Anti-immigration group calls for ‘action on the streets’

The director of a new pressure group hoping to become a “focal point” for anti-immigration sentiment across the UK has called for “action on the streets” to “force the issue” on to the agenda of political parties.

The project, called End Mass Migration, has links to Reform UK and is based among the insidious network of think-tanks and lobby groups at 55 Tufton Street which fuelled Liz Truss’s brief spell as Prime Minister.

The group’s director, Neil Philip Anderson, stood as a Brexit Party candidate at the 2019 election, securing just 1.9% of the vote, and is a former director of Tufton Street’s principal immigration think-tank, Migration Watch UK, which has used misleading figures to stoke anti-asylum seeker sentiment.

Anderson launched this new project, which aims to challenge what it calls “the myth that mass immigration is beneficial to the UK”, in October at a Tufton Street conference with a speech entitled Five Years Left to Save Britain: A Call to Action.

“We have to move the Overton window to make immigration and diversity a topic that we refuse to be coerced by,” Anderson said, adding that the right needs “to create a separate ecosystem, or counterculture, through which our ideas can be promulgated”.

End Mass Migration could encourage this new ecosystem, he continued, “via, of course, legal means”, by creating “a grass-roots presence throughout the country… setting up local chapters and coordinating and messaging our activities centrally”, and becoming a “focal point” for anti-immigration sentiment.

Lack of public trust in mainstream politics could provide an opportunity, Anderson argued,  suggesting that people might vote for “a smaller party that opposes mass immigration”.

Boasting of “grand plans”, Anderson laid out five aims: a “massive reduction in immigration”; a referendum on a legal limit to immigration; withdrawal from the European Court of Human Rights, the UN Refugee Convention and the UN Migration Compact; starting an “open and honest conversation about immigration”; and “Exposing the pro-mass immigration lobby.”

Like many other groups based in Tufton Street, End Mass Migration does not declare who funds its activities, but does accept donations via its website.

Responding to questions from the audience at the launch, Anderson said he hoped to “emulate UKIP’s achievements… even if it does take a decade or twenty years to force this on to the agenda of the political parties”.

He encouraged supporters to “distribute literature” and “go knocking on doors”.

“We need action on the streets,” Anderson declared, “we need grassroots local action.”

End Mass Migration UK was approached for comment.

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• This investigation was carried out with Byline Times.