As part of our package of member benefits, VONNE’s Gold and Silver Membership+ supporters have the opportunity to submit a guest post for our website. This blog from Duncan McAuley, CEO of Action Foundation, tells us about their recent report uncovering the human impact of the summer riots.
Every organisation in the North East charity sector was rocked by the anti-immigration protests and riots of August this year.
Here at refugee charity, Action Foundation, we were particularly concerned about the impact this anti-migrant sentiment, so violently expressed, had on our clients, staff and colleagues.
So, in October we decided to conduct a survey to find out a little more about our people’s reactions, in order to improve our response in times of crisis – and to hopefully spark a conversation more widely about how we can create a safer, more welcoming environment for people new to our region.
The results, which form the basis of our report, ‘Unwanted, like a stranger’ – Reflections on the 2024 riots’, shocked us. One Afghani mum told how she and her husband stockpiled three weeks’ worth of groceries because she was too afraid to leave her home during the riots.
She had moved here earlier this year so her daughter could receive an education.
She said the unrest had been ‘difficult to accept’, as it was not the ‘normal feeling’ she had experienced since moving to the region.
Our report found that 89% of people said they were aware of the riots either via the news, social media, or in person and 42% of people witnessed violence, riots or attacks. More than half felt unsafe and adjusted their day-to-day activities, choosing to stay at home, move in with family or friends, avoid certain areas and postpone appointments.
The Afghani mother said she had felt the necessity to remove her hijab, something she never does, when taking her son to an urgent dental appointment, because she feared it would identify her as ‘an outsider, a refugee.’
We also spoke to our Project Managers about this time. Bridget Stratford MBE, who runs our Young Lives project for asylum seeking and refugee children and their families, told us that one child had disclosed they’d been physically assaulted because of their background. She said multiple children recounted being shouted at in the street with racist remarks or were told to ‘go back home.’
Bridget said that even months after the events, they could vividly articulate how they had been emotionally affected and how this led to heightened anxiety as they returned to school in September.
It seems clear that the riots have had a lasting effect on both adults and children, with emotions still raw for some. When we asked how they felt two months on, one adult asylum seeker told us: ‘ I feel like I am living in a hidden war. Or a cold war. I feel I am hunted.’
Our staff were also understandably impacted by the events of this summer and we wanted to hear from them about how we could support them better going forwards.
It was clear that staff with their own lived experience of migration found things particularly difficult and we need to continue to be mindful that they may experience such unrest in the same way that the clients they support do.
One staff member told us: ‘The stress of working in a high-risk environment during civil unrest leads to emotional exhaustion and burnout.’
I know that other organisations in the voluntary sector – and outside it – will have had, or will be having similar conversations in the aftermath of this summer and I really welcome the news that this year’s VONNE conference and AGM will focus on social cohesion.
I hope this can be the beginning of a deeper dialogue which leads to us working much more closely together to create the kind of welcome we’d all like to see across the region.
The scale of support shown for migrants following the riots, in the shape of marches of support in Newcastle’s West End and the community clean-up operations in Middlesbrough and Sunderland was heartening. Let’s build on this groundswell of public support as we move forward together into 2025.