Only a fool would believe that the decision of Boris Johnson’s Conservative Government to use hotels to accommodate large numbers of refugees in already hard pressed working class areas, was a good idea – especially considering the damage already done by New Labour’s ban on asylum seekers gaining employment and contributing to society, making them dependent on state support.
It’s notable that asylum seekers and refugees are seldom, if ever, placed in hotels in middle class or wealthy areas and that the venues chosen are predominantly within working class communities where resources are already stretched and morale is at an all time low, following decades of successive governments’ right wing economic policies.
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2025/aug/09/britain-asylum-hotels-racism-culture-war
For all the hysteria and mock outrage, in contrast to the fortunes of working class communities and asylum seekers, for the Conservative Party and its Ultra Conservative Frankenstein’s Monster, Reform UK, ‘migrant hotels’ have been both a lucrative cash cow and political mana from heaven.
Laughing all the way to the bank: Firoz Kassam’s Asylum Hustle
The privatisation of the Asylum system gifted millions of pounds of easy money to shameless, rack-renting, slum landlords. The Holiday Inn, on the edge of Blackbird Leys, the scene of recent Asylum protests, is owned by Firoz Kassam. Kassam is a canny businessman who bought Oxford United for £1 and was gifted the land by Oxford City Council for less than half the market value enabling him to build both the Kassam Stadium and the Holiday Inn. He is justifiably an unpopular figure locally for forcing United out of the stadium in order to free up the land for even more profitable use. Yet the Oxford United story is only the tip of the iceberg.
https://www.oxfordmail.co.uk/news/1769534.stadium-sale-good-value/
Having amassed a fortune in the 1980s from government handouts for housing homeless people in his notoriously putrid Mount Pleasant Hotel in Kings Cross, Kassam came early doors to the asylum racket. In 2000, long before the far right recognised the issue as politically useful, Kassam made headlines over his London Park, ‘Hostel from Hell’, where according to newspaper reports, some residents felt even more unsafe than they did in the war torn countries from which they had fled.
https://www.theguardian.com/uk/2000/jul/09/immigration.immigrationandpublicservices
It is important to note that Kassam and other hoteliers who hit the jackpot at the taxpayers expense through housing asylum seekers, repaid the favour, with substantial donations to the Tory Party.
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2006/jun/02/conservatives.uk3
The Failure of Government Asylum Policy
While Kassam raked in the money, the Holiday Inn, Blackbird Leys, became home for refugees from across the globe and for four years, there had been no obvious fuss and no outcry of opposition from local residents. Fast forward to last summer’s ‘Farage Riots’ and still no trouble at the Holiday Inn and it remained that way until 3 weeks ago when a sorry looking stranger with a placard and two elderly women with a dog rolled in. The following Saturday saw the same motley crew turn up, and it would probably have been the same the next week, but emboldened by the High Court ruling that the former Bell Hotel in Epping must stop housing asylum seekers, Nigel Farage called for national protests and the small group of zealots outside the Holiday Inn increased slightly, their ranks swelled by locals living next to the hotel who appeared to be more animated by the slogans and megaphones of the much larger and more organised counter protest than anything else.
Yet, while right wing opportunists have waited on the sidelines until the issue of ‘Asylum hotels’ became politically useful, more sober heads had been airing concerns about government policy for a number of years. One such group is the Refugee Council, founded in the wake of World War 2 to address what was at the time, an unprecedented refugee crisis, which recently reiterated its position on the issue:
“Everyone agrees that hotels are the wrong answer: they cost the taxpayer billions, trap people in limbo and are flashpoints in communities. Through our frontline work, we see how protests and hostility leave people who have fled war and persecution feeling terrified and targeted in the very places they are forced to live. Ultimately, the only way to end hotel use for good is to resolve asylum applications quickly and accurately so people can either rebuild their lives here or return home with dignity. This will cut costs and allow refugees to integrate into their new communities, contribute, and play their part in Britain.”
Locally, the Independent Working Class Association, which represented Blackbird Leys on Oxford City Council between 2002 – 2012 also tried to address the issue:
‘..As a rule political refugees are housed in the most under-funded areas which are duly expected to share out already meagre resources with the new arrivals. Across the country, the government is shown to have repeatedly short-changed councils to whom refugees are allocated. The interests, concerns and sensitivities of local communities are also routinely dismissed. Unsurprisingly this can be a source of suspicion, tension and resentment.’
IWCA Manifesto July 2003
Unfortunately the mainstream parties had no such consideration for local communities, so it was full steam ahead with no visible strategy for managing the impending crisis. Given the political climate, a disenfranchised working class and a relentless, extremely well funded campaign of disinformation on social media, it was almost inevitable that a quasi messianic autocrat with a pocket full of promises would emerge. Enter, stage right, Nigel Farage, who had cynically positioned himself to profit from the misery caused by the application of the very policies that have served him and his class so well.
Traitors?
The extreme right wing element at recent anti-asylum protests have attempted to label anyone who refuses to be bullied into adopting their hateful world view as a ‘traitor’, but if a traitor is one who acts against the national interest, maybe they should look a little bit closer to home.
Nigel Farage was a member of the Conservative Party from 1978 to 1992. He was, and remains, a passionate supporter of the party’s anti-working class, neo-liberal economic policies. In 1979 when Nigel’s idol, Margaret Thatcher, came to power, the gap between rich and poor was lower than at any time in recorded history. Four decades and counting into the neoliberal experiment, and that gap has widened to Victorian proportions, leaving many of our once proud working class communities on their knees. The use of food banks has increased by 51% in the last five years, while over the same period, wealth inequality has risen at a staggering rate with the UK’s 50 richest families now holding more wealth than 50% of the population.
https://www.trussell.org.uk/news-and-research/latest-stats/end-of-year-stats
The political right loves to bang on about ‘Broken Britain’, but they conveniently fail to mention that they broke it.
The Thatcher Government’s widespread privatisation of public services (more than 40 UK state owned businesses were sold off between 1970 and 1990), resulted in billions of pounds of public money being syphoned off into the private bank accounts of overseas venture capitalists. Today, it is the public utilities sector where the impact is most keenly felt. If we’re looking for a prime example of an individual beneficiary of the privatisation of UK utilities, we need look no further than the aptly named Hong Kong billionaire, Li Ka-shing. Ka-shing, was recently paid more than £2 billion pounds in dividends as a director of the CK Group, owners of UK Power Networks, the company that supplies electricity to the South East of England. Ka-shing’s cut is just a fraction of the astronomical figure that has been lost from the UK Exchequer through the privatisation of our utility services.
When the Game is up, Move the Goalposts
It has become more and more difficult for those on the right to keep up the pretence that Thatcherism has been anything but an unmitigated disaster for the UK. The physical and emotional scars of Thatcherite policies blight the landscape of contemporary Britain. This can be seen more than anywhere else, in the former industrial heartlands, where working class solidarity, dignity and industry has been replaced with unemployment, poverty, zero hours contracts and heartbreaking social decline. This is the legacy of Thatcherism and millions of voters know it, which is why, if the elite want to cling to power, Conservatism needs a rebrand – and you can guarantee that the Reformed version will be even more vicious.
https://weownit.org.uk/public-ownership/energy
Old Wine in New Bottles
Reform UK has nothing to offer working class people. Farage is a well connected millionaire; the product of an elite private school and very much a part of the British establishment he claims to oppose. His party is bankrolled by a particular type of wealthy individual who would have traditionally donated to the Conservatives but now feel that Reform better represents their interests. These people would not be investing in Reform UK if they thought for one minute that the party would consider reintroducing a fair tax system or implementing any other form of wealth redistribution to help tackle rising inequality. Independent international media platform, Open Democracy, report that ‘Farage’s party has sought to frame itself as an alternative to the political status quo of the Conservatives and Labour, yet this is at odds with its wealthy funders, many of whom are longtime political donors and paid-up members of the elite’.
Nigel Farage and his Limited Company, Reform UK, are happy to whip up hysteria over desperate people arriving in small boats, but they turn a blind eye to the moral bankruptcy of the likes of Firoz Kassam and other multimillionaire beneficiaries of the Great Asylum Hotel Swindle who are milking millions of pounds from the public purse to fund their luxury lifestyles in Riviera tax havens – tax havens incidentally, from which Reform UK receives 10% of its donations. Farage may self identify as a ‘man of the people’, but we’re having none of it.
Blackbird Leys Community Spirit 