Liberty Steels Rotherham at Aldwarke. Hundreds of jobs and key steel production facilities are under threat. Photo Workers.
Workers looks behind the headlines to find out what is going on with immigration in one town: Rotherham.…
Rotherham, a large town in South Yorkshire, is not exceptional. It shares the same problems as many towns across Britain. It did achieve national notoriety over a child sexual exploitation scandal involving men of Pakistani heritage, and then last August for an attack on a local hotel housing asylum seekers.
John Healey, Labour’s defence minister, is one of the local MPs. He wrote to the then Home Secretary, Priti Patel, in 2022 complaining about the placement of 130 asylum seekers in a hotel in Manvers, a small former mining village in the north of the borough.
Supported by the Labour-controlled Rotherham Metropolitan Borough Council, Healey reflected the concerns of some local residents. He pointed out that Rotherham already had over 600 asylum seekers, while other parts of the country were taking far fewer, and some had none at all.
One Manvers local stated that local people had a good-natured relationship with the hotel’s occupants, but then pointed to the change in the asylum seekers from families to young single men, noting an “undercurrent of resentment” from some locals, particularly older people.
Unemployment
That is hardly surprising. Rotherham has a higher level of unemployment than Yorkshire and the Humber region as a whole. The main industry, mining, was closed down in Manvers and many similar villages, destroying jobs.
Despite recent improvement, unemployment is still high. And now the local steelworks at Aldwarke is threatened, with the potential loss of more relatively well paid jobs.
Another Manvers local said that Rotherham had changed beyond recognition. He accepted that some immigrants were hard-working and happy to take up the low-paid jobs still on offer. But he thought that others exploited Britain’s generous welfare benefits, and that large-scale immigration led to a lack of housing and filled-up schools.
The national cost of housing asylum seekers reached around £8 million a day in October 2023. Many people in Rotherham are on low incomes or benefits that don’t keep pace with inflation; they face ever higher bills. They want to know why their taxes are supporting hundreds of foreign people, including those who have entered the country illegally.
Many shops are now boarded up in Rotherham town centre. It was hit hard by the opening of the Meadowhall shopping centre in 1990, on the site of a steelworks close to the border of the town.
Crime
The town centre is next to the poorest areas of Rotherham, where many of the immigrants live. Those areas suffer from high levels of crime and anti-social behaviour, as does the town centre.
In 2019 the council sought to turn things around with a Town Centre Masterplan. The £47 million transformation of the former Rotherham Forge into modern, attractive retail and leisure facilities has attracted a new cinema and a 69-room hotel, plus six new independent bars and restaurants.
But the new area, Forge Island, is having trouble attracting customers. One local, a former union shop steward, told Workers, “there are often large groups of migrant men hanging around at all times of the day and night. I am genuinely concerned for my safety on the odd occasion that I visit the town centre to go to the pub or go shopping.”
In response, South Yorkshire Police has announced a crime crackdown. Starting this April, it promises “an intense focus on removing people who are causing problems with their behaviour and also plans put in place to change the layout of certain areas which may be attracting people to congregate.”
‘The police and the council know there are problems, but both studiously avoid any reference to immigrants in discussing the issues…’
Healey is clear that there is a problem with immigrants in Rotherham, though he is guarded in what he says, for fear of being accused of racism. The local police and the council also know there are problems with immigrants. They now appear to understand the need to tackle anti-social behaviour and crime, often perpetrated by immigrants. But both studiously avoid any reference to immigrants in discussing the issues.
The people of Rotherham certainly know what the problems are, and the causes. What frustrates them, and hampers progress in tackling the problems, is the general unwillingness to openly discuss the issue of uncontrolled immigration.
Appalled
The town’s residents were also largely appalled at the riot that happened outside the hotel in Manvers on 4 August 2024. This involved a few hundred fascists, mainly from outside Rotherham, assisted by some local youths looking for trouble. Victimising individual asylum seekers and refugees and trying to burn down their hotel is not the answer.
Around 49 per cent of Rotherham voters backed leaving the EU; only 25 per cent wanted to stay in. They voted overwhelmingly for Brexit largely because they could see the growing immigrant problem and wanted Britain to have proper control over its borders. In that, they have been betrayed by successive governments, first Conservative and now Labour.
Asylum seekers and illegal immigrants are not the main problem – it is government policies that allow legal mass immigration. Immigrants will gravitate towards towns like Rotherham where housing and other costs are relatively low. And with such concentration, there is little chance of integrating with the existing population.
It is not racist to talk about concerns relating to the impact of immigration. Until there is open debate about immigration, and until immigration is significantly restricted and reduced, the immediate future for Rotherham and similar places looks bleak.