Protests and counter protests to be held outside asylum hotels in Scotland

Protests and counter-protests outside hotels housing asylum seekers will take place in Scotland this weekend.

Demonstrations under the Abolish Asylum System slogan will be held in major towns and cities around the UK, including in Aberdeen and Perth.

Protests will also be held in Bristol, Exeter, Tamworth, Cannock, Nuneaton, Liverpool, Wakefield, Newcastle, Horley in Surrey and Canary Wharf in central London.

A separate batch of protests organised by Stand Up to Racism will be held in Bristol, Cannock, Leicester, Liverpool, Newcastle, Wakefield, Horley and Long Eaton in Derbyshire.

It comes after around 1,000 people attended a demonstration outside the Cladhan Hotel in Falkirk last weekend.

Organisers from the Save Our Future & Our Kids Futures group said they were “concerned citizens” who were “standing against uncontrolled illegal immigration”.

Photos and video from the protest showed one man doing a Nazi salute and another wearing a t-shirt bearing the logo of Britain First – the far-right fascist political party.

Other demonstrators were caught on video making lewd and sexually aggressive comments and gestures toward counter-protesters on the other side of the road.

The Stand Up To Racism campaign group called the demonstration “a danger to us all” and said it should be a “wake-up call for Scotland”.

They said approximately 250 counter-protesters stood on the other side of the road, separated by police.

Police Scotland said officers arrested two people during the demonstrations last Saturday.

It comes after tensions around the use of the hotels for asylum seekers spiked earlier this week.

On Tuesday, the High Court granted Epping Forest District Council the temporary injunction to remove asylum seekers from the Bell Hotel in Epping, Essex, from September 12.

Regular protests had been held outside the hotel in recent weeks after an asylum seeker was charged with trying to kiss a 14-year-old girl, which he denies.

The Government then announced plans on Friday to appeal against the High Court’s refusal to allow it to intervene in the case, and to then further appeal against the temporary injunction.

A group of other local councils also publicly announced their intentions to seek legal advice as to whether they could achieve a similar injunction for their hotels.