In what circumstances might you expect a violent mob to congregate outside your home, hurling bricks at your windows and attacking police officers trying to protect you? What might you have done to merit the mob’s attempts to break into your home? Who would you need to be sheltering? What hideous crimes would need to have occurred?
And whatever your answers to these questions, however “deserving” you were or were not of the attention, how frightened would you be by the sound of glass smashing and door handles being rattled by members of the howling mob?
Exactly these scenes unfolded on three nights last week in the Norfolk town of Thetford. All that was known about the humans being terrorised is that they were “believed to be asylum seekers“. In the UK today, that is enough. That is all you need to have “done”.
Some asylum seekers have committed terrible crimes. So, of course, have some police officers, doctors, Capricorns, nurses and long-distance lorry drivers. So have newspaper columnists, comedians, TV presenters and radio hosts. So, almost certainly, has someone who lives where you live, or does what you do, or eats what you eat. But don’t worry. You will never be held accountable for their crimes or be forced to hide terrified in the darkness while complete strangers bay for your blood. Unless you’re an asylum seeker. Right?
