A year after major riots, police warn of escalating tensions fuelled by far-right activism and Channel migrant crossings
Concern was mounting that recent violent anti-immigrant protests could herald a new summer of unrest, a year after the UK was rocked by its worst riots in decades.
Police have arrested 16 people since protests flared last week outside a hotel housing asylum seekers in the town of Epping, northeast of London. In one demonstration, eight police officers were injured.
The unrest was “not just a troubling one-off”, said the chairwoman of the Police Federation, Tiff Lynch.
“It was a signal flare. A reminder of how little it takes for tensions to erupt and how ill-prepared we remain to deal with it,” she wrote in the Daily Telegraph.
