Protest works. That will be the take-home message to activists across the country, now that Epping Forest District Council has been granted a temporary High Court injunction blocking asylum seekers from being housed at the Bell Hotel in the leafy Essex market town.

Thousands have demonstrated outside the Bell in recent weeks, sparked by the charging last month of an Ethiopian asylum seeker with three counts of sexual assault, one count of inciting a girl to engage in sexual activity and one count of harassment without violence. Hadush Kebatu, a resident of the Bell, had arrived in the UK by a small boat just eight days prior.

The hotel has been used to accommodate asylum seekers since 2020, when the doors of Britain’s hotels were flung open to migrants during the pandemic. The Bell was s

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