“It was, quite literally, you deserve to be raped, you N-word bitch,” Ella Mitchell tells me, standing in her kitchen, “and I can’t wrap my head around it.”

Warning: This article includes content that some readers may find distressing

Ella, 25, an administrative assistant in Leeds, is recounting her recent experience at an asylum hotel protest.

The abuse she says she’s had from protesters, calling for the hotel to shut, is shocking.

“Threats of sexual violence, rape threats, racial slurs,” she says, shaking her head.

“I think I will always find it a little bit galling to hear people say that they’re doing this to keep people on their streets safe.”

For several weeks now, Ella’s helped organise counter-protests outside the Britannia Hotel in Leeds.

The hotel houses 200 male asylum seekers and protests started in early August, organised under the slogan “Protect Our Kids”.

“We live in a time of immense misogyny and violence against women,” Ella says, but “the only incidences of sexual violence against women that they care about are ones that they can use to further their own agenda, to stir up more hatred around asylum seekers.”

I put it to Ella that there are some people at the protests who wouldn’t call themselves racists or far-right, as some of the counter-protesters claim them to be, but are local residents who feel ignored by the government and angry at small boat arrivals.

“I do understand,” Ella says, “that not every single person there is a seasoned far-right organiser, and I wouldn’t want to claim as such.

“However, if you are stood next to someone who is Sieg Heil-ing [the Hitler salute], for example, or next to someone who is yelling racist abuse, week in, week out, then I think it does reflect on you.

‘They’re angry with the wrong people’

Protests and counter-protests outside asylum hotels have been going on all summer, sparked initially by those that began outside the Bell Hotel in Epping, Essex.

For weeks, we’ve been speaking to people on both sides and found communities starkly divided.

Read more:
Asylum seekers come face-to-face with migrant hotel critics
Protesters on why they oppose asylum hotels
The key numbers driving the immigration debate

“We shouldn’t have to do this, should we?” a counter-protester tells me.

It’s Friday night and we’ve come down to see the Leeds protest for ourselves.

The numbers aren’t huge – a few dozen on both sides, flanked by police – but the rhetoric is aggressive and the atmosphere febrile. Insults are lobbed by people on both sides.

“We shouldn’t have that hatred on this side of road,” Sally Kincaid says, “against people who live on this side of the road.”

Sally, a retired teacher and seasoned protester, has worked with refugee communities for decades.

“I can understand people being angry, but they are angry at the wrong people.

“Refugees are not to blame for the fact that there’s bad housing or overcrowded schools.

“And people keep being told that they’re getting all these things – they’re not! They are just waiting and waiting for the Home Office to make a decision.”

Sally then tells us about Hossein, a young refugee from Iran who she fostered from the age of 15.

“He’s lovely,” Sally says, “and everyone that’s ever met him loves him to bits.

“Now, this lot would say he is a bad person.”

I tell Sally that, from our previous conversations with protesters, we know there are a lot of concerns about safety and rates of crime associated with migrants.

“It’s a myth, it’s a myth,” she says, pointing at protesters on the other side, “and it’s being stirred up to make the situation more polarised than it already is.”

‘There’s a lot of racism around and kids are scared’

A few days later, we go to Sally’s house.

We’d hoped to meet her foster son Hossein, who lived with Sally and her partner, Steve Johnston, for five years after he first arrived in the UK in the back of a freezer van.

Sally and Steve saw Hossein through college, driving tests and, after nearly a decade of waiting, getting British citizenship.

But Hossein isn’t there, and when I ask Sally why, she looks really sad.

“There’s a lot of racism around and kids are scared,” she explains. “That’s the tragedy of it.”

She describes her foster son as someone who “was very, very open on camera a few years ago” but says he is “now worried”.

“The amount of hatred on social media is awful towards refugees, even though he now has status.”

I ask Sally if she finds that painful to admit.

“Yes,” she says, “we sat and watched the TV the other night when [Nigel] Farage was talking about deporting Afghan women, and I just thought what’s going on?

“Why have we got ourselves into this situation where people who desperately want to contribute to society are scared to meet people like you.”

‘I don’t think wearing a dog collar exempts you from abuse’

It’s Friday night and, once again, we’re back outside the Britannia hotel.

Protesters and counter-protesters take their positions on either side of the road, and the chanting and name-calling – amplified on loud hailers and speakers – start being flung across the dual carriageway from both sides.

As we walk along the bank of counter-protesters, I see a man, wearing a dog collar and crucifix and quite clearly a member of the clergy, carrying a tray of homemade cakes.

He offers me one and I ask if they are for both sides of the protest.

“Yes we’ve offered them to both sides, and a sense of peace, in the midst of rising tension.”

I ask him what he means by “rising tension”.

“Well, I was last here three weeks ago, and I think the verbal abuse I got today,” he says, gesturing to the protest side, “is more than I had three weeks ago.”

“So to that extent, it does feel like the tension has raised slightly higher,” he adds.

The man, as it turns out, is Arun Arora, the Bishop of Kirkstall, the most senior member of the Church of England in West Yorkshire.

I ask him if he finds it shocking that someone who, in his words, has come in peace, should be the target of verbal abuse at these protests.

“I don’t think wearing a dog collar exempts you from abuse,” the bishop says.

“I think part of it is if you stand alongside those who are being dehumanised, those who are being degraded, those who are regarded the least, then you can expect to share in some of the same treatment that they get.”

‘Being polite about it doesn’t win’

I scan the crowd and see Ella, escorting groups of counter-protesters from a nearby car park to the meeting point.

She tells me no one walks here alone in case things get violent.

I also see Steve, Sally’s partner.

Like Sally, he’s been involved in the protest movement for years and I ask him about the language we hear being used by the counter-protesters, like chants of “Nazi scum” and “fascist scum, off our streets”.

Does he think it risks making a tense situation even more polarised?

“There are people over there,” he says, gesturing to the protesters on the other side, “who are clearly members of fascist organisations.”

He concedes, when I challenge him, that there will be some who won’t be, but says “by doing these sort of chants, we hope those people will go away and think ‘well why are they calling us Nazis?’

“People have [previously] stopped the rise of fascism by calling it out for what it is.

“Ignoring it or being polite about it doesn’t win.”