Since 5 October, a string of anti-migrant attacks in Salford have left family homes with smashed windows and covered in graffiti.
Across four recorded evenings, a total of 25 properties were targeted, many covered in spray paint reading “No HMOs”; one had a swastika drawn on its windows and a pig’s head was left at another location.
The Kersall area was first targeted, and then the area in and between Walkden and Little Hulton. The perpetrators, theoretically, intended to target HMOs housing asylum seekers. In reality, several of the properties damaged were not HMOs at all, but family homes.
One resident reported to the Manchester Mill that there were four children asleep in her home when the windows were smashed in. The attackers later targeted her new car, which was left damaged and covered in graffiti.
Of course, violence and intimidation is unacceptable whether the home is an HMO or not. However, the indiscriminate attacks show that anti-migrant rhetoric endangers any racialised person living in the UK, regardless of status.
The attacks have been gleefully greeted by local far-right ‘auditors’ and social media influencers, including Brandon Breen (AKA ‘Struggle of the Streets’), who has posted daily videos since they began. The comment section of most of his videos are filled with racist hate, with individuals encouraging further violence or congratulating the perpetrators.
Cameron Mears (AKA ‘cozzy’), a Salford-based auditor, has also posted footage of homes that have been trashed, with their doors kicked off, windows smashed and egg smeared up the internal walls. He claims that “as you can see, Salford just don’t want these HMOs here”.
Ashlea Simon, former co-leader of Britain First, lives locally and was quick to produce video content in the area. A self-professed ethnonationalist, Simon took apparent pleasure in zooming into the broken down properties: “Oh you can actually see the migrants inside there”. Referencing the destroyed home, she claimed that “the area, overnight all of a sudden, became very very African, and obviously we see the community have a problem with that”.
These attacks follow more than a year of sustained far-right campaigns against the use of HMOs to house asylum seekers. Rhetoric shared by prominent figures fuels racist hate, resulting in multiple homes being violently attacked and communities left terrified.
The destruction of properties, HMOs or not, simply because of the race of its inhabitants, is a dystopian vision that requires a very strong response. Like the property damage witnessed during the Belfast riots, it cannot be boiled down to simply “difference of opinion” over immigration.
Prefer to listen? Click the play button to hear the audio version. Harry Shukman Reform UK is staffed by oddballs and enigmas, but none odder…
