“It’s an invasion,” Dinah Bentley tells me, standing next to a cardboard cut-out of Nigel Farage.
The 78-year-old retired teacher says she “doesn’t laud” the Reform MP, whose grinning likeness is a permanent fixture in her West Yorkshire conservatory, but he “says what I believe”.
“Everybody talks about migration, but our country’s ruined,” Dinah adds. “They’ve ruined it.”
The “they” in her mind? People who have crossed into the UK on small boats.
We have seen asylum hotel protests intensify over the summer and wanted to speak to the people who’ve joined them.
Over the coming weeks, we’ll speak with counter-protesters too, but today, we meet Dinah, a grandmother of two who has joined those calling on asylum hotels to close.
She was, like many of the protesters we met, initially sceptical to speak to a journalist.
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Dinah says she “doesn’t watch mainstream news” because of “media lies” over Brexit.
Instead, she says she gets her news from social media.
It was on social media that Dinah learnt about a protest being organised outside a hotel in Wakefield, which has housed asylum seekers for several years.
It was the first migration-related protest she had ever attended.
“We’ve put up with so much for so long and I think ordinary people now, they’ve decided it’s no good sitting, doing nothing,” Dinah says.
After reading about a male asylum seeker being charged with a sexual assault in Epping, she says she is “fearful” for her granddaughters’ safety.
“They’re undocumented,” she says, referring to those who have arrived in the UK on small boats.
“We know nothing about them. We don’t know where they are wandering the streets. It’s not right, is it?”
She’s also angry about the cost of housing asylum seekers in hotels.
I ask Dinah what she thinks about the government plan to close asylum hotels, stop illegal crossings and deport people who do not have a legal right to remain.
“It’s all talk, all talk”, she says. “I don’t believe them.”
“I would be happy if the Navy went into the Channel, we’re an island for God’s sake, and stopped the boats.
“That would make me over the moon.”
Dinah tells us people used to be “afraid” of saying what they really thought about migration.
No more, she says.
The ‘migrant watch’ group
On the other side of Wakefield, we meet 47-year-old James Crashley.
He’s also been to the local asylum hotel protests.
An army veteran and former policeman, James says he does not think asylum seekers should be housed in hotels or houses of multiple occupancy.
“I’ve served in Kosovo and in Iraq, within the British Army,” he says. “And if I can be housed in a tent for six months, then they can too.”
The prime minister has pledged to end the “costly use of hotels to house asylum seekers in this parliament” – which would be 2029, if not earlier.
James has, by his own admission, become somewhat notorious in his local area for trying to set up what he’s called a “community watch”.
He says the police are “very good at dealing with serious crime” but believes “they seem to forget that day-to-day crime exists”.
Called “5 Town Migrant Watch” and advertised by him on social media, James says the volunteer group will support the Wakefield hotel protests and act as a “gentle presence” in public areas to tackle “all anti-social behaviour”.
But it will focus on “illegal migrant men” who James describes as having “conflicting traditions and cultures”.
“They come from cultures that aren’t as civilised as ours,” he says. “They don’t seem to adhere to our laws.
“And because of the cultural differences, as in the sexual assaults on children and women, they believe that’s fine in their cultures. Well, it’s not here.”
I say to James that no culture accepts sexual assaults on women and children are “fine”, a point he says he “accepts”.
But he claims that, by definition, people have already “broken the law” when they arrive on small boats in the first place.
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James’ group has attracted hundreds of supporters online, but also criticism from people who believe the group – and James himself – is not only divisive but dangerous.
James admits he has previously had a police caution for a public order offence, not related to the community watch, but stresses this group “isn’t vigilantism”.
“It’s a peaceful movement,” he says. “But if needs be, we’ll stand our ground and will prevent crime. We’re not allowed to commit crime.”
‘People are angry’
A few days later, we meet Dinah again outside the Cedar Court Hotel in Wakefield.
Protesters line the road, waving Union and St George’s flags. Some are shouting “send them back” and “stop the boats”.
Groups of counter-protesters are there too, chanting “Nazi scum” over the police barricade.
I ask Dinah how that feels.
“I think it’s hilarious,” she says. “I know what I am, I don’t value their opinion, so I couldn’t care less what they call me.”
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But standing next to Dinah, also waving a Union flag, is Sharon.
She says she’s “a little bit frightened being here” and feels it’s unfair to be put in that position just “to try and get the government to listen to you”.
She added: “I’m a 60-year-old mum. I work 40 hours a week. And nobody gives me anything free. You just want fairness.”
In the crowd, we find James.
I ask him what he thinks about the government plan to appeal a court ruling to shut the asylum hotel in Epping.
“Of course they were going to try and block it,” he tells me.
“The smiles here and the good attitude and the positivity is masking the anger of what’s happened to the English.
“People are angry. People know that once they’re out of here,” he says, gesturing at the hotel behind us, “they’re going to be put in the community”.
“What happens then, who knows?”
Dinah and James are among thousands of protesters who share a sense of being ignored by the government – leaving an overwhelming sense of pressure and uncertainty about what will happen next.
