. Cheshunt is, in many respects, an ordinary suburban town. It’s also my home, and I enjoy living here; local people are hardworking, down-to-earth, and good fun. Cheshunt Football Club stands out as an anchor, a genuine theatre of community for working-class people. The generosity and good nature of the Ambers faithful never fail to lift my spirits. The club supports me with foodbank collections at the gate a couple of times a season and works with local GPs to support men struggling with their mental health, providing a social outlet at the football.

The task ahead is varied; there is no silver bullet. The disinformation, demonisation, and scapegoating of asylum seekers have to be challenged head-on. I don’t accept that those who currently disagree are lost to us; our labour movement has to meet this moment with a politics that gives people something better to believe in than fear.