Thetford in Norfolk in the East of England is a market town that has existed in some form or another since the Iron Age and still has parts that date from the Norman Conquest of England. Although it has grown over the years and has had problems such as major local employers shutting down, it has never been one of those places which I would say were likely to kick off violently over political and other issues. It doesn’t have the tensions and criminality of larger conurbations that contribute to street based trouble and crime it’s been a relatively peaceful place when compared to large towns and cities.

However things have changed. Thetford is no longer a peaceful place or a place where people live without the fears that come with living in a big city. Thetford or at least parts of it are becoming places of increasing turmoil.

The reason for this turmoil is the Home Office’s decision to dump hundreds of so-called asylum seekers, in reality hostile invaders, into homes in multiple occupation (HMO) across the town much to the chagrin of local people. These invaders are not wanted by locals and they are not wanted because of the bad reputation of these invaders who have elsewhere been involved in violence against Britons and who have carried out appalling sex crimes against British women and children.

Local people seem to have lost all confidence in the authorities over the issue of housing these invaders in Thetford. From what I can gather they have exhausted all legal and democratic routes to prevent these invaders being dumped in Thetford. Local people are now gathering outside the homes that these invaders have been placed in and demonstrating against them and in some cases forcing the police to remove the invaders for their own safety. The only problem with this tactic is that although it might remove the invaders from Thetford the government just dumps these invaders on other communities. This is the abject failure of the government’s policy of ceasing to use hotels to house these invaders and instead dump them on often unsuspecting formerly peaceful communities.

As I said earlier, Thetford is not one of those places in the UK where I would have expected to see violent resistance to terrible government policies but this is what has happened. From what I can gather the pattern is this: Invaders are dumped on local communities, local people get angry not just at the presence of the invaders but also the largesse that these invaders get from the UK government. Local people then gather outside the houses occupied by the invaders and protest which brings the local police into the equation. There is then escalation with the locals turning on the police sometimes violently because the are starting to see the police as agents of the state tasked with protecting the invaders and not them.

Several police officers I understand have been injured by protestors including one police officer who was bitten. In an effort to keep some semblance of police the local people have forced the police’s hand and compelled them to remove the invaders.

The Thetford situation is a good illustration of the complete failure of the government’s policy of housing invaders in HMO’s instead of hotels. The government might have thought that changing where these invaders were housed would have toned down the growing tension over the issue of invaders but it has not. It’s clear that people are not primarily concerned with whether or not the invaders are housed in hotels or HMO’s but are mostly wanting these invaders not to be in Britain in the first place.

That Thetford can become, in a relatively short time, a hot bed of anger and frustration over the issue of invaders is significant because if violence carried out by frustrated locals who have been ignored and slagged off by the state and its representatives can happen there then it is significant. If protests such as these can happen in Thetford then they can happen anywhere.