UK

Police pepper-sprayed a woman in a wheelchair during the violent anti-migrant protests in Thetford, locals have claimed.

The woman is said to have been among a largely ‘peaceful’ protest when the crowd became ‘rowdy’ and officers used the device.

Norfolk Police have been defending their handling of the violence and disorder in the market town, which began on Tuesday.

Police have detained six people following several nights of unrest in Thetford that led to officers having to evacuate asylum seekers from their homes.

The protests come amid plans to house more asylum seekers in former military barracks – including at RAF Barnham near Thetford. pic.twitter.com/NLbPTGyF0B

— Channel 5 News (@5_News) August 7, 2026

A market town has been engulfed by violence and disorder on two nights this week after angry residents stormed houses rumoured to be used by asylum seekers.

Frustration exploded into fury at three properties on Tuesday in Thetford, Norfolk, following weeks of protests at a nearby former military barracks which has already been earmarked to take 1,250 male migrants.

It continued last night, when two officers needed hospital treatment – one who was hit by a rock and another who was ‘seriously bitten’ during another protest. Three arrests have been made.

Thetford finally forced their hand.
Locals stood outside the HMO last night and refused to accept undocumented military-age men on their streets. Police turned up, and this time they actually started removing them.
That’s what happens when a community stops asking politely and… pic.twitter.com/GfSAQxqUxg

— Retard Radar (@FullRetardRadar) August 5, 2026

According to a glowing report on NBC’s Today program last week, thousands of well-heeled American visitors are flocking to spend vacations in the English countryside this summer, seeking to commune with the parent country of their ancestors, in what NBC said transatlantic visitors fondly imagine to be the “land of Downton Abbey and Jane Austen.”

he British government is fighting an order to reveal how many foreign nationals were convicted of crimes in England and Wales, sparking heavy criticism, mostly from the right-wing, anti-immigration Reform UK, which has accused Labour of deliberately hiding migrant crime statistics.

The story goes back to June 2025, when the UK-based think tank Centre for Migration Control submitted a request for the figures under freedom of information laws. To protect offenders from identification, the group asked for every result below five to be suppressed. The request covers violence, sexual offences, drugs, arson, criminal damage, weapons, theft, and robbery between 2018 and 2024.

The nearest shop is three miles away and there are no amenities beyond some swings and a playing field.

Yet, apart from a pop-up traveller site, the 350 residents of the Oxfordshire village of Piddington seem pretty happy about life.

Or at least they were until they woke up three weeks ago to be told that the population will shortly be quadrupling.

The High Court has delivered a judgement ruling unlawful a key element of the UK-France ‘one in, one out’ asylum deal.

Under the deal, the UK can send certain people arriving illegally on small boats back to France. In return, the UK has to accept an equivalent number of migrants who apply for asylum in the UK lawfully.

At 9.31 on the morning of Yom Kippur last year, a man named Jihad Al-Shamie drove his Kia Picanto into the security gates of the Heaton Park Hebrew Congregation Synagogue in Crumpsall, Manchester. He then got out and resumed the attack with a knife. He was wearing what looked to everyone present like a suicide belt. The first 999 call came from witnesses at the scene; it was only after firearms officers were already making their way to the synagogue that Al-Shamie himself rang emergency services to claim responsibility and pledge allegiance to Islamic State – a gesture that resolved any ambiguity about his motivation with an efficiency the subsequent police communications would struggle to match. Armed officers shot him dead within seven minutes. Melvin Cravitz, aged 66, and Adrian Daulby, 53, were killed; Daulby, it later emerged, by a round from one of the responding officers, a tragedy Greater Manchester Police handled with considerably more transparency than they managed with their characterisation of the attack itself.