AT THE end of March in a Morning Star article I reported on anti-refugee protests and counter-protests which took place outside a Newquay hotel in Cornwall housing refugees and asylum-seekers. 

I recounted the successful nature of the counter-protests organised by anti-racist and refugee-support-groups in the area.

The counter-protesters easily outnumbered the fear- and hate-fuelled protests by about 10 to one, and so effectively prevented the would-be refugee ejectors from getting anywhere near the hotel front to intimidate the residents. 

Nevertheless it was a bitter victory, as just a couple of weeks later the Home Office suddenly, at very short notice, bussed all the hotel residents out of Cornwall to a new, undisclosed location, no doubt spooked by the perceived growing public support in Cornwall for embattled asylum-seekers. 

As a resident of Cornwall for 50 years I was glad to have attended and been a part of the counter-protests and proud to have played a role in helping safeguard traumatised refugees from bitter harassment and to let them know that many people here in Cornwall welcomed them. 

However, my place of birth and childhood home is not Cornwall, it is the relatively small industrial town of Llanelli in south Wales, where I still have family.

A couple of weeks ago I became aware of an emerging situation in my old hometown involving a large hotel close to the street where I grew up. 

Some local residents are blockading the driveway entrance of the Stradey Park Hotel in protest at a contract the owners have agreed with the Westminster Home Office to appropriate the hotel to accommodate 200-plus refugees and asylum-seekers. 

The situation has been inflamed by the dismissal of almost 100 hotel staff by the hotel owners and by the complete lack of consultation with the devolved Wales administration or local authorities by the Home Office.

It is not hard to see why residents of the village of Furnace on the outskirts of Llanelli, where the hotel is located, are angry and upset, but it is hard to imagine a more insensitive, bungled, incompetent, careless and crass process initiated by a Home Office which has scant regard for people’s lives regardless of nationality or circumstance.

Llanelli is certainly not a hotbed of racists, and while there may initially have been suspicion and some low-level xenophobia at the potential arrival of a large number unknown “outsiders” concentrated into one site, local people’s focus was mainly on the very rational and understandable concerns around the impact of job losses, local housing shortages, rising homelessness and the pressure on beleaguered health and social services.

But as always in such circumstances it did not take long for far-right hate-monger groups to take advantage of the situation for their own political agenda. 

Local anti-racist activists in the town quickly became aware that an organisation called Voice of Wales had inserted itself into the villagers’ campaign and was vociferously taking up the localised cause and helping to blockade the hotel where refugees were expected to arrive at the beginning of July, though this date is now subject to rescheduling. 

Anti-fascist and anti-racist organisations in Llanelli describe Voice of Wales as a fake news outlet.

While Voice of Wales refers to itself on various online platforms as an “online alternative media for Wales,” and states that its opposition is to “the corrupt establishment, the Marxist left, socialism and all things ‘woke’,” a quick scan of the group’s online activities reveals that it has welcomed, and given platforms on its previous YouTube channel, to such charmers as Stephen Yaxley-Lennon (aka Tommy Robinson), and the US neo-fascist organisation the Proud Boys.

Voice of Wales had several of its features removed by YouTube for displaying “racist and foul language and ideas” following an investigation a couple of years ago by the BBC Wales programme, Newiddion, and has since been permanently banned. 

Local anti-racist activists in Llanelli report that other notorious far-right groups have also been spotted at the Stradey Park Hotel blockade, including Patriotic Alternative, the Welsh Defence League, Britain First and the National Front.

And a very recent addition to this assorted far-right gang of miscreants is the notorious media controversialist Katie Hopkins who rocked up this week to show her enthusiastic support for the campaign against the hotel’s intended use to accommodate asylum-seekers.

As is happening across Britain, local people everywhere are at the sharp end of social disintegration, trying to cope with the depletion of local health and care services, the homelessness crisis, and having to juggle (in colder months) the heat-or-eat dilemma.  

Many people struggling with the daily grind of just about surviving and who are frightened and demoralised, often have little political experience or awareness or scant time to engage with it, and as such are prime targets for hard-right factions wishing to whip up anger and hatred against even poorer, even more traumatised people from other parts of the world who are desperately trying to escape even worse conditions, and often perishing in the attempt. 

But wherever poverty or extreme poverty occurs, it is always caused by the same common enemy — a capitalist, warmongering, imperialist system set-up and maintained by the super-rich to ensure that most of the world’s resources and wealth remain exactly where they are — in their coffers, forcing most of humanity to squabble and fight over what little is left available. 

Far-right groups across Britain are actively infiltrating localised grievances and campaigns such as the one in Cornwall earlier in the year, and now the one currently happening in south Wales.

They deliberately direct people’s anger away from the real cause of social disintegration and local poverty — the neoliberal, capitalist economic system designed to impose austerity on everyone other than the uber-wealthy whose acquisitions continue to skyrocket.

These far-right infiltrators endeavour to foment hatred in distressed communities and direct it onto soft targets — desperate human beings fleeing war, persecution, trauma and hunger.

Asylum-seeking people are attempting to escape degradation unimaginable to many of us in the so-called “developed world,” which has been created by the very same common enemy that is responsible for the decline of our own cities, towns and villages. 

It is therefore essential, even though it is becoming increasingly difficult in the current climate of fear, for those with a progressive outlook and an understanding of the real drivers of poverty and social decay to continuously and vociferously speak out against the pernicious spread of hatred and division which is relentlessly contaminating our communities.

Ever-growing numbers of people are now supporting and joining local anti-racist and anti-fascist organisations in places like Cornwall and Wales and in many localities across Britain.

They are courageously putting themselves out there in order to disseminate truth, justice and humanitarian compassion, and to inspire hope.