Reform UK leader Nigel Farage gave a major speech on law and order on Monday and said, in remarks that follow two weeks of unrest in Essex over the alleged sex abuse of a young girl by a migrant, that he understands how those taking to the streets feel.
“I don’t think anybody in London even understands just how close we are to civil disobedience on a vast scale in this country”, Nigel Farage said on Monday as he responded to weeks of protests — sometimes violent — in the Essex town of Epping.
The protests started after the alleged sex assault on a 14-year-old girl by a migrant living in a migrant plantation hotel established by the government in the area. The suspect, an Ethiopian male who as said to have struck after being in the country only little more than a week, has denied the charges and will return to court next month for a two-day trial.
Acknowledging there had been some extremists in Epping on recent protest days from both the left and right — he particularly called out the arrival of a large group of hard-left activists who wished to oppose the anti-child-rape demonstration — Farage nevertheless said: “do I understand how people in Epping feel? You bet your life I do. I’m sitting [at] this table with two mothers; a 14-year-old girl is sexually assaulted by an [Ethiopian] who’d arrived by boat eight days before. Don’t underestimate the simmering anger and disgust that there is in this country, that we’re letting in every week — in fact some days — many hundreds of undocumented young males, many of whom come from cultures in which women and young girls are not even treated as second-class citizens.”
He continued: “I do understand the genuine upset and anger, and I bet you the vast majority of people outside that hotel in Epping weren’t far right or far left or anything like that, they were just genuinely concerned families.”
Mr Farage expressing his sympathy with the frustrations of the public concerned about rising levels of crime was enough for him to be hit with calls to be investigated from the left. Labour adviser Paul Richards spoke to TalkTV and said he believed that Farage was “flying very close to the wind” with his comments and should be investigated for incitement of further violence.
Richards told host Alex Phillips that: “Farage’s language, I think, is going to have to be interrogated very closely… because some of it sounded borderline incitement to me… I think some of the language strayed dangerously close to the suggestion people should go out and riot”.
Farage’s remarks on Monday come amid a growing national discussion about what has by turns been called a febrile atmosphere, a tinderbox, or simply a nation where the basics are increasingly being left undone, leaving the door open for unrest. First among those voices, perhaps, has been the increasingly outspoken King’s College London professor of War Studies David Betz, who takes the view many Western nations are already “beyond the tipping point” and face difficult years ahead.
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