Asylum hotel protester jailed for violent disorder

A youth football coach who punched, kicked and shoved police officers during a protest outside an asylum hotel has been jailed for two years and nine months.

Lee Gower, 43, was among up to 500 people gathered outside The Bell Hotel in Epping, Essex, on 17 July, last year.

He was motivated by "hostility" towards asylum seekers and had been accusing them and the police of being paedophiles, Chelmsford Crown Court heard.

Dad-of-two Gower, who lives in the town, was found guilty of violent disorder in April and sentenced on Thursday.

The protest was prompted by the arrest and subsequent jailing of asylum seeker Hadush Kebatu, who lived at the hotel and sexually assaulted two people.

Prosecutor Sam Willis said the gathering was initially peaceful but the arrival of 50 counter-demonstrators at about 17:30 BST led to clashes.

He told the court that police, who were trying to keep the groups separate, faced "large-scale acts of violence" by a group including Gower, who coaches his son's football team.

That included pushing, shoving and kicking officers, while Gower also threw a large barrier at a police van.

"You adopted a fighting or boxing stance with your fists still clenched," Judge Alexander Mills told the defendant.

He said Gower's actions were "clearly far removed from peaceful protest" and he deliberately joined a "mob", before fleeing to Gloucester in a failed attempt to avoid arrest.

"If your actions by the side of a football pitch are anything like your actions that day, that raises real concerns," the judge added.

Tony Wyatt, mitigating, said his client was a "well-liked" member of the community who took his concerns about asylum seekers in Epping too far.

Gower was the latest person to be jailed for the violent disorder of 17 July, following three others sentenced in October.

In that case, prosecutors said the total cost of policing anti-immigration protests and counter-demonstrations outside the hotel was £1.54m.

A statement from a senior police officer, read to the court earlier, said: "In my 20 years of policing, I have never witnessed this scale of disorder in Essex - and certainly not in a town like Epping."

Gower's co-defendant, Phillip Curson, 53, from Upminster in east London, was also found guilty of violent disorder and is due to be sentenced on 14 August.

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