GMTU statement on fascist protests outside asylum seeker hotels:
This summer has seen a wave of protests against hotels which house people seeking asylum, cheered on by the press and supported by politicians including Nigel Farage and Tory MP Robert Jenrick. GMTU opposes these protests and stands in solidarity with people seeking asylum, against racist and fascist attacks and scapegoating.
The process by which asylum seekers have become ‘siloed’ into hotels, sometimes for years while they await decisions on their asylum claims, is a shameful one. Laws to prevent people seeking asylum from working and renting in our communities means that as soon as they arrive in the UK, they are forced into substandard conditions in crowded hotels and house-shares. Big companies, including hotel chains, make millions of pounds in profit for providing homes for people pushed out of the mainstream housing system. Many of these asylum seekers have fled wars and poverty directly created by our government’s actions abroad, including Palestinians who have fled the genocide in their home country while the Labour government signs deals with Israeli weapons manufacturers and declares direct action groups who try to stop this flow of weapons are ‘terrorists’. Hotels that house destitute individuals are then identified by the media and local far-right groups, and become a focal point for right-wing attacks.
Our housing system starts failing refugees from the moment they arrive in Britain. Even after they are granted asylum, people with ‘refugee’ status are often kicked out of their Home Office accommodation just weeks later, with no job and no means to pay a deposit. Immediately, they are on the sharp end of the housing crisis, left street homeless or sofa-surfing, turned down by private landlords and forced to rely on local authorities who see them as a problem, not people. It is in this context that Greater Manchester has seen homeless camps spring up, for example in Manchester, Stockport and Oldham. Often the residents will set up these camps outside Town Halls, where homeless teams are supposedly there to help them. GMTU members have worked in 2025 to support the people in these camps, helping them access legal advice through our partnerships in the Housing Justice Network, speaking to the press to oppose the Manchester camp’s vicious evictions, and providing material support whenever we can.
GMTU stands with asylum seekers and refugees facing racist abuse this summer. Many of our members have been out counter-protesting the fascist gatherings at asylum seeker hotels. We support action to oppose attacks on people seeking asylum and their right to exist in our communities. We encourage everyone who can to get down to the counter-protests.
But we also know that the wave of racist abuse that creates the conditions for these protests is not something that emerges from nowhere in our communities. It emerges in the context of the managed decline of our welfare state, the artificial scarcity of housing supply created by years of government housing strategy, and the deliberate scapegoating of migrants for wider social problems – while many migrants themselves are still denied a vote and a voice in the British system. Politicians and elites who profit from high rents fan the flames of existing racism in our society to direct anger away from legitimate targets – including themselves. While Greater Manchester’s local authorities allow developers to build more and more high-rise flats that will never house working-class people and average waiting times for social homes in Manchester spiral to up to 12 years, it is the most marginalised people in the city who get blamed.
Asylum seekers and refugees did not cause the housing crisis. ‘Stopping the boats’ will not fix the housing crisis and neither will making this country increasingly hostile to those who come to call it home. GMTU opposes the vicious rhetoric that scapegoats migrants for homegrown failings. Join GMTU to fight the real problem – developers, landlords and the government.
