Episode 2

Mobeen Azhar returns to Kirkby to try to connect the dots between a whirlwind of misinformation and growing unrest outside sites housing asylum seekers. He soon finds out that a local man with white supremacist views and connections was campaigning outside the Suites hotel in the run-up to the riot. The question is, how much did this influence what took place days later?

With that man now serving time in prison for stirring up racial hatred, Mobeen’s investigation takes him further afield to a former RAF base called Scampton. Since the night of the riot in Kirkby, the policy of the then Conservative government shifted. They began shutting down asylum seeker hotels in favour of bigger sites like Scampton.