By Andrew MacAskill and Andrew R.C. Marshall
MANCHESTER, England, Dec 17 (Reuters) - Adam didn’t set out to expose what he calls Britain’s “broken asylum system.” About four years ago the 32-year-old started working in one of hundreds of hotels being used to house asylum seekers because, he said, he wanted to help them settle in the country.
What he saw began to anger him. Some residents had made fraudulent claims about conditions in the countries they had escaped, or protested about hotel food by
refusing to eat, he said, while people with claims he considered genuine were overlooked.
In 2022, he started filming inside the Manchester Airport Stanley Hotel, where he worked, later posting online videos he shot undercover there and in other asylum hotels to a nation simmering with anti-immigrant sentiment.
Adam, who asked Reuters to withhold his surname for privacy reasons, said his Palestinian heritage allowed him to slip past security at hotels around Manchester and blend in with residents, many of them from the Middle East.
“I thought it'd be a unique opportunity just to film inside,” he said.
He is part of an emerging network of mainly right-wing videographers both stoking and profiting from widespread anger in Britain over the use of the hotels. Footage of them confronting staff and asylum seekers has surged in popularity this year to gain tens of millions of views on YouTube, according to a Reuters tally. Their online followings now rival the daily print circulation of major British newspapers.
They have helped foment an unprecedented wave of protests outside hotels across the country since the summer, the police say. The videographers say they provide unfiltered coverage of the impact of rising asylum claims on communities in Britain, an issue they feel is neglected by traditional media.
Over the past three years, arrivals of asylum seekers in Britain have reached record levels, including 110,000 in the year to September, mostly Pakistanis, Eritreans, Iranians, Afghans and Bangladeshis. Many come on small boats illegally. About half are initially granted asylum.
“There are genuine refugees there, but the whole system is tainted by an influx of people who want to basically have a free ride,” said Adam.
He described one man who viewed his time at the hotel as “a paid vacation,” and a Kurdish man who said he fled his country after killing his wife. Reuters could not verify Adam’s verbal accounts of such cases.
Weyman Bennett, co-convener of Stand Up To Racism, a nationwide group that stages counterprotests in support of migrants, said refugees were “terrified” of protests he said demonized them and traumatised their children. He described the videographers as provocateurs who encouraged division.
The almost weekly protests are often organised online at a local level by residents of areas near hotels, with some demonstrations attended by far-right activists.
At two gatherings attended by Reuters, protesters said they worried that asylum seekers in the hotels, who are mostly young men, put women and children at risk, citing specific incidents in their communities.
Though usually small, the protests Reuters attended were often tense, with people yelling “Go home!” at hotel residents. Some videographers confront police and shout at security guards or migrants, and at least six have been arrested or face criminal charges, Reuters found.
BRITAIN’S ASYLUM ACCOMMODATION PROBLEM
Under British law, the government houses most asylum seekers while claims are assessed. The use of hotels only became commonplace after the COVID-19 pandemic when asylum processing seized up just as arrivals were rising, leading to a growing backlog.
Britain has roughly halved the number of hotels in use since 2022, but still houses about a third of asylum cases in them, at an annual cost of 2.1 billion pounds – an amount that would pay the annual salaries of more than 40,000 nurses.
The number of arrivals is lower than other large European nations, including France and Germany, but the situation has outraged Britons wearied by years of economic austerity and fearful of rapid cultural shifts.
Reuters interviewed 10 videographers who film in and around asylum hotels, and analysed videos shot by dozens of others, to understand how they operate, make money and influence the national political debate.
They amplify the impact of the protests, channelling fury towards Keir Starmer’s centre-left Labour government.
Their views often dovetail with those of Nigel Farage, a right-wing populist politician whose policies include mass deportations. His Reform UK party has shot to the top of opinion polls.
Gavin Stephens, the chair of the National Police Chiefs' Council, which coordinates policing policies, told Reuters the videographers generated large online followings and stirred anger. He described their work as entertainment rather than journalism. There were a record 3,000 protests this summer, he said, the “vast majority” about immigration.
With immigration now polling as the top issue for voters, the government in November unveiled proposals for stricter asylum rules.
The Home Office told Reuters it aimed to close asylum hotels by 2029 and was working to house people in military bases. It did not respond to questions about the videographers.
Reuters reviewed Adam’s employment contract for Manchester Airport Stanley Hotel, where he has since stopped working. Now renamed and under new management, as part of the government’s policy of reducing the use of hotels, it no longer houses asylum seekers.
CONFRONTATION INCENTIVIZED
Among those Reuters interviewed were three men who said they made enough money from the videos to give up day jobs as a milkman, plumber and language teacher.
Marti Blagborough, 33, has a webpage selling merchandise with his logo including badges and key rings. He said his YouTube following reached over 100,000 after he started covering the anti-migrant protests.
“Plumbing was very good money,” he said, with a laugh, “but this is even better.”
Most of those Reuters interviewed said they profited from their videos, mainly thanks to income from social media companies such as YouTube that pay creators different sums depending on the size and location of the audience and other factors. More combative videos often generate more views and more income, three of the videographers said.
Another of the men, who goes by the name of Laine Audits, said he earned about 3.50 pounds per 1,000 views on YouTube. One of the most popular of the videographers, Daniel James Edwards, known as DJE Media, who has collaborated with Adam. He received more than a million views for a film of Adam talking about hotel residents rejecting food.
Reuters could not verify the profitability of the videographers' work.
Edwards, who has spoken in his videos about asylum seekers committing crime, has a criminal record under a different name for fraud and sexual offences, according to 2019 court documents reviewed by Reuters. “The past is the past, and what I’m doing now is a positive thing,” he said in an interview.
Adam said he was not aware of Edwards history when he collaborated with him and no longer works with him.
At a protest at a migrant hotel in Wakefield, in northern England, Blagborough filmed himself taunting security guards. Blagborough and two associates left after police issued them with a dispersal order for “making animal noises” and “harassing security staff.”
He posted the video online and said he was “making fun” of the guards for blocking access to land he said was public.
Bennett, of Stand Up To Racism, said the videographers ratcheted up local tensions and catalysed more protests and conflict.
“They’re like enzymes. They speed up the process,” he said, describing some videographers as “thugs with phones.”
HIDDEN CAMERAS, SPY GLASSES
Adam’s videos are shot mainly on “spy glasses” containing a hidden camera. One filmed in August at the Cresta Court Hotel on the outskirts of Manchester showed residents eating at a well-stocked canteen and playing table tennis.
Adam narrated softly so he wasn’t overheard and pretended to speak bad English when interacting with staff. The video generated more than 1,700 comments on YouTube, many angry that asylum-seekers had paid-for food and shelter.
“Our own homeless and veterans are left to rot and those who arrive into the UK ILLEGALLY are living like this at the taxpayers expense,” read one of the comments.
Others expressed fears about asylum seekers conducting crimes. Britain collects limited data on the immigration status of offenders, making it hard to establish a link between crime and asylum seekers.
Reports of most serious crime are falling, government data shows.
However, individual cases have fueled anger. Protests outside the Bell Hotel in Epping became violent in July after an Ethiopian resident of the hotel was arrested and later convicted for sexually assaulting a 14-year-old girl. Another asylum seeker was convicted in October of using a screwdriver to murder a woman who worked at the hotel he stayed in.
ARRESTED AFTER HOTEL INFILTRATION
About three weeks after Adam’s visit to Cresta Court Hotel, ten police officers, some in facemasks, riot gear and a battering ram, appeared outside his home and detained him, video shot by his home security camera shows.
They said he was arrested on suspicion of burglary for eating a “bowl of chicken pasta” at the hotel buffet, he said. Adam denies any wrongdoing.
While Adam is yet to be charged, under his bail conditions he must sleep at his house every night and is banned from within 200 metres of any protest.
“It almost sounds like I am an enemy of the state,” said Adam.
In response to Reuters questions about Adam’s case, Greater Manchester Police confirmed a 32-year-old man was arrested on suspicion of burglary. The police said it was standard practice to use protective equipment to execute warrants and the people at the address were treated with dignity.
(Editing by Frank Jack Daniel)
