Britain could descend into Southport-style rioting "within a month" as "serious societal division" over the migrant crisis threatens to light the fuse of unrest.

Epping became the epicentre of a protest in recent weeks after a 41-year-old Ethiopian asylum seeker was charged with multiple sex offences having arrived in the country eight days earlier.

While peaceful protests from concerned parents and residents caused a stir in the mainstream media, they were sparked by the same thing that set off rioters across the country last summer in the wake of a stabbing attack in Southport - immigration.

Last year's violence had started amid fears of a "cover-up" after Axel Rudakubana's name took weeks to be made public.

Instead, "fake news" from a Pakistani website filled the information void, claiming fictional 17-year-old Ali Al-Shakati had murdered three young girls.

Now, almost a year on from the rioting, GB News spoke to one Epping protester to investigate the reasons behind the recent demonstrations and their connection to the violence seen last summer.

Local mother Lindsey Thompson emerged as a prominent voice during recent protests at the Bell Hotel, exclusively telling GB News that “basic safety” had been thrown out the window.

“When it happens on your doorstep, you feel it,” she said.

“You feel less safe and you see it with your own eyes, you see women not able to walk their dog, not able to walk past the Bell Hotel.”

Thompson said once she herself started to feel unsafe as a woman, that swiftly turned into being fearful for her own children.

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Thompson spoke on GB News during the protests

“That’s the moment you say ‘I can’t sit back and do nothing, I have to do something’,” she said.

“Whether that is you joining up and standing out in the rain saying ‘save our kids’ or sharing information … about who’s arriving … this is a really small town, word travels really fast.”

The situation has festered for so long that Thompson has even had to discuss rape with her 17-year-old daughter.

“I’m just literally on Amazon looking at rape alarms,” she said.

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'This is a really small town, word travels really fast,' Thompson said

And while six months ago, “when woke had its full grip on the country”, Thompson would have been frightened to be called a racist, the issue was “more important” than a label.

“Once you lose your fear of being called racist, because you know you’re not, I don’t really care what you think,” she said.

“[I’ve spoken to media] and I’ve got people saying to me ‘we know where you are… we will find where you live’ … and [they] will cancel me at the worst.”

The mother said, despite being advised not to attend the protests, she had moved past that fear.

It comes as 44 per cent of Britons say they “sometimes feel like they are strangers to those around them”, according to polling by More In Common.

The research found that lower income Britons feel less trusting and more disconnected from society.

It also suggested that Reform supporters and non-voters were more likely than other voting groups to feel disconnected from society.

Thompson's comments were echoed by Reform MP Lee Anderson, who said illegal immigration has moved past being a “taboo” topic to discuss.

“Most of the countries saying it, it’s just taboo for these idiots in Westminster, they were frightened to death of breaking maritime law,” he told GB News.

“They’re frightened to death about our international reputation on the world stage. They’re frightened of unsettling their friends at dinner parties in Islington.”

The Ashfield MP condemned his fellow parliamentarians as a “bunch of spineless, weak… cowards”.

Anderson said successive governments had “stood by and done nothing while we import third world cultures into our country.”

“Some of these [people have] got medieval ideologies,” he declared.

“They have no respect, some of them for women, young women and girls and women like my own sister, and my niece are scared for their own children to go out or even walk home from school.”

The Reform MP said women are being warned “about the possibility of attacks”.

PA | Reform UK Chief Whip Lee Anderson

“Bear in mind, we haven’t got a hotel in Ashfield,” he said.

“But what we have got is lots of HMOs with some illegal migrants in … I know for a fact that one of my HMOs, the landlord kicked out all the tenants, all five of them, two of them were NHS workers by the way.

“He’s filled it with illegal migrants because the Serco contract is so good and one of these [people] is alleged to have committed a horrible crime in my constituency.”

Reform UK deputy leader Richard Tice echoed his colleagues' sentiment, adding that protests like those Thompson has been a part of stemmed from a “rising fury amongst British people about illegal migrants crossing the Channel”.

NCA | The seizure was made as part of a National Crime Agency operation targeting supplies of small boat equipment moving into Europe

On Thursday, the National Crime Agency intercepted 25 boats destined for Britain, only a day after 900 migrants successfully made it across the English Channel from France.

Anderson told GB News that he maintained his position that “they are not genuine asylum seekers” and that they were “economic migrants” given that France was already a safe enough country for them to live.

And, given the anger shown by protestors across the country, even the Labour Government has accepted immigration was an affecting social cohesion within the country.

Deputy Prime Minister Angela Rayner outlined findings of her year-long study into the wave of riots which followed the Southport tragedy.

“While Britain was a successful multi-ethnic, multi-faith country, the government had to show it had a plan to address people's concerns and provide opportunities for everyone to flourish," she warned.

A Cabinet read-out said Rayner had told colleagues that immigration was one of the impacts on local communities and public services.

She accepted that “declining trust in institutions was having a profound impact on society”.

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Richard Tice said fury derived from those illegal migrants being unvetted, undocumented and unchecked

Rayner suggested it was important for the “Government to acknowledge the real concerns people have and to deliver improvements to people's lives and their communities”.

And while Rayner has acknowledged the issue, Tice argues the Government hasn’t done nearly enough.

Many, including Tice are concerned that the issue could come to a tipping point.

Tice added that this fury derived from those illegal migrants being unvetted, undocumented and unchecked.

“[There are] young men of military age from countries that have no cultural recognition or sharing or empathy with our own British values,” he said.

“Countries … they view and treat women as third-class citizens, and British people in particular, mums looking after their daughters are rising up in a peaceful but very angry way.”

Tice said neither the police leadership, the Home Secretary, the Home Office, nor the Westminster Establishment had any idea “about the depth of anger building up”.

“Any idea at all, and those of us that do have an idea are desperately worried about where this goes and how quickly,” he said.

That very anger has caused “serious societal division” as illegal migrants “get all the freebies” while British taxpayers are left fending for themselves.

Amidst the discussion of the migrant crisis, Dr Sheikh Ramzy - founder of the Oxford Islamic Information Centre - said the Muslim community has been “picked on” over the past few years.

While admitting people of his faith “have their own tradition”, he said Muslims are “well integrated” in Britain.

“They go to the same Tesco's, they are talking, they are going to (British) schools,” Ramzy said.

“The UK is a multi-faith, multicultural society, but of course people would like to … pick on someone … but (Muslims) are well integrated and they are contributing to the society.”

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Dr Sheikh Ramzy

Ramzy said the four million Muslims were some of the “most generous people” and included doctors, lawyers and other skilled workers who were all part of the “British family”.

However, the Sheikh agreed that the migrant crisis had got out of control.

He said incoming illegal immigrants shouldn’t be painted with the same brush, and shouldn’t be treated “like an animal”.

Ramzy told GB News he advised politicians to “don’t let them come in” because “France is a very good country”.

“Everybody can sit there very nicely … France sends all these problems to us. What?” Ramzy said.

But, Ramzy said, “one bad apple” doesn’t make every other apple bad.

While not all illegal immigrants are committing crimes and ending up in front of courts across the UK, the migrant crisis has reached a point where Extremist Expert Dr Daniel Allington from King’s College London said he would be “pleasantly surprised” if the UK doesn’t “see riots anywhere … in the next month”.

“It is a likelihood, I hope it doesn’t happen, but I expect that it will,” he said.

KINGS COLLEGE LONDON

“The thing is, the secrecy has to end … people are not stupid.”

Allington said consecutive Governments had forced the British people to lose faith in the system, and they’ve since “seen proof that [secrecy] was going on, on a very large scale” when referencing the recent Afghan scandal, in which a personal data leak caused the secret relocation of almost 7,000 Afghans to the UK.

An independent review by Lord Walney found that social cohesion was damaged by “disproportionate police responses to protests”.

He also found that the media had stoked division as well as social media playing a role.

With people fearing disproportionate action against certain members of the community, the idea of people losing trust in the Government has long been a topic of discussion.

However, Cambridge University Associate Professor of Philosophy of Religion Dr James Orr said “we never used to have to talk about social cohesion”.

The idea of people losing trust in the Government has long been a topic of discussion, but Cambridge University Associate Professor of Philosophy of Religion Dr James Orr said “we never used to have to talk about social cohesion”.

“We start talking about social cohesion as soon as we start, basically when we start to realise that we’re losing it,” he said.

“We never had to have these debates before the era of mass migration, which was inflicted on the nation against its express will from the 1960s onwards.”

Orr said the country was now “left with the consequences of that” and society was not “cohesive”.

Despite “enormous challenges” to social cohesion, including the Black Death, the civil war or Dunkirk, Orr sees this migrant crisis as the hardest challenge, given it was “self-inflicted”.

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Small migrant boats are regularly making their way across the English Chanel from France to the UK

“It’s being imposed by leaders who ought to be accountable to us … ‘We The People’,” he said.

“There is no longer really a ‘We The People’.”

Orr detailed how the UK is seeing a break out of “ideological factions” which go against the fabric of what the country was built upon.

“In order to handle it, you need lots of very powerful antidotes, and some of those antidotes is a very … strong commitment to a shared project,” he said.

Orr believes right at the very top of the country there is a “mindset of national self-repudiation, which I think infects every level of Whitehall”.

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“I think it pervades the Labour Party, and I think it pervades the Tory party,” he said.

“And the only … political force that I can see that gets it, or is close to getting it, is Reform UK.”

What Orr believes is important in the viability of the UK is “pride” which is an “antidote to violence … to rioting”.

“If you haven’t got that pride, if you haven’t got that shared sense of being it together, and even if there are lots of things you don’t like … but you basically think we’re all in this together … then you can get through a lot and you can survive.”

“The mentality is that nationalism is the other N-word, that nationhood and pro-national sentiment are intrinsically morally dubious and problematic.”

While the migrant crisis continues to degrade, the Reform UK deputy leader also believes society in the UK has developed to where there is “two-tier policing and two-tier justice”.

“It is going on every day of every week … Lucy Connolly was a typical example,” he said.