One day after Labour councillors voted to turn West Cheshire and Chester into ‘a welcoming place for those asylum seekers, refugees, and migrants in a vulnerable situation’ the Labour Party announced the name of their candidate for the close fight against Nigel Farage’s ‘zero net immigration’ party at the May 1 Runcorn and Helsby by-election.
With excruciating timing, Labour Party members gathered at the Forest Hills Hotel in Frodsham opened floodgates of hatred by choosing Karen Shore, the deputy Labour leader of West Cheshire and Chester, as their candidate for the fight against Reform UK.
The Daily Telegraph immediately posted on Facebook:
Karen Shore boasted about the council providing ‘decorated, furnished accommodation’ and English language lessons for asylum seekers.
Hate-filled reaction
Their post linked to a Daily Telegraph news story headlined: ‘Labour candidate battling Reform at Runcorn by-election welcomed Afghan and Syrian refugees.’
Among 243 mostly hostile comments was one from Michelle Stewart from Tyneside, who compared Karen Shore with the thousands of French women punished in 1944 by vigilantes for ‘horizontal collaboration’ or ‘sleeping with the enemy’ during the German occupation of France.
Read the room FFS! Stupid woman! You will be like the French women who slept with Nazis during ww2!
blasted Ms Stewart.
The French épuration sauvage (wild purge) of 1944 has been described by the Franco-American novelist Ann Mah:
Their heads were shaved, they were stripped half-naked, smeared with tar, paraded through towns and taunted, stoned, kicked, beaten, spat upon and sometimes even killed.
Labour candidate campaigns to close asylum hotel
Following the social media attacks, Karen Shore, who teaches history and politics at Upton Hall School, Wirral, defended her position on immigration with her own Facebook post:
The last government left behind a broken asylum system, with millions being spent on hotels, whilst evil people smuggling gangs rake in huge profits.
That is simply not fair. Labour is fixing the mess and has already removed over 19,000 people who shouldn’t be here. I’ll campaign to close the local asylum hotel. Sign my petition here.
Ms Shore’s petition to close the Daresbury Park asylum hotel is now hosted on the Labour Surveys website. The Home Office has so far refused to confirm that Daresbury Park is one of nine asylum hostels earmarked for closure this year, after 13 similar hostels closed in 2014.
Chester awarded Council of Sanctuary status
West Cheshire and Chester Council serves many towns and villages in the Runcorn and Helsby constituency where the previous MP, Labour’s Mike Amesbury who resigned after being suspended, had a majority of 14,696 against a Reform UK candidate in 2024.
In March this year the Council voted to make Chester a city of sanctuary by joining a scheme founded in Sheffield in 2005 by City of Sanctuary UK. City of Sanctuary campaign ‘to advance the education of the public in general and in particular the City of Sanctuary Network in subjects relating to refugees and those seeking asylum,’ and to promote ‘activities to foster understanding between people from diverse backgrounds, including promoting activities to foster understanding between the general public, refugees and asylum seekers.’
Two Labour cabinet members, Cllr Gemma Davies, director of economy and housing, and Cllr Christine Warner, member for homes, planning and safer communities, said in the Council meeting that City of Sanctuary UK had conducted an assessment and awarded Chester ‘council of sanctuary status. Government funding came from the Homes for Ukraine scheme and the Sanctuary scheme to support ‘refugees, asylum seekers and other vulnerable migrants in the borough.’
Cllr Warner said:
Cheshire West and Chester has a proud history of welcome and compassion for refugees, asylum seekers, and other migrants from around the world in search of safety, sanctuary, work, education opportunities, and a better life.
Reform candidate’s vanishing Facebook post
At the time, Sarah Pochin, now Reform UK candidate for Runcorn and Helsby, commented on Facebook: ”Pleasure to attend the Refugees Welcome event in Macclesfield this afternoon with Syrian and Afghan families that have settled in Cheshire East.”
That post has now been deleted but the Congleton Nub News still carries Belinda Ryan’s 2022 report of Pochin’s words to Cheshire East Council after 62 refugees had arrived under the Homes for Ukraine Scheme. Ms Pochin was a councillor for Cheshire East Council at that time:
The scheme that we’re very much involved in is the Homes for Ukraine Scheme and at the moment we have 130 sponsors, so that’s families that have come forward and opened up their homes to potential refugees.
The council is very busy in terms of getting together welcome packs, information for the refugees, signposting for the sponsors. There’s putting the processes in place to pay the refugees, pay the sponsors, there’s all the safeguarding checks to ensure that accommodation is appropriate.
The by-election in Runcorn and Helsby looks to be being fought by Labour and Reform UK over the question of asylum seekers rights. The asylum seekers and refugees have no vote.
