Two Devon politicians claim to have helped prompt asylum protesters to relocate from an Exeter hotel and potentially avoid future gatherings there.
The pair of councillors, Ed Hill and Angela Nash, attended the most recent protest at the Hampton by Hilton hotel near Exeter airport, which has seen weekly gatherings for at least a month.
Protesters have been broadly split into two groups; those who want to express concerns about immigration levels, and those who express support for asylum seekers.
Cllr Hill said he had ascertained that the occupants of the hotel were either families, or women with children, and that there are no single men.
Cllr Hill, who was expelled from Reform UK earlier this year, said he and Angela Nash, who remains a Reform UK member on Devon County Council, had attended the protest with the aim of conducting a “myth-busting mission”, and to subsequently “appeal to the protesters, based on the various facts we discovered, that this hotel should be excluded from protesting”.
“The protesters wanted us to confirm there were no single men on the top floor of the hotel, as had been apparently reported by Conservative councillors,” he said.
“We went into the hotel and asked to see the top floor to confirm this, and the manager was more than happy to oblige. On reaching the top floor, we saw women with toddlers and young children, but no men at all.
“We even took photos from the third floor window to prove we’d been able to go up there.”
A press release, sent by Honiton and Sidmouth Conservatives last month, claimed it had conducted an investigation that showed the top floor of the hotel housed asylum seekers, including “many young men”.
However, Cllr Hill stated all men in the hotel are fathers: “Every one of them is connected to the children there.”
One protester, Mark Paddon, said it was “fair to say” the intervention by the pair of councillors helped their decision to relocate the protest to Exeter’s Cathedral Green.
“We made a decision to leave, en masse, ensuring we hadn’t left any rubbish or anything behind,” he said,
“We said anyone could stay if they wanted to, but we made a committed decision to move [based on] Cllr Hill’s proof.
“He was liaising with us from the hotel, alongside the manager, and any questions we wanted asked, Cllr Hill relayed them and we received answers from the manager, which was very good.
“We essentially had a live telephone line into the hotel.”
Mr Paddon said the purpose of the protests, which have occurred for several weeks at the hotel, had “in no way ever been about intimidating or antagonising people, or making anyone in the hotel feel threatened”.
He also acknowledged that the families who were in the hotel had “such a horrendous time getting from where they were to here”.
“That hit me,” he said, “that hit me right in the heart, so I want to make it my mission to get something donated to the occupants.”
Mr Paddon said he did not have an issue with the asylum seekers themselves, but that his protest was about the government’s policies, and what he saw as its lack of ability to process asylum seekers and migrants properly.
Cllr Hill also claimed that he confirmed any men in the hotel were associated with the women and children.
He added that when he explained the extremely distressing circumstances the people in the hotel had been forced to face both in their home country and their journey here, Cllr Hill said the protesters opted to move.
“The protesters decided this hotel was not for protesting and with the exception of one protester, we all moved to Cathedral Green in Exeter,” he added.
Cllr Hill said the protesters told him about their concerns over unvetted illegal immigrants being “allowed to roam freely, with no way of credibly checking their past criminal records”.
Mr Paddon said discussions were now underway about where future protests would be held. He described the relocated protest on Saturday at the war memorial on Cathedral Green as “very quiet and dignified”.
A spokesperson for the hotel said they were unable to comment.
