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Anti-Immigrant Furor in Thetford

Norwich Cathedral and close, August 12, 2026. Photo: The author.

If William Blake were alive today, he’d call his country a “brown and unpleasant land.” English summers used to be short and wet; now they are long and dry. More than 70% of the country is experiencing drought, with hosepipe bans and other water-use restrictions. Norwich, in the county of Norfolk, where I live with my wife Harriet, has experienced its hottest summer ever, with a record temperature of 36C (97F) on June 26, and multiple other days nearly as hot. Yesterday (August 13) it reached 90. Today is expected to be the same.

Having lived in New York, Los Angeles, Chicago and Central Florida, the summer warmth feels to me unexceptional, even welcome, what Nat King Cole serenaded as “those lazy-hazy-crazy days of summer.” But for people here, the excess of sun and heat is punishing. In the age of global warming, Englishmen, contrary to Noel Coward’s Depression-era patter song, avoid the midday sun. I suspect the same is true of mad dogs.

Worse this summer than the heat, were the race riots and anti-immigrant furor in London, Tamworth, Glasgow, Bicester, Wethersfield, Belfast and Thetford. They say hot weather increases aggression, but anti-immigrant attacks have been a staple of British politics for generations, and in all seasons. Notorious outrages include the Seaport Riots of 1919, Notting Hill Riots in 1958, Northern Town Riots of 2001, and the upwellings in Southport, Liverpool, Sunderland, Belfast, and Rotherham in summer, 2024.

The most common argument British residents (especially white ones) make against asylum seekers is that they cost the government money that could otherwise be spent on services for them. But this is largely specious. The cost of the asylum system in the U.K. is 0.29 percent of the national budget, and that could be reduced if asylum seekers were allowed to work in jobs or industries where they are most needed. The other major complaint is that newcomers – legal immigrants as well as asylum seekers — undermine traditional British values. I don’t mean to be ungenerous to my new hosts, but apart from beer, chips, football and mistaken pride in a former empire, British values are hard to identify. That’s not because values have broken down, but because Britain has always been a diverse country. And anyway, the taste for curries, kebabs, and pizza has long rivalled if not overtaken that for pasties, baps, and bangers-and-mash.

The arguments against immigration and asylum are familiar and notorious. They are found in Oswald Mosley perorations against London’s immigrant Jews in in the 1930s; and again in 1958 and ’59 against Blacks from the Caribbean. A decade after, Defense Secretary Enoch Powell rehearsed them in his infamous speechgiven at a Conservative Party gathering in Birmingham. Inveighing against a proposed anti-discrimination bill in parliament, he said that the influx of Commonwealth immigrants was straining housing, hospitals, and schools.

Most of all, however, Powell said immigration was polluting the nation, and undermining both social cohesion and national values: “For reasons which [British people] could not comprehend and …[about] which they were never consulted, they found themselves made strangers in their own country.” Claiming that immigrant communities aimed to organize themselves to replace (“overawe and dominate”) native ones, he concluded: “As I look ahead, I am filled with foreboding. Like the Roman [he’s referencing Virgil’s Aeneid], I seem to see ‘the River Tiber foaming with much blood.'”

Former Labor Prime Minister Keith Starmer, to his everlasting shame and regret, echoed Powell’s “River of Blood” speech in an address from June 2025. He said that immigration risked turning the nation into “an island of strangers.” Nigel Farage, leader of the far right, Reform U.K. party, has gone farther, calling it an “invasion” and “national security threat,” and promising if elected Prime Minister, to greatly reduce immigration and ban all foreign nationals from social housing and other public services, no matter how long they’ve been legally settled.

In the U.K. as in the U.S., opposition to immigration and asylum has perverted common sense.  Even if you accepted the idea that mass immigration taxed services, (not a point to be conceded), the current threat is non-existent. The number of U.K. residents who initially came to the country seeking asylum is about 0.6 percent, in other words six in a thousand. The number currently waiting for an asylum decision is 0.2 percent. The annual inflow of immigrants is 0.14 percent of the population, that is, 1.4 out of a thousand. In addition, despite employment of seasonal foreign workers in agriculture, there currently exist significant shortages of workers in that and other sectors, especially healthcare, hospitality, and construction. Economic growth in the U.K. depends upon the very labor pool that most politicians are aiming to restrict. If the new PM, Andy Burnham, wants to light a fire under the U.K. economy, he should start by denouncing racism and embracing immigration. The Royal Navy could escort migrant boats crossing the channel from France to England!

The Thetford riots and Thomas Paine statue

Norwich is only about 30 miles from Thetford (pop. 25,000), so on a hot Sunday afternoon, four days after attacks there against immigrant and non-white families, we decided to visit the town. The rock throwing, housebreaking, window smashing and verbal abuse was over, the injured police had been treated (one was badly bitten a rioter), the threatened residents were relocated, and most of the press had gone. Thetford was buttoned up, and King’s Road, the town’s high street, nearly deserted on the sunny, sabbath afternoon.

As we........

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