Building community led solidarity in the Stroud district to oppose the hatred of minorities and oppressed people arising from false and harmful information
Standing with people seeking asylum! A report back from the August 30th counter-protest outside the Ibis hotel in Gloucester, and an invitation to join the ‘Gloucestershire Solidarity Network’ WhatsApp channel. Published 16th September 2025.
For humanity – against division. In this 15 minute read, we talk about the organiser of a protest outside a hotel housing people seeking asylum in Gloucester and his history of violent racism, the domestic violence convictions of the rioters who attacked asylum hotels and people of colour last summer, the long history of racists and the far right pretending they care about “protecting women and girls” to push their vile ideas, and the need for support services and interventions to meaningfully end violence against women and a culture of patriarchy that makes abuse rife. Published 29th August 2025.
Nazi meetings in Stroud – what? providing detail about the Nazi Meetings, the group that organised them, the planned speaker, and some background context (published 15th April 2024)
Letters to the Stroud News and Journal, 12/10/22 (responding to a letter by Richard House the week before on topics of facilitated dialogue and climate denial, quoted on our website October 15th 2022)
We, a Progressive Jewish Rabbi, a Pioneer Priest and regional Inter Faith Adviser in the Stroud Anglican Team, and a trustee of the Stroud District Islamic Centre, stand together today not merely as representatives of our respective faiths, but as grieving human beings united in horror and sorrow.
The atrocity committed at Bondi Beach, targeting families gathered for the festival of Hanukkah, was an assault on the very sanctity of life. To murder innocent people during a celebration of light is an act of profound darkness. We mourn the lives stolen, we pray for the healing of the wounded, and we extend our deepest love to the Jewish community in Australia and around the world who are once again reeling from the trauma of antisemitic violence.
We are compelled to speak with one voice because the intent of terror is to divide us. The gunmen sought to sow fear and hatred between our communities; we refuse to give them that victory.
To our Jewish brothers and sisters: We see your pain. We acknowledge the terrifying rise in antisemitism that has led to this moment. You are not alone. We stand around you as a shield of friendship and solidarity.
To our Muslim brothers and sisters: We affirm that such acts of violence are a betrayal of true faith. We stand firm against any retaliatory Islamophobia that seeks to blame an entire community for the crimes of a few.
To all people of good will: We call upon you to resist the pull of polarization and to stand together against oppression and injustice. Do not let this tragedy harden your hearts against your neighbours. In the face of those who wish to spread hatred and conflict, our most powerful weapon is our unity.
Let us be the light that defies the darkness.
Mustafa Davies Trustee, Stroud District Islamic Center
Rabbi Anna Gerrard, Three Counties Liberal Jewish Community
Rev Simon Howell, Stroud Parish Churches/Gloucester Diocese
At the start of the Chanukah celebrations on Sunday on Bondi Beach in Sydney, Australia, a 10-year-old little girl called Matilda, her face freshly painted with sea shells and a dolphin, was chosen by a gunman as his next target. A little girl. Out with her family and friends celebrating a holiday with her family and friends. She was one of 15 people killed and 26 people seriously injured. Alexander Kletyman was also killed. He and his family knew what that kind of ‘being chosen’ means. Alexander was a survivor of The Holocaust.
It wasn’t just a holiday. It was a Jewish holiday where Jews come together to celebrate the festival of lights – Chanukah. The killings were antisemitic murders, planned and organised.
In the hours and days that have followed these terrible shootings, conspiracy theories have abounded. As have the excuses, the justifications, even the celebrations – in short, an outpouring of online antisemitism. And, also troubling, silence from too many friends and comrades. In the days and weeks to come, we will do what we can – as is the purpose of our organisation – to challenge racism, antisemitism and hate-filled conspiracy theories, and to break that silence.
We mourn the victims, and send love to our Jewish friends following our work at Community Solidarity Stroud District, and thank the friends who have reached out to some of us privately. We welcome the following statements released by local organisations, and those from Na’amod UK and Rabbis for Ceasefire, and encourage our supporters to read and share them:
Sandi Adams is no stranger to Stroud. Many Stroud residents were concerned at her speaking at an anti-lockdown rally in 2020 where she promoted her conspiracy theories about COVID-19.
Sandi Adams doesn’t want to be associated with the views posted on her website. She claims that she is not antisemitic and that a previous business colleague posted antisemitic material on her website, which she since removed. We have no difficulty accepting her version of events in respect of this.
However, Sandi Adams continues to host antisemitic conspiracy films on her website. There is no ambiguity in the sub-title of the film “The Crucifixion Of Russia- Bolshevism & the strategy of divide and conquer”. A few seconds into the film and its true title is revealed: “The Jewish Crucifixion Of Russia” (still on her website 25th November 2025 – when the screenshot below was taken, the link is to Internet Archive record from 11th October 2025).
Adams also promotes blatantly antisemitic conspiracies in an article ‘The World Order – How It Works (there’s nothing particularly new about it!’) on her website (again, still on her website 25th November 2025, link is to Internet Archive record from 11th October 2025). This article begins with a quote from Eustace Mullins, an American white supremacist, antisemite, Holocaust denier and conspiracy propagandist. We first raised these two examples in our article published in February 2023. Why has Sandi Adams not removed these pages from her website over two years later? The removal of other pages we raised as an issue shows she can – why not in these cases?
Given she says it was her previous business colleague’s fault that some antisemitic material was on her website, we can only conclude that she is responsible for its current content and is happy to host it. Would you trust someone who says they have removed the antisemitic content on their website but leaves these examples for years?
Adams also explained her position on free speech in an email to Community Solidarity Stroud District on 11th October 2024. She was concerned that calling out the antisemitism on her website attempted to interfere with a positive business relationship. She said: “I trust this clarifies for you my position on the matter, and now that you are fully informed may I remind you that any further tort of defamation would be proven by public presentations or dissemination of information by email on your part that further defamed, either directly or indirectly, my character and views.”
We are fully informed by Sandi Adams’ own website that she continues to promote and support antisemitism. We will continue to use our right to freedom of speech to point this out.
We again call upon The Old Convent to reconsider accepting this booking and ask why its owners are happy to promote antisemitism and racism.
As we’ve said before, Sandi Adams’ theories about Agenda 21 / Agenda 2030 are dodgy too. “In fact, “Agenda 21 was a non-binding planning paper, adopted by the UN Conference on Environment and Development in 1992. It is not a treaty. It has no force of law, no penalties, and no significant funding. It sought to encourage communities around the world to come up with their own solutions to environmental problems rather than to impose them. In the decades since, right-wing groups in the US like the John Birch Society, have claimed that this document is a blueprint for a totalitarian world government – but people who care about our environment shouldn’t be fooled.”
This isn’t the only bizarre and false conspiracy theory Yeadon pushed about the pandemic – “many of the claims he made were unfounded and lacked scientific or empirical evidence”. However, he used his position as a former Pfizer employee to persuade audiences he was an authoritative source. In reality, “Yeadon worked in a drug discovery research unit at Pfizer that worked on allergy and respiratory medical research. The division he ran had nothing to do with vaccines or infectious disease“. His record of baseless claims and failed predictions shouldn’t be a cause to give him further opportunities to propagandise and trick people.
Ben Rubin will speak in his capacity as writer and broadcaster for a website rated as “a strong right-wing biased conspiracy website that frequently promotes false or misleading information”, known as the UK Column. This is the MediaBiasFactCheck summary.
Community Solidarity Stroud District exists to build community led solidarity in the Stroud district to oppose the hatred of minorities and oppressed people arising from false and harmful information.
The “Patriots of Gloucestershire” and far-right groups they have been working with like Patriotic Alterntive have announced today that they intend to protest outside the Ibis hotel in Gloucester again on November 2nd, from 1-4pm. Together with other organisations in the Gloucestershire Solidarity Network, we’ll be organising a community counter-protest again, please save the date!
Jeremy from The Stroud Red Band speaks at the Stroud Ceasefire Now Coalition vigil at Wallbridge, Friday 10th October 2025. The vigil meets every Friday from 6-6.20pm. You can watch or read the speech in full below. We have included some clips of Karen Coldrick singing with the Band.
As well as the Red Band, the coalition includes us at Community Solidarity Stroud District, Stroud Against Racism, Stroud District Together With Refugees, Palestine Solidarity Campaign – Stroud District, Na’amod Gloucestershire, Nailsworth Quakers, Stroud Quakers, Parents for Future – Stroud, and The RYSE. If your group would like to join the coalition, please approach one of the organisers at the end of a weekly vigil.
Friends, it falls to me to open the vigil tonight as we enter into our third year of standing here to bear witness to the slaughter in Gaza and call for a permanent just peace between Israelis and Palestinians. As ever, one of the Ceasefire Coalition partners will say a few words, and then we’ll have fifteen minutes of silence, and then I will read some notices about upcoming events.
Oddly, I now have to call on myself to speak, because today it’s the Red Band’s turn to say a few words to open the vigil. The Red Band is Stroud’s progressive street band, and we’ve been a member of the Ceasefire Coalition since March.
Last time it was our turn to speak we played music for the vigil – the antifascist anthem “Bella Ciao”, which is also used by the Palestinian resistance, “He ain’t heavy, he’s my brother”, and The Internationale.
We’re not playing for you tonight. The band is on a pause, because one of founder members – Karen Coldrick – died two weeks ago. We are devastated, and we have chosen not to play at all during the month of October. Karen was a lovely, kind, beautiful, talented, enthusiastic member of our band, and her death has affected us all deeply.
There is a saying in the Jerusalem Talmud that goes: “”Whosoever destroys one soul, it is as though he had destroyed the entire world. And whosoever saves a life, it is as though he had saved the entire world.” A similar phrase is in the Koran – “whoever saves a life, it will be as if they saved all of humanity.”
Karen’s death, one death, connects us to the many thousands of people who have died since the latest round of the conflict between Israelis and Palestinians began in October 2023. The tens of thousands who have died in Israel’s assault on Palestinian civilians in Gaza. The twelve hundred Israelis who died as a result of Hamas’s attack on 7th October. Every one of them was someone’s friend, someone’s mother or brother or father or child.
Earlier this year Karen sang at the annual Holocaust Memorial Day commemoration in Stroud, which the band co-organises with Community Solidarity Stroud District – another Coalition partner. In Yiddish she sang the Jewish partisans’ song, Zog Nit Keynmol, an anthem for hope and against despair. It begins with the words “Never Say This is Your Last Road”. It reaches across the years, from one genocide to another.
Tonight there is a faint glimmer of hope. Israel and Hamas are in direct talks about a permanent ceasefire. There are plans for an exchange of prisoners and hostages. Of course we’ve been here before. We have no guarantee that this will be a permanent ceasefire. In March this year Israel unilaterally abandoned the last ceasefire. We have no guarantee that this will lead to a just peace – the opposite seems more likely. But even this ceasefire is a necessary condition for something better, and we will go on fighting and work for that something, so that there is justice and equality for everyone who lives between the river and the sea.
As so as this glimmer of hope flickers, let’s remember our friend Karen alongside all the victims of the war and the genocide.
Who are Community Solidarity Stroud District?
Community Solidarity Stroud District exists to build community led solidarity in the Stroud district to oppose the hatred of minorities and oppressed people arising from false and harmful information.
Meet at Westgate Car Parkbetween 12 noon and 12.30pm
Support those seeking asylum by joining people from across Gloucestershire for a celebration of community – and to oppose attempts to stoke division and racism.
Organised by over a dozen organisations and many individual residents of Gloucestershire, forming a new alliance under the provisional name “Gloucestershire Solidarity Network”.
This event has been collectively organised by disparate groups and individuals to show our united opposition to racism and right-wing ideology. We will not be divided.
An effective protest means we must be organised and work as a team.
There will be static teams of stewards coordinated by another mobile team.
We ask people to heed our advice and remember that individual actions can impact on others.
Our concern is practicable, personal and collective security.
The protest will be bold, vocal and vibrant, but not provocative or verbally abusive in a way that puts us in a bad light.
Try to stay calm and not be provoked. The police are eager to avoid confrontation.
Due to upgrades at the Gloucester train station, there will be no trains on October 5th.
There are nearby toilets at the Cavern Pub, Comfy Pew, Clementine Cafe, and Westgate Street Car Park has some too.
Please read on for further guidance
Everyone should aim to arrive at Westgate Street Car Park for 12.00, and we will leave together at 12.30.
If you cannot be at the assembly point by 12.30 make sure your clothing and what you carry does not make you easily identified as a protester.
The stewards will manage the event and will inform you when the event ends. All stewards will be easily identifiable – if you know a steward make sure you have their mobile number. Numbers will be provided on the day.
If you see anyone who you think is acting suspiciously (on our side or the other) tell a steward.
Solicitors numbers and what to do in the event of arrest will be provided on the day & electronically.
The police will ensure free access to the pavement area opposite Shire Hall where the cafes and shops are located.
The stewards will communicate the time the event will end, speak to a steward if you have to leave earlier. Once the event is over, do not linger.
Make sure your phone is fully charged.
Do not bring banners with poles, or bring anything that might be used as a weapon.
Do not engage with anyone who you think is an anti-migrant protester before you arrive at the point of the counter protest, including shouting slogans. You have no idea what is around the corner.
After the event, if you want to go to a cafe, bar or pub, do not do so in the vicinity of the protest action. If you do, you are literally being left behind and possibly going to the same place as anti-migrant protesters.
Community Solidarity Stroud District exists to build community led solidarity in the Stroud district to oppose the hatred of minorities and oppressed people arising from false and harmful information.
We’ve become aware that the same group that organised the protest outside the IBIS hotel are planning to march through the centre of Gloucester on OCTOBER 5TH from 1:30pm.
Together with over a dozen organisations and individual residents of Gloucestershire forming a new alliance under the provisional name “Gloucestershire Solidarity Network”, we will be organising a counter-protest to stand with people seeking asylum and against hate and division (we will most likely be meeting before 1:30pm to get ahead of them).
We in Community Solidarity Stroud District have been working with individuals and organisations across Gloucestershire to respond to protests against people seeking asylum, spreading hate and division. Read on for a statement debriefing from the August 30th counter-protest, from an alliance that is forming across the county – and join the WhatsApp Channel for updates!
Community Solidarity Stroud District exists to build community led solidarity in the Stroud district to oppose the hatred of minorities and oppressed people arising from false and harmful information.
We in Community Solidarity Stroud District have been working with individuals and organisations across Gloucestershire to respond to protests against people seeking asylum, spreading hate and division. Read on for a statement debriefing from the August 30th counter-protest, from an alliance that is forming across the county – and join the WhatsApp Channel for updates!
Community Solidarity Stroud District exists to build community led solidarity in the Stroud district to oppose the hatred of minorities and oppressed people arising from false and harmful information.
Why we’re standing with people seeking asylum living at the Ibis hotel in Gloucester. The article below was written ahead of a counter-protest against a far right protest outside the hotel on Saturday 30th August, which has been organised by a violent racist. We have since learned the “Patriots of Gloucestershire” are planning a further protest against people seeking asylum on October 5th – there will be another counter-protest, details to follow.
See details of the counter-protest at the end of this article or on our webpage here.
2,800 words – appproximately 15 minute read.
Content Warning: racism, sexual violence, child sexual exploitation
Tough times and a bleak future
We live in times of huge uncertainty, regularly receiving awful news about things happening in this country and around the world. It’s often hard to see the future as anything other than bleak. Everything is costing more and more, so many of us are overloaded, underpaid and disrespected at work – and public services are falling apart after decades of underfunding. There are long waiting lists for NHS treatment, you get put in endless queues any time you ring for any kind of support, and everywhere we turn there’s endless forms or some annoying digital process you have to navigate in order to be able to … well, live. Town centres are full of empty shops and homelessness is at an all time time – and no wonder when rents and house prices are completely ridiculous. In so many places around the country it feels like any sense of community is being broken, or has been long lost. And violence against women is terrifyingly common. Every week there are women who are killed by a partner or ex-partner, and one in four women experience domestic violence in their lifetime – that’s us, our family members, our friends, neighbours, and people we work with. It is hard to think of anything more horrific than the sexual abuse of children, and understandably it is a crime that incites a lot of anger within our communities. But again, if we don’t have direct experience ourselves, we will all know people who have – whether we know of their experiences or not.
We all adapt to living in this messed up world in different ways – we all do what we have to do to make it through. One thing that is hard to watch is how people respond to the mess of the world by adding to the hatred, division and nastiness themselves.
Scapegoating
We’ve seen in the past how, when things get especially bad – like in the Great Depression of the 1930s for example – cruel and ruthless leaders prey on people’s fears and manipulate and channel them into hatred of people who have nothing to do with the problems that actually face people. This is called ‘scapegoating’. It’s what the Nazis did in Germany – blaming the economic problems in the country following WW1 and the reaction to it by the victors of that war and blaming them on Jews, migrants, LGBTQ+ people, disabled people, their political opponents and… well… anyone except the people actually responsible.
We’re seeing the same thing play out today – a whole cast of characters spending their entire time turning whole groups of innocent people into the “other”, making them less than human, making them our “enemies”. Maybe you’ve noticed how it seems like the targets change week to week, or that the targets seem to be chosen almost at random… and that’s because they are. The people who peddle hatred are just throwing mud at a wall and seeing what sticks – what their audience will latch onto, what gets the most clicks or engagement online, what will make people angry, what will generate its own momentum… what the mainstream media or the Prime Minister will join in with.
And if one peddler of hate gets some success targeting a particular group of people? Well then the others will all join the chase. When you think about it, it’s incredibly lazy. What’s frustrating is how these grifters and hate mongers are somehow able to speak to all the anger we feel about poverty and the cost of living, our societies and environment being destroyed and politicians promising change and then delivering mostly just more of the same… they take that righteous anger and redirect it onto other working class people, and away from the billionaires who are hoovering up all the wealth and the systems that sustain inequality and injustice. In 2024 alone, “UK billionaires saw their collective wealth increase last year by £35 million ($44m) a day to £182 billion ($231bn)”. Instead of talking about how we could better distribute the wealth we all produce, we get rich white men funded by even richer white men telling us that “climate change isn’t real”, but people fleeing war are a “threat to civilisation”.
For a while the focus was on disabled people, then we’ve had a whole panic about trans people, and right now it’s back to that familiar target of hatred – “asylum seekers”. Whether its Nigel Farage, Tommy Robinson, or local figure Rone Taylor (more on him in a second), the arguments are just reheated versions of the same nonsense we’ve heard since the early 2000s (when papers like The Sun and Daily Mail kept trying to attach the word “bogus” to the term “asylum seeker” in a a desperate attempt to convince us all not to have compassion for people feeling war and persecution). As ever, those pushing hatred will claim they aren’t racist, they just have “legitimate concerns” that for some reason always single out people from other countries as the problem, rather than the actual causes. As if there haven’t been around 700,000 empty homes in Britain since 2012, and as if high rents aren’t the result of profiteering by landlords, developers, banks and a whole system that treats housing as a source of wealth rather than a basic need.
Protecting women and girls
This time around there’s a particular focus on “protecting women and girls”. Who doesn’t agree we should do that? It just comes as a bit of a shock to learn that the people who’ve been attacking feminism, praising the likes of Andrew Tate as he faces rape and trafficking charges, or defending Donald Trump… are suddenly concerned with women’s safety.
There’s a long and grim history of white men pushing racism by claiming whole other groups of people are a threat to women and girls, but we saw a particularly stark example of this last year. When Bebe King, Elsie Dot Stancombe and Alice da Silva Aguiar were killed in Southport, with other children wounded and traumatised when attacked attending a Taylor Swift themed dance workshop, most people responded with horror and support for the people, families and communities affected. But the hate merchants and far right organisations had other ideas.
“In August 2024, six days of racist rioting spread across UK cities. Asylum seeker centres were fire bombed, Black and Brown people were subject to pogroms, pulled out their cars and attacked on the streets. It was multi-racial communities, coming out in unity and self-defence, that put an end to the violence – not the police or politicians.” (Black Lives Matter UK)
But though the attacker was Black, he was not an “asylum seeker” – nor was he representative of all Black people. There is no evidence to suggest that people seeking asylum are disproportionately sexual offenders or violent criminals. People seeking asylum are human beings, and some human beings do horrible things. We don’t need to pretend all people seeking asylum or all Black people are perfect, but it absolutely is bigoted prejudice to suggest that every person applying for asylum and placed in a hotel by the Home Office is inevitably criminal, or more of a threat to women and girls than anyone else.
And while it’s true that not everyone who attends a protest outside a hotel is a long-term member of a far-right organisation, or a violent racist, it’s revealing to look at who is involved in these protests and riots, and who is involved in organising them.
Rone Taylor – organiser of the Gloucester hotel protest REVEALED
Let’s start with “Rone Taylor”, who appears to be the main organiser of a protest outside the Ibis hotel in Gloucester, where people seeking asylum are living.
On the 18th August, Rone posted that this protest was “upcoming” and prominent in his advert is “PROTECT OUR CHILDREN!!” His name on Facebook now is “Rone Taylor”, but he is quite open that this is a new name adopted since his previous account under his full name “Byron Glyn Taylor” was disabled for breaching Facebook’s Community Standards. We understand this was related to being reported for racist comments, and nothing to do with the Online Safety Act.
In 2020, Byron was jailed for 18 months for physically attacking and racially abusing schoolchildren, while in his mid-late twenties. He “pleaded guilty to the racially aggravated assault of a teenage girl by beating her and damaging her property on May 2, 2019. He also admitted assaulting two other teenagers by beating on the same date.” He had followed three schoolchildren, “shouted some racial comments at them and made derogatory comments about their dreadlocks”, before swinging a punch at a girl with a closed fist. “He later swung his fist at a female pupil and assaulted a male pupil with a punch to the victim’s head. Taylor then turned his attention to the first girl and punched her again.” Is this someone you can believe is holding a protest outside a hotel housing people seeking asylum because he wants to “protect children”? Is it more likely it is because of racism, however hard he tries to deny it?
This wasn’t the first time Taylor was convicted of a crime and sent to prison. In 2012 he was sentenced to 6 months for falsely accusing 3 innocent people of rioting (including two members of his own family). Not only has Tayler had his Facebook pages taken down in the last few months, he also informs his followers that the Police and the Prevent programme made him take down his YouTube channel. His TikTok account has gone the same way as the YouTube channel and his Facebook account. Rone Taylor claims to be a peaceful Christian patriot. In fact he is a racist criminal who assaulted children. Can you trust what he says?
Are the far right really interested in protecting women?
“Rone Taylor” isn’t the only example of someone who has claimed to be prioritising protecting women and children to disguise their racism. 899 people were arrested for taking part in violent disorder in the August 2024 riots. Two in every five of these people arrested (41%) “had been previously reported to the police for domestic abuse… Previous offences include actual bodily harm, grievous bodily harm, stalking, breach of restraint and non-molestation orders, controlling coercive behaviour and criminal damage.”
We’ve had decades of the far right trying to focus on “Asian grooming gangs” to justify hate, bigotry, and violence towards people of colour. These grooming gangs exist and are appalling, but somehow the existence of grooming gangs made up of white people seems to draw far less attention. When Police officers themselves have been implicated in the Rotherham grooming gangs scandal, with five victims also accusing three police officers of raping them, this horrifying aspect has been treated as less important, or ignored altogether. As Hope Not Hate say, “There have clearly been major systemic failings. Whether it is Telford, Rotherham or Rochdale children have been let down by police, councils, social services and the wider community. We must put justice for survivors first, as we oppose [Tommy Robinson’s] racist opportunism.”
Tommy Robinson” (real name Stephen Yaxley Lennon) has – through the “English Defence League” he founded, other far right organisations and his own platform – been one of the main hate mongers pushing hate against people seeking asylum, migrants, and Muslims – and claiming it is because of an interest in protecting women and girls. But his campaigns are opportunistic, driven by racism – and hypocritical in 2022, Hope Not Hate reported how there have been at least 20 members and supporters of the EDL “convicted of child sexual exploitation offences. At least 10 of these were active in the EDL while Lennon was still leading it, and at the time of writing they could not find a single condemnation from Lennon.
We know that Bryon Glyn Taylor / Rone Taylor – the organiser of the protest outside the Ibis Hotel, is a fan of Tommy Robinson from an old Facebook profile picture and banner image of an EDL protest. He’s also pictured with Laurence Fox – a man notorious for his misogyny and racism.
Ending sexual violence, standing against hate
As the Institute for Race Relations have written, “Whatever the ethnicity of perpetrators, we need to ask what were the structural conditions in that context that enabled sexual abuse, and understand what obstacles victims face in seeking help and support. Funding for youth services and accessible support spaces that do not stigmatise or criminalise victims would be a start. And if we are serious about dealing with issues of sexual violence within different communities, we must also fight for specialised support services that can address particular cultural and language needs of victims – many organisations on the frontlines providing this kind of support are having to fight for survival. Already many have been shut down.” Funding for refuges has been cut by a quarter since 2010.
And this raises another question about the approach of Rone Taylor and all the far-right groups organising protests outside hotels housing people seeking safety. Why aren’t they protesting against the cuts to support services for victims of sexual violence, with Sisters Uncut? Why aren’t they calling for interventions to reduce the likelihood of people of any ethnicity or background committing sexual offences, like the work of Beyond Equality?
As Black Lives Matter say “The painful reality is that sexual violence occurs across all racial and ethnic groups, and in most cases, it is perpetrated by someone the victim already knows. Yet, rare but sensationalised incidents that fall outside this pattern are often exaggerated and weaponised, fuelling moral panics targeted at particular communities.”
To meaningfully end sexual violence and protect all victims, we desperately need to address the underlying causes of sexual violence – most obviously a culture of patriarchy that makes abuse rife – rather than only taking an interest when the perpetrators are from a certain race or background.
We will stand by people seeking asylum. They are human beings. The nastiness and nonsense that’s being said about people fleeing their countries and travelling to the UK is increasing day by day. To state basic facts: everyone has the right to seek protection in a country other than one they have fled from – that’s all an “asylum seeker” is, and it is a legal human right. No one becomes ‘illegal’ just by lacking immigration documents or taking irregular passage to get to a country in which they claim asylum. People making a claim for asylum cannot work, cannot choose where they live, and receive a pitiful amount of money to live on. Refugees are those who have been granted asylum, once their claim of fleeing persecution, conflict or human rights violations has been proved. We can’t support “genuine refugees” without having a system whereby people apply for asylum. There are around 27 million refugees across the world and the UK takes in some of the lowest numbers in Europe – and is home to only 1% of refugees in the world.
Inhumane plans to spending millions deporting thousands more people seeking asylum – as Reform and the Conservatives are now proposing isn’t going to help anyone living here. Nor is targeting migrants who live outside of their country of origin but aren’t seeking asylum, or people of different skin colours or backgrounds who’ve grown up in this country. Scapegoating asylum seekers, refugees, immigrants, or people from different ethnic backgrounds will not solve any of the problems in this country. Losing our sense of shared humanity will lead to a far worse country for everybody and together we need to stand up to it.
We can fight against sexual violence and against racism at the same time. We can welcome people seeking safety. We can build community solidarity – join us.
Join us and other groups across Gloucestershire on Saturday 30th August from 12.30pm outside the Ibis Hotel in Gloucester, GL4 3DG
Take a stand in solidarity with people seeking asylum who are being threatened by a far right protest advertised to take place at 2pm at the Ibis Hotel in Gloucester where people seeking asylum are living.
Groups across Gloucestershire are working together to hold a counter protest. We won’t let the far right scapegoat people seeking refuge for the problems in this country – we won’t be divided.