We spoke to Defence Secretary John Healey in Rotherham, outside a hotel housing asylum seekers that was attacked.
John Healey: I was down here last night. I was just the other side of the estate with the backup teams. So police forces coming in from other parts of the country to help our South Yorkshire Police, who were taking the violence on the frontline, who were trying to protect the hotel here. This was an area that was wracked with shock and fear for the staff and the residents in there facing the violence and people trying to set fire to the hotel, while their own local residents here, who were holed up in their own homes or forced to go to in-laws to try and get away. And especially with the police who were facing violence directed at them, for which there is no justification and there will be arrests…
…There are legitimate concerns about community tensions, about how a hotel like this in the middle of a residential area is appropriate to house long-term asylum seekers, but nothing legitimises the violence, the disorder, the deliberate vandalism that we saw yesterday. Utterly unjustifiable, and there will be a reckoning for those who are involved…
… My greatest fear was when we knew yesterday afternoon they’d got into the hotel. We know they were putting the windows through. They were trying to set fire, and mercifully, nobody inside was injured. But my thoughts today are with the police officers, double figure police officers that took injuries to protect us all yesterday…
… All right-minded people have got to condemn what we saw yesterday in Rotherham and what we’ve seen in other towns and cities, which is thuggery, violence, disorder, vandalism unleashed under the banner of protest. It is unjustifiable and there will be arrests, there will be convictions.
