Anti-Immigration Protesters Mistakenly Confront Pakistan Under-19 Cricket Team
Anti-immigration protesters descended on a Portsmouth hotel expecting to confront asylum seekers. They went home quietly once they realised they were shouting at a Pakistan Under-19 cricket team.
The mix-up unfolded on Monday, less than 24 hours after the city had already been the stage for an ugly flashpoint over migration. On Sunday, an estimated 140 asylum seekers arrived at Eastney harbour in a large dinghy, triggering a major demonstration and the appearance of a black-clad vigilante group that tried to block streets around the port.
Police eventually broke that stand-off in the early hours of Monday, using a dispersal order and the threat of arrests to clear the area. By then, the tone had been set.
Prime minister Andy Burnham’s spokesperson condemned what Downing Street saw on the streets, branding the demonstrators’ actions “intimidating and thuggish”, while Burnham himself vowed to stop “the politics of poison seeping into our streets”.
The atmosphere did not cool for long.
On Monday, images of a coach and a group of young Asian men outside the Marriott Hotel in the city began circulating online. Within hours, protesters were back out, convinced that another group of newly arrived migrants had been quietly moved into the building.
George Madgwick, leader of the Reform UK group on Hampshire county council, was called to the hotel as tensions simmered. In a Facebook post that has since been deleted, he described what happened when he arrived.
He said he spoke first to the hotel manager, who told him the guests in question were the Pakistan Under-19 cricket team. The team coach then came out to speak to him directly and, according to Madgwick, provided proof of their identity.
Madgwick wrote that he then addressed the crowd of around 40 to 50 people gathered outside, telling them it was a cricket side, not asylum seekers, staying at the hotel. The reaction was immediate. The group dispersed within minutes.
“I’m glad I could do my bit to help the situation and stop tensions rising,” he wrote, before turning his fire on the government and arguing that local residents “just want to protect the city they love in the best way they know how”.
Anti-racism campaigners saw something very different.
A spokesperson for Stand Up to Racism told the Portsmouth News that the incident laid bare a dangerous pattern: “Allowing racists to mobilise like this every time they become suspicious of any group of non-white people is extremely dangerous. It is racism in action and it has to stop.”
While the political argument raged, cricket authorities moved quickly to check on the young players caught in the middle of a domestic row over immigration.
The England and Wales Cricket Board contacted the Pakistan Cricket Board to ensure the squad were safe and to review security arrangements for the rest of the Under-19 tour. The teenagers had just come off a tight four-day Test against England Under-19s, losing by 10 runs last week, and are scheduled to play a one-day match against the same opponents on Wednesday at Arundel, about 25 miles from Portsmouth. A final ODI is set for Guildford on Saturday.
As the senior Pakistan men’s team contest the third and final Test against England at Edgbaston, their younger counterparts have already had a stark introduction to a different side of life in England: a country where a team bus and a group of teenagers in tracksuits can be enough to summon a street protest.
