ELECTORAL POLITICS| GOVERNMENT POLICY

See also anti-fascism and far Right for anti-asylum protests

23 July: Essex police chief constable Ben Julian-Harrington refutes claims by Nigel Farage that police bussed in left-wing protesters to an anti-asylum protest outside the Bell Hotel, Epping, adding that the force is looking to see whether incitement laws have been broken. Farage calls for his resignation, amplifying his claim that ‘hard-left groups Stand Up to Racism and Antifa were given the red carpet treatment by Essex police’. (Guardian, 23 July 2025; Guardian 24 July 2025)

24 July: Cabinet minister Jonathan Reynolds says protesters outside an asylum hostel in Epping are ‘upset for legitimate reasons’ and show a ‘huge frustration that is shared by the government’ about the asylum system and the pressures it creates on housing, adding that since ‘the number of deportations is up, there are fewer asylum hotels’. (Guardian, 24 July 2025)

24 July: In a non-binding symbolic move, Epping Forest district council vote to support a motion calling for the immediate closure of the Bell hotel for the purpose of asylum processing and for the ‘managed closure’ of the Phoenix hotel. (Local Government, 25 July 2025)

24 July: The Guardian reveals that a Reform UK official shared a platform with the far-right Homeland party at an anti-asylum protest in Epping, saying in a speech that ‘[If] I’ve got to wear a far-right title then so be it’. James Regan, another Reform UK councillor present at a protest, says in an interview that ‘they’re trying to dilute the Englishness out of us’. (Guardian, 24 July 2025)

30 July: Suella Braverman, MP for Farham and Waterlooville, Portsmouth, calls on the government to scrap plans to house asylum seekers in temporary accommodation in the constituency, reinstate the Rwanda deportation plan and ‘stop the invasion’. Havant borough council is criticised for only finding out about the proposals after Braverman spoke to the media. (Portsmouth News, 30 July 2025)

31 July: The government overrules the objections of parliament’s equalities committee and the joint committee of human rights to appoint Mary-Ann Stephenson as the new chair of the EHRC. Critics say she has insufficient experience in the areas of protected characteristics such as race and disability. (Guardian, 31 July 2025)

1 August: The leader of Spelthorne borough council, Surrey, writes to the home secretary saying the local community is shocked by a recent decision to change the usage of the local hotel from family asylum seeking accommodation to accommodation for male asylum seekers only. Local people stage a demonstration. (Evening Standard, 1 August 2025)

1 August: Polish far-right MP Konrad Berkowicz (Konfederacia) tells TOK FM radio that ‘Xenophobia is an important element of our national unity. Condemning xenophobia and stifling it in the West has led to rapes and terrorist acts, that’s why we should cherish xenophobia’. (Al Jazeera, 1 August 2025)

2 August: In an analysis of news reports and House of Commons debates from 2019 to July 2024, the Runnymede Trust finds that racist discourse is framing immigration as a threat, with ‘illegal’ being the word most commonly associated with migrants in parliamentary debates, and concludes that the language used is helping embolden the far-right and increase reactionary politics. (Guardian, 2 August 2025)

2 August: Newcastle City Council announces that it has asked the Home Office to close down an unnamed site housing asylum seekers, saying they understand the anger and frustration of some residents in their city and beyond. (Northern Echo, 30 July 2025)

3 August: The home secretary tells the Sunday Times that the government will announce plans in the autumn to speed up the decision-making appeal system to enable claims to be decided and appealed ‘within weeks’ and to tighten the rules around ‘exceptional circumstances’ in the use of Article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights (protecting rights to family life), whilst continuing to increase deportations. (EIN, 3 August 2025)

5 August: Home secretary Yvette Cooper says that guidance to police not to release suspects’ ethnicity and immigration status ‘should be changed’ for ‘greater transparency’, and that she asked the Law Commission to do this six months ago, as rumours circulate that men arrested in Warwickshire on suspicion of raping a 12-year-old girl are Afghan asylum seekers and Reform leader Nigel Farage says that police non-disclosure is a ‘cover-up’. (BBC, 5 August 2025)

5 August: A media investigation finds that Lord Dannatt, a former head of the British army currently under investigation for breaking parliament lobbying rules, urged government ministers to crack down on Palestine Action on behalf of US defence firm Teledyne, which runs a factory in Wales targeted by the group in 2022 and employs Dannatt as a paid adviser. (Guardian, 5 August 2025)

ANTI-FASCISM AND THE FAR RIGHT

With anti-migrant, anti-Muslim, anti-equalities, anti-abortion, misogynistic and anti-LGBTQI activities increasingly interlinking, we now incorporate information on the Christian Right as well as the religious Right generally.

See also section on racial violence for racist attacks linked to protests in Epping

 22 July: Police in Switzerland question 25 men from Europe and the US after they crossed the Wildhorn massif wearing Nazi-era Wehrmacht uniforms. Though police make them remove jackets with Nazi symbols to prevent public clashes, no criminal charges are filed, as such symbols are not yet banned in Switzerland. A law under consideration to prohibit public use of Nazi imagery would impose fines for violations. (Swiss Info, 22 July 2025)

24 July: Two members of the Homeland Party, a splinter group from the neo-Nazi Patriotic Alternative, are identified as administrators of the Facebook group ‘Epping Says No’ (1,500 members) that organised anti-asylum protests outside the Bell hotel. Activists from Patriotic Alternative and the White Vanguard movement are also identified attending rallies, as is the electoral party Reform UK. (Independent, 24 July 2025; Guardian, 24 July 2025).

25 July: Around 300 people shouting ‘smash the boats’ attend an anti-asylum protest in Sutton-in-Ashfield, Nottinghamshire, after Reform MP Lee Anderson claims on social media that a man charged in a local rape case is an asylum-seeker. (Nottingham Post, 25 July 2025)

26 July: UKIP leader Nick Tenconi heads a 150-strong ‘mass deportations’ rally in Glasgow opposed by anti-racists, trades unionists, faith leaders and community campaigners. In a social media video, Tenconi advocates sending ‘teams of men’ to France to ‘intercept and destroy the boats’. (The National, 26 July 2025)

27 July: Anti-asylum and counter protests take place across the weekend in Epping (the fifth such protest outside the Bell hotel), Diss, Norfolk and Canary Wharf. Asylum-seekers at the Bell hotel write to the Guardian, stressing that ‘harmful stereotypes’ about asylum seekers do not reflect the truth. (Guardian, 27 July 2025)

28 July: In Germany, Daniel S is sentenced to life in prison for the murders of four members of a Bulgarian-Turkish family in an arson attack in Solingen in March 2024. A note containing a racist poem was found in a garage he used and investigators uncovered far-right content on a hard drive in his home. (Anadolu Agency, 30 July 2025)

30 July: After local MP Suella Braverman organises a petition, around 2,000 people demonstrate in Waterlooville, Portsmouth, against a Home Office plan to house migrants in the city centre. Portsmouth Patriots are amongst those organising and children are amongst those shouting ‘send them back’. (Portsmouth News, 30 July 2025)

30 July: A new report by the Global Project Against Hate and Extremism (GPAHE) exposes a vast, internationally connected network of far-right extremist groups in Spain, including neo-Nazis, white nationalists, and anti-LGBTQ+ organizations. Groups like Vox, CitizenGO, La Falange, and Democracia Nacional are flagged for promoting hate, forging transnational alliances, fuelling recent violence and exporting fascist ideologies globally, posing a serious threat to democracy. (GPAHE, 30 July 2025)

1 August: A group calling itself The Great British National Protest says it will demonstrate outside every migrant hotel until all asylum seekers are deported. (Standard, 1 August 2025)

1 August: Far-right demonstrators stage a ‘Protect our Kids’ anti-immigration protest outside the Britannia Hotel in Seacroft, Leeds. Counter-protesters mobilise. (National World, 1 August 2025)

1 August: An investigation by Al Jazeera finds that far-right anti-migrant activity is on the rise in Poland, citing anti-migrant marches organised by the Konfederacja party and football fans on 14 July in 80 Polish towns and cities, where racist slurs and slogans were shouted. (Al Jazeera, 1 August 2025)

1 August: An elderly member of Stand Up to Racism is hospitalised after a placard is thrown at her during a rally in Edinburgh organised by Great British National Strike, which lists its priority targets as ‘Illegal immigration, net zero, inheritance tax and the attacks on our farmers, the attacks on our most vulnerable, the lack of inquiry into rape gangs and the attacks on free speech and two-tier justice’. (Daily Record, 4 August 2025)

2 August: Anti-immigration protests are held in Manchester, Newcastle, London, Spelthorne and Portsmouth, and outside the Roman Way hotel, Cannock, Staffs. In Manchester, up to 600 people join a  Britain First ‘march for remigration’. Outside the New Bridge hotel, Newcastle, protesters rally under the banner of the ‘Great British national protest’. Local people are amongst those demonstrating outside the Thistle City Barbican hotel, Islington, but Patriots for Britain and Together for the Children are active online. All demonstrations are met by counter-protests. (BBC News, 2 August 2025; Manchester Evening News, 2 August 2025; Sky News, 2 August 2025; Northern Echo, 2 August 2025; Express & Star, 2 August 2025; Northern Echo, 4 August 2025)

LIVE updates as hundreds of Britain First protesters march through Manchester city centre amid counter demonstration https://t.co/kthSwlVFm2

— Manchester News MEN (@MENnewsdesk) August 2, 2025

3 August: Chief Inspector of Constabulary, Fire & Rescue Services Sir Andy Cooke warns that there is ‘every possibility’ of a repeat of the violence of summer 2024. The police must ‘modernise its understanding of how disorder develops and spreads in the digital age’, he says. (Morning Star, 3 August 2025; Telegraph, 4 August 2025)

4 August: After a TV interview with German AfD leader Alice Weidel outside parliament is drowned out by the amplified voices of a women’s choir singing an anti-fascist song, Scheiß AfD Jodler (Shit AfD Yodellers), organised by the artist-activist group the Centre for Political Beauty (ZPS), the song goes viral. (Guardian, 4 August 2025)

 4 August: Police launch a webpage with images of 40 people they are seeking in relation to rioting provoked by the far Right after the Southport murders. The National Police Chiefs Council says 1,876 people were arrested, with 1,100 charged so far. (Guardian, 4 August 2025)

4 August: British far-right figure Tommy Robinson is arrested at Luton airport on suspicion of grievous bodily harm after a 64-year-old man was seriously injured at London’s St Pancras station on 28 July. The arrest follows Robinson’s departure from the UK shortly after the 28 July incident, with police tracking him through Tenerife and Portugal. (Guardian, 4 August 2025)

POLICING| PRISONS| CRIMINAL JUSTICE SYSTEM

 23 July: A hearing of the legal challenge to the government’s authorisation of the use of pepper spray in Young Offenders’ Institutions in England and Wales begins in the High Court, brought by the Howard League for Penal Reform, which cites the disproportionate use of PAVA spray against BME, Muslim and disabled children. (Morning Star, 23 July 2025; (Howard League, 23 July 2025)

24 July: 80-year-old retired teacher Marianne Sorrell, who was arrested at a Cardiff rally on 12 July for holding a pro-Palestine placard, says she is traumatised by her detention for almost 27 hours and the forcible entry and search of her house. Armed police similarly threaten to arrest a woman at a rally in Canterbury, Kent, suggesting that her Palestinian flag and sign stating ‘Free Gaza’ and ‘Israel is committing genocide’ express support for a proscribed organisation. (Guardian, 24 July 2025; Guardian, 25 July 2025)

 25 July: An inquest into the death of Kaine Fletcher, a mixed-race man with mental health problems, finds that ‘gross failings’ by Nottinghamshire Police and others involved in his care contributed to his death, leading the coroner to issue a Prevention of Future Deaths Report to police and East Midlands Ambulance Service. (BBC News, 26 July 2025; INQUEST, 25 July 2025) 

26 July: Police data released under Guardian FOI requests suggests that two in five people (41 percent) arrested during last summer’s ‘riots’ had previously been reported to police for domestic abuse. (Guardian, 26 July 2025)

28 July: Tasers are issued to specialist riot-trained officers from two bases in Oxfordshire and Doncaster who are authorised to use the Taser 7 model, currently used by police, when there is a threat to safety, including hostage situations or prison riots.The Prison Officers’ Association welcomes them but urges the government to tackle the causes of increasing violence in prisons, including overcrowding and understaffing. (Morning Star, 28 July 2025; Sky News, 28 July 2025))

31 July: Ministry of Justice statistics reveal that the number of people dying in prison rose by nearly a third to 401 deaths in the year to the end of June 2025, including 86 prisoners who died in circumstances recorded as ‘self-inflicted’. Prisons also reported a record high of 77,898 incidents of self-harm in the 12 months to the end of March, a rate of one every seven minutes. (Guardian, 31 July 2025)

31 July: The justice secretary is urged to intervene after a joint inspection by Ofsted, the Care Quality Commission and HMI Prisons uncovered ‘profound and systemic failings’ with safeguarding systems in disarray at Oakhill secure training centre in Milton Keynes, which can hold up to 80 children and young people aged between 12 and 19. (Guardian, 31 July 2025)

1 August: Over 100 protesters at Palestine Action’s proscription are arrested across the country at weekend demonstrations, including 81-year-old former magistrate and parole board member Deborah Hinton OBE, arrested at a vigil outside Truro cathedral, Cornwall and held for seven hours under the Terrorism Act before her release on bail. (Observer, 2 August 2025)

Former magistrate, 81, faces six months in jail for Palestine Action vigil.

Cornish pensioner arrested at Truro cathedral falls foul of government’s labelling of direct action group as a terrorist organisation.

Read more:https://t.co/pI7kBaStv3

— The Observer (@ObserverUK) July 30, 2025

ANTI-TERRORISM AND NATIONAL SECURITY

25 July: The UN human rights commissioner calls on the government to rescind its ‘disproportionate and unnecessary’ proscription of Palestine Action, which limits the rights and freedoms of people in the UK and violates international law. (Guardian, 25 July 2025)

30 July: A High Court judge grants permission for Palestine Action founder Huda Ammori’s legal challenge to the group’s proscription under the Terrorism Act, saying the order risks ‘considerable harm to the public interest’ through a potential ‘chilling effect’ on legitimate freedom of speech. The full hearing is set for November. (Guardian, 30 July 2025)

 4 August: As police threaten mass arrests if a large-scale protest against the ban, planned for Saturday, goes ahead, 300 leading Jewish figures warn that the ban on Palestine Action is ‘illegitimate and unethical’. (Guardian, 4 August 2025)

ASYLUM | MIGRATION| BORDERS| CITIZENSHIP

Asylum and migrant rights

23 July: The government comes under pressure to waive the requirement for advance biometric data for 40 Palestinian students with scholarship places at UK universities but who are unable to travel from Gaza, where no facilities exist to provide biometric data, without which visas will not be issued. (Guardian, 23 July 2025)

29 July: The House of Lords Secondary Legislation Scrutiny Committee strongly criticises reforms to the Skilled Worker visa route – such as raising the skills threshold to RQF level 6 and removing social care and 180 other occupations from the list of those eligible to sponsor overseas workers – and the Home Office’s failure to conduct consultation or produce an impact assessment. (EIN, 29 July 2025) 

1 August: In a case brought by two Bangladeshis rescued at sea and taken to detention in Albania, the European Court of Justice rules against Italy’s listing of Bangladesh and Egypt as ‘safe’ countries for asylum seekers’ return, as the designation can apply only to countries whose ‘entire population’ is protected across all regions. (Politico, 1 August 2025)

2 August: 82-year-old Comfort Olufunmilayo Olawo, who arrived in the UK in December 1966, is finally granted permanent settlement after having spent the past 50 years commuting between Nigeria and the UK as she had to apply for a visitor visa every 6 months. (Guardian, 2 August 2025)

4 August: Human Rights Watch warns that government plans to use artificial intelligence to assess the ages of children seeking asylum is cruel and risks producing disastrous, life-changing errors, as AI is unable to account for children who have aged prematurely from trauma and violence or whose face may be altered by factors such as malnutrition and dehydration experienced on a dangerous sea journey. (EIN, 4 August 2025)

Borders and internal controls

22 July: A Polish soldier shoots a Sudanese asylum seeker in the thigh with a rubber bullet for ‘failure to comply with orders’ after a group crossed the Belarus border. (TVP World, 22 July 2025)

23 July: The Home Office announces it will share asylum hotel locations with food delivery firms to prevent illegal work by asylum seekers. (BBC, 23 July 2025)

25 July: Officials of EU external partner Libya round up and detain 1,500 undocumented migrant workers, mostly sub-Saharan and Egyptian, in raids in eastern Tripoli over the weekend. (InfoMigrants, 29 July 2025)

29 July: The RNLI insists that its volunteers will continue to rescue migrants in distress crossing the Channel, as ‘without judgement or preference’, it is a voluntary lifesaving rescue service. (Independent, 29 July 2025)

2 August: The government creates a new offence targeting online adverts that promote or offer services such as ‘small boat’ crossings, fake passports, visas and travel documents, or opportunities for illegal work, which will attract a sentence of up to five years in prison. (Guardian, 2 August 2025)

3 August: The home secretary announces a further £100 million to stop ‘small boats’, recruiting up to 300 more National Crime Agency officers, as well as new technology and equipment to increase intelligence-gathering. (Guardian, 3 August 2025)

Reception and detention

24 July: Medical Justice’ annual review, The state of healthcare and harm in 2024, reveals that among their clients, statutory healthcare screenings on arrival in detention failed to identify 77 percent of torture survivors and 89 percent of those with a reported history of trafficking. Detention adversely affected the mental health of 97 percent of them, with almost one-quarter self-harming in detention (Medical Justice, 24 July 2025)

New Medical Justice report finds that failures in clinical safeguards put vulnerable people at unacceptable levels of risk and caused harm and suffering to people in immigration detention during 2024

medicaljustice.org.uk/annual-revie…

[image or embed]

— Medical Justice (@medicaljustice.org.uk) 30 July 2025 at 10:04

24 July: Research by ActionAid and the University of Bari finds that Italy’s offshoring model to Albania, currently eyed by the EU, is ‘inhuman and useless’ and costly, with beds in the two centres of Gjader and Shengjin costing €150,000 each to set up compared with €20,000 in Italy. (EU News, 24 July 2025)

25 July: Home Office minister Angela Eagle announces that asylum seekers who turn down suitable non-hotel accommodation will be refused the right to stay in hotels and lose financial support. Refugee charities say these conditions already apply. (Guardian, 25 July 2025)

30 July: The Home Office moves 445 asylum seekers to the controversial Wethersfield mass accommodation site in Essex, where 800 people are already housed, increasing its population by over 50 percent, as the leader of the local council argues that the site is in a very rural area without the infrastructure to host such large numbers. (Guardian, 30 July 2025)

1 August: The European Court of Justice rules that Ireland cannot evade its responsibility to house asylum seekers by pleading a large influx in the context of a housing shortage. (Irish Times, 1 August 2025) 

4 August: Refugee charities express dismay at the government’s decision to keep the controversial mass asylum accommodation centre Napier barracks open for asylum seekers despite its planned closure in September, while the closure of the Napier drop-In centre in August will leave residents of the camp without essential support. (Guardian, 4 August 2025)

Deportations

23 July: The Dutch Council of State bans the government from returning single male asylum seekers to Belgium, as would normally be the case under the Dublin regulation, because the lack of reception accommodation means they are unlikely to have their ‘most basic needs’ met, for shelter, hygiene and food. (NL News, 23 July 2025)

1 August: Kurdish journalist Serkan Demirel, a refugee who has lived in Switzerland for twelve years, is detained on the German border and told he is banned from entering the country for unspecified ‘journalistic activity’, despite being married to a German citizen and repeatedly visiting the country in the past. He says he was threatened with deportation to Turkey or Switzerland. (ANF News, 2 August 2025)

4 August: As the EU approves the ‘one in, one out’ deal between the UK and France, the Home Office says detentions and returns of asylum seekers to France will begin within days. (Guardian, 4 August 2025)

Crimes of solidarity

23 July: NGOs engaged in search and rescue say Italy has detained their vessels five times in the past six weeks in an escalating crackdown which they say will lead to more deaths in the Mediterranean. (Guardian, 23 July 2025) 

Citizenship

1 August: The family of Delroy Walker, a Black British man from Birmingham murdered in Jamaica, accuse UK officials of ‘indifference’, saying they were initially told ‘your brother’s not British, or not British enough’ to receive help. (Guardian, 1 August 2025) 

HUMAN RIGHTS AND DISCRIMINATION

30 July: The High Court grants permission for the legal challenge to the EHRC’s interim guidance on gender and sets the full hearing for November, when the Good Law Project will argue that the guidance, which encourages companies and public bodies to stop trans people from using toilets in line with their lived gender, is discriminatory and in breach of human rights. (Good Law Project, 30 July 2025)

5 August: Amnesty International calls on EU member states to fully implement an EU resolution extending the legally binding EU Anti-Torture Regulation. This now includes, amongst other things, hoods and blindfolds, leg cuffs and weighted batons, and introduces stricter controls for the trade in ‘kinetic impact projectiles’ such as rubber or plastic bullets and related launchers. AI calls for further revisions to the Regulation, particularly in relation to direct contact electric shock devices. (Amnesty International, 5 August 2025)

📢Last week the EU expanded its pioneering Anti-Torture Regulation, adding more equipment used for torture and other ill-treatment to the trade ban and control lists – a key move to protect detainees, protesters and human rights defenders.https://t.co/ICxXyWK3nh

— Amnesty EU (@AmnestyEU) August 5, 2025

EDUCATION

Although we do not cover student protests for Palestine, we do track university administrative measures that deny the right to protest and authorise the use of force, or silence pro-Palestinian voices and display anti-Palestinian bias.

22 July: A board composed mainly of millionaires is convened to investigate ‘the educational outcomes of white working-class children and young people’. (TES, 22 July 2025)

22 July: University and College Union (UCU) president Jo Grady accuses the UK government of ‘going out of its way’ to block Gazan students from taking up their places at British universities through its requirement for biometrics (see Asylum and Migrant Rights). (THE, 22 July 2025)

26 July: The University of Edinburgh apologises after a landmark inquiry finds that it played an ‘outsized’ role in the creation of racist scientific theories and greatly profited from transatlantic slavery. The university is asked to drop the IHRA definition of antisemitism and divest from companies facing boycotts. (Guardian, 26 July 2025)

30 July: The High Court turns down a legal challenge to isolation booths, which are used by a growing number of schools in England to discipline children with complex behaviour issues. Three families at the John Smeaton academy in Leeds made the application, after one child spent 83 days in isolation. (Guardian, 30 July 2025)

HOUSING| POVERTY| WELFARE

23 July: Following rumours on social media that Welsh housing association Trivalis was building homes for asylum seekers, the association and the police issue statements clarifying that the new homes are for local people. (Free Movement, 28 July 2025)

EMPLOYMENT| EXPLOITATION| INDUSTRIAL ACTION

29 July: A week after the government banned employers from recruiting care workers from overseas, statistics reveal the number of British workers in the sector fell by 30,000 in the year to March 2025, leading to concerns among providers of a looming crisis caused by staff shortages. (Community Care, 29 July 2025)

CULTURE| MEDIA| SPORT

While we cannot cover all incidents of racist abuse on sportspersons or their responses, we provide a summary of the most important incidents. For more information follow Kick it Out.

24 July: After Nigel Farage is accused of spreading conspiracy theories on social media about police bussing in anti-racism protesters to Epping, he modifies his comments, though his original tweet remains. Unsubstantiated claims that asylum seekers staying at the hotel are routinely shoplifting in Epping are part of online disinformation, as well as the claim that police operated ‘decoys in the crowd’ to encourage violence. (Guardian, 24 July 2025)

24 July: A housing law blogger reveals how AI-generated false information that council tenants are being evicted to make way for asylum seekers, which is legally impossible, appeared on a Google search. (Nearly Legal, 24 July 2025)

24 July: Greek police arrest several AEK Athens fans who approached OPAP Arena carrying Palestinian flags ahead of the team’s match against Israeli club Hapoel Beer Sheva in the UEFA Conference League. (Gazzetta, 24 July 2025)

25 July: After the Irish rap group Kneecap is banned from entering Hungary to perform at a music festival on the grounds of ‘antisemitic hate speech’, the organisers of the Sziget Festival call it an ‘unnecessary’ move and an example of ‘cancel culture’. (Middle East Monitor, 25 July 2025)

28 July: Activists from the Good Law Project deliver coffee, a wake-up call and 21,000 complaints to Ofcom on its failure to take action over transphobic hate speech on channels such as Talk TV. (Good Law Project on Instagram, 28 July 2025)

 

View this post on Instagram

 

A post shared by Good Law Project (@goodlawproject)

29 July: The Nerve exposes the far-right online disinformation ecosystem surrounding the Southport riots and the rise of anti-immigrant disinformation in the UK, drawing on 27 million social media posts. (The Nerve, 29 July 2025)

2 August: The Online Safety Act, combined with the UK government’s recent ban on Palestine Action, poses a serious threat to freedom of expression, human rights groups warn, as its vague provisions risk prompting platforms to over-censor Gaza-related content, especially through automated moderation systems. (Guardian, 2 August 2025)

3 August: Two Reform UK flags displayed near the entrance to the National Eisteddfod, a major Welsh cultural event in Wrexham, spark backlash, with Welsh independence group Mudiad Eryr Wen accusing Net World Sports’ owner of trying to provoke attendees. The flags were later replaced but activists responded with their own protest, warning of growing cultural tensions ahead of the 2026 Senedd election. (Nation Cymru, 3 August 2025)

3 August: Watford FC diversity officer Ebonnie-Rose John-Jules, is convicted of assault after yelling ‘go back to your country, you bloody Indians’ at railway staff during a violent altercation at Southall station. She admits to the racially aggravated offence in court and awaits sentencing. (LBC, 3 August 2025)

4 August: After 182 staff at the Royal Opera House write an open letter criticising director Oliver Mears’ ‘aggressive’ attempts to snatch a Palestinian flag from a performer during a curtain call, also criticising the company’s support for Israeli Opera, the CEO announces the cancellation of a 2026 production in Israel. (Artists for Palestine, 4 August 2025)

5 August: German football club Fortuna Düsseldorf cancels the transfer of Israeli striker Shon Weissman after a fan backlash over his past social media activity, including support for bombing Gaza following the October 2023 Hamas attacks. (Bild, 5 August 2025)

RACIAL VIOLENCE AND HARASSMENT

For details of court judgements on racially motivated and other hate crimes, see also POLICING | PRISONS | CRIMINAL JUSTICE SYSTEM.

See also anti-fascism and far Right for the context of the racial violence in Epping

24 July: Asylum seekers at the Bell hotel, Epping, targeted in anti-asylum protests, are attacked on the streets, causing some to require medical treatment. An asylum seeker from the Yemen is attacked by six men and suffers injuries to his face. An east African asylum seeker chased down the street says he has been unable to sleep since the attack. (Guardian, 26 July 2025) 

24 July: In an open letter coordinated by Care4Calais to our ‘brothers and sisters in Epping and others in asylum accommodation’, asylum seekers in hotels in Reading, Newcastle, Cardiff, Birmingham and Canterbury write: ‘We thought we were safe in the UK but now we are afraid again. Let’s not allow fear to divide us’. (Guardian, 26 July 2025) 

24 July: Phosphoros, a refugee theatre company, surveys 37 young asylum seekers about the impact of the 2024 riots on them and finds that a year later, 49 percent felt mentally affected and 69 percent experienced loneliness. (Guardian, 26 July 2025)

26 July: In Ireland, gardai investigate a racially motivated attack on an Indian man in west Dublin, by a teenage mob who beat, robbed and partially stripped him. Anti-immigration accounts spread false information claiming that the victim was caught exposing himself to children, and a woman who helped the victim is abused and threatened with harm for countering this claim. Another racist incident leaves an Indian student with a broken nose. (Irish Times, 26 July 2025; Irish Independent, 26 July 2025)

1 August: The Polish Migration Forum describes the atmosphere in Poland as ‘pre-pogrom’, with an investigation by Al Jazeera citing an attack on a Paraguayan man accused of taking pictures of children and the following day, the storming of a hostel in Walbrzych that he and other migrants were living in. (Al Jazeera, 1 August 2025)

This calendar is researched by IRR staff and compiled by Sophie Chauhan, with the assistance of Graeme Atkinson, Sam Berkson, Margaret McAdam and Louis Ordish. Thanks also to ECRE, the Never Again Association, Research Against Global Authoritarianism and Stopwatch, whose regular updates on asylum, migration, far Right, racial violence, employment and policing issues are an invaluable source of information. Find these stories and all others since 2014 on our searchable database, the Register of Racism and Resistance.