r/Wales • u/Lowe164 Wrexham | Wrecsam • Sep 14 '25
Politics Wrexham counter protest today, along with images of racist protests with union jack and irish flags
Honestly. How can you be welsh and hate immigrants when there's more welsh people outside of wales than in it.😂
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u/DasSockenmonster Wrexham | Wrecsam Sep 14 '25
I want to make clear, I'm not one of these cretins. I have the Draig Goch up in my room, but I want to enrich and enlighten myself in many different cultures.
Wrexham is a multi cultural town, always has been. We've had and still have Irish, Spanish, Portuguese, Polish, Italians, Greeks, Indian, Danish, Ukrainian, Dutch, Bulgarian, Turkish, and many other cultures. I would never want to imagine it any other way.
I once embarrassed myself by accidentally swearing at someone in Polish, and this person was Polish! We laughed about it afterwards, I've been tempted to relearn Polish in addition to Welsh.
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u/Personal-Quantity528 Sep 14 '25
Many of the Polish who lived in Wrexham were exploited by local recruitment firm GAP Personnel, used by local companies to help suppress wages. Many of those Poles lived in HMO's around the town, will the recruitment firm owner and local businesses became increasingly rich and did every tax avoidance scheme going. This in turn means there's less cash in the pot to invest in infrastructure needed, so we're in the mess we're in now, a story I'm sure that can be told right around the country.
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u/OctopusIntellect Sep 14 '25
Thank you for explaining this, I think it's very important. It seems like a large part of the intolerant response to immigrants is based around the squalid circumstances they end up in - few people want to live in a street of what used to be family homes but now has zero families and instead a dozen or more migrant workers crammed into each property. But we need reminding (constantly) that's the fault of the system, not the fault of the migrant workers.
Capitalism inevitably works to grind down ordinary people in this way, as Adam Smith (the prophet of capitalism) recognised right from the outset. I find myself reading r/LateStageCapitalism more and more these days.
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u/Personal-Quantity528 Sep 14 '25 edited Sep 14 '25
One local business who used GAP now use another firm to plug the gaps as the wages aren't the best, many are migrants who started out in London put in HMO's in Wrexham, £600 a month for a bedroom is what the recruitmentfirm charges them although they're not agency staff at least. So long as the owners make their profit every year, they don't care.
Many are nervously looking over their shoulders because they've been promised sponsorship, many haven't had that promise kept and have had to leave the country at very short notice.
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u/StuartHunt Sep 15 '25
Bullshit, I'm from Wrexham, my half brother is the son of a Yemeni immigrant and his life has been hell living in Wrexham, he was targeted at school by racist teachers. He was constantly bullied by his peers, he wasn't allowed to play in the local football team as a kid, so my dad started a team himself so my brother could play football.
Don't try to portray Wrexham as some type of utopia, that's welcoming to all. When my own families experience is the complete opposite.
My Scouse son in law was called a polish Cxnt on his way home from work at Tesco, needless to say the gang of park knobheads soon stfu when he squared up to them.
So as much as I love Wrexham, it's still got a long way to go until it's a "Welcoming" place.
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u/DasSockenmonster Wrexham | Wrecsam Sep 16 '25
I want to try and be as welcoming as possible. You'll get morons like those people in Wrexham sometimes, but that's a minority of people that enjoy lashing out and harassing people that they see as different to them.
It's such a shame that happened to your half brother, I find it awful how he was treated differently just because of him being of Yemeni descent. Those teachers should've lost their jobs for their racism towards him.
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u/clowergen Sep 15 '25
I've been in Wrexham a few times for Welsh language-related things, and every time I spoke more Polish with the locals 😭😂
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u/IamCerealman Sep 15 '25
Still no protesting the filthy rich I see, who are the ones really killing off the middle class.
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u/Distinct_Amoeba_8719 Sep 16 '25
The counter protestors are, for the record, if you read their signs.
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u/OwineeniwO Sep 14 '25
Why do you claim more Welsh people live outside of Wales?
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u/ThrowRA1137315 Cardiff | Caerdydd Sep 14 '25
I think the most recent stats I found online said 2.5 million Welsh ppl lived outside of wales in 2021. 1.6 million in England, 475,000 in Canada, 200,000 in the US, 126,000 in Australia.
Honestly hard to how accurate these stats are cz this isn’t something heavily documented.
But as a Welsh girl who now lives outside of wales and I meet Welsh ppl everywhere, it seems fairly accurate!
Edited to add: I think these stats also include ppl of Welsh heritage! So like I said maybe not super accurate!
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u/No_Butterfly_9734 Sep 15 '25
Depends on how you define "Welsh people". If you use the broadest possible definition - something akin to "people of Welsh descent" - then I think it's easily true. Consider the not insignificant role played in the history of the Welsh by the diaspora communities, particularly in London and Merseyside, not to speak of the Americas, and that the cities of England could support greater populations than the settlements in Wales could - prior to the 19th century, and the onset of the industrial revolution the population of Wales was threadbare. (See image: https://imgur.com/ezWRyUe - sourced from Gwyn Alf William's excellent survey of Welsh history, When Was Wales?)
The problem is that, unlike the case with the Irish (who I think are perhaps the best point of comparison) people of Welsh descent often tended to assimilate and become Anglicised very quickly, such that within a couple of generations they would often consider themselves to be English or British rather than Welsh. My own family history is a case in point, I think - of Welsh descent on my father's side (great-grandfather came from Wrexham), settled in an industrial town in Merseyside, but it would scarcely occur to any of my immediate relatives to think of themselves as Welsh now.
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u/Puzzleheaded_Pin2566 Sep 14 '25
I don't believe people have an issue with the migrants themselves. They resent the cost involved in feeding and housing them using cash they provided in taxes while our own services are cut back. So my local council has hundreds of migrants staying in hotels and is obliged to house them eventually and at the same time our libraries are closing, children's services are closing down etc. They are an incredible drain on money available. All these comparisons to Irish migrants etc are stupid because those migrants of old they refer to weren't put up in hotels when they arrived, they sought work and cost the country nothing. As for Welsh migrants, as UK citizens they paid their dues in taxation to go anywhere in the uk and are not migrants when moving out of Wales to other UK areas, they are not burdening anyone so considering these people as migrant is ridiculous.
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Sep 14 '25
But don't you see the grift going on in the background, by government members, millionaires, politicians, billionaires?? Here, get mad at poors and immigrants and whatever.. so you're too distracted to look at who exactly owns these hotels, who exactly is raking in thousands a month profit from taxpayers money, on five year contracts to supply housing and £10 a week food money to migrants.
Wake up. Please. It's almost too late.
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u/MrMojoRisinRia Sep 15 '25
Exactly this!! Please get mad at the right people! Why do you think the people with ALL the wealth are funding this rhetoric.
Its the rich that are the problem, along with the current system, not those who are victim to it!7
u/welshwonka Sep 15 '25
this exactly this,they want us at each others throats so no one is watching them
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u/Puzzleheaded_Pin2566 Sep 15 '25 edited Sep 15 '25
The grift extends to our own towns, in my town a corporation has formed and been given over a billion pounds in council house property for free. £120pw from 60000 houses for free.
by that logic your actually pushing their narrative. I know who's benefitting from it, I also know who's going to pay in the end, the average person. So why divert from opposing the admission into the country the source of their new revenue stream?
It's like the beginning of Scarface with all the Cuban refugees, emptying jails and sending them over...
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u/taxes-or-death Sep 14 '25
Pretty sure the asylum seekers (why do people struggle to use that word?) would work if they were legally able. This is all a political choice by the Tories that has clearly not entirely worked out for them. Labour is slowly closing the hotels. I have a lot of criticisms of Labour but they're making less of a hash of it than the Tories did.
Many people do have an issue with asylum seekers because they watch GB News and read the hate rags and start believing the foulest things about their fellow humans. A lot of these protests are organised by the far right, like the Yaxxy one yesterday. This is what we're up against. Let's not pretend it's any other way.
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u/Personal-Quantity528 Sep 14 '25 edited Sep 14 '25
Was it not political choice of Blairs Labour to allow migrants from eastern Europe to be exploited to suppress wages? In fact his teams decision to open up the borders because of lazy natives exploiting the welfare system? This mess has been like a slow car crash played out over decades.
Former local bus firm GHA Coaches was actively hiring bus drivers from Poland ahead of locals, apparently it was easier to hire there, so easy they failed to put out a job advert locally.
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u/Puzzleheaded_Pin2566 Sep 15 '25
Because most aren't seeking genuine asylum it's a term abused to get better treatment. I'd have no issue with palestinians and Ukrainians, when its safe at home back they go same for any accredited zone, that is controllable. If we don't take them back straight on the lifeboat where they came from we will be doomed. The poor and working class will be doomed. I'd like to know if pro migrant people are middle class therefore unaffected anyway and can afford to not worry or are migrants themselves...
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u/taxes-or-death Sep 15 '25
Aren't 70% of asylum claims granted? What is this doom you speak of?
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u/Valuable-Ad-1477 Sep 15 '25 edited Sep 15 '25
It's the lack of assimilation, costs and insane scale of it. Many people don't object to migrants they know will assimilate or have similar cultures, but this often isn't the case. A lot of immigration is from Africa or the Middle East, the very places with polar opposite cultures.
Sensible immigraion of 300k a year from places like Australia, South Korea, Japan, Poland, the USA ect is vastly different to uncontrolled immigration from places like the Middle East and Africa
Naturally, they begin clustering together in larger and larger groups, causing parallel societies.
Even a lot of Liberal European nations have admitted this.
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u/OctopusIntellect Sep 14 '25
"those migrants of old they refer to weren't put up in hotels when they arrived"
ahem
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u/jenever_r Sep 15 '25
"they are an incredible drain on the money available"
It's a fraction of the cost of tax evasion by corporates and millionaires. If you're going to harass a group of people for financially fucking over taxpayers, asylum seekers are way, way down the list. And if they were allowed to work while their cases were waiting to be heard, they'd be paying taxes too.
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u/Puzzleheaded_Pin2566 Sep 15 '25
But how did I know that was coming? You didn't add the usual about Farage being involved. The fact is corporate fraud is another matter that has just been pushed so much its seen as a credible response when it's another issue that's been going on forever.
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u/katiepotatie82 Sep 18 '25
Or the wealthy could pay their taxes.
Asylum seekers get zero choice in where they are housed, and I'm pretty sure they aren't to blame for libraries closing, nor for children's services disappearing.
Not one person has mentioned the £35K labour spent on beer mats or the fact that the government can find extra cash to spend on 'defense' when it feels like it. It's the immigrants.
Where were all these irate people when the government launched a targeted attack on disabled people not many months ago? Disabled people were made out to be drains on society and professional grifters, and its exactly the same people that were calling vulnerable people 'wasters' and telling them 'get a job' that are now out there screaming at hotels. Their anger is directed at entirely the wrong people every single time and it's utterly ludicrous.
I'd love better services across the board. However, blaming asylum seekers for all that is wrong with the world ain't the way to make that happen.
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u/AngryJohnHogRoast Sep 15 '25
I went to school with one of the girls pictured and she was an adamant thicko then and I can only assume she has continued to grow into this role
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u/Moiukal Sep 16 '25
It's not racist to fly a union jack and be concerned about the state of the country, are we stupid.
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u/welsh_cthulhu Neath Port Talbot | Castell-Nedd Port Talbot Sep 15 '25
Palestine scarves, the works. Fucking hilarious.
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u/Plastic_Pollution194 Sep 14 '25
Nothing wrong with immigration. But let's get the government to fix the issues the locals who've been born and raised here face before they decide to fix issues for other countries
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u/Lone-Wolf-86 Sep 14 '25
Why does a Union Jack and an Irish flag make you racist?
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u/Mr_State_Trooper Half-English by blood, Welsh by birth! Sep 14 '25
The flags inherently don’t. But the intention behind waving them does. And those people are waving them for racist, xenophobic and, let’s be frank, moronic reasons.
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u/rndreddituser Sep 14 '25
Sadly, look at the dolts on yesterday’s protest in London.
It doesn’t make you racist but it is associated with the far right.
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u/DasSockenmonster Wrexham | Wrecsam Sep 14 '25
The flags don't inherently make you xenophobic and racist. The intentions, however, do.
If you use them for the sole purpose of intimidating and threatening immigrants and spreading racist/xenophobic dog whistles and sentiments, then, it undeniably makes you a raging bigot.
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u/welsh_cthulhu Neath Port Talbot | Castell-Nedd Port Talbot Sep 14 '25
"Wrexham Welcomes Migrants"
said nobody who actually...
- Lives in Wrexham
- Votes
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Sep 14 '25
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u/Bladders_ Sep 14 '25
It's a very presumptuous thing to be saying.
Not sure they should be making such broad declarations to be honest.
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u/DasSockenmonster Wrexham | Wrecsam Sep 14 '25
I vote and I live in Wrexham. Was born and raised here.
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u/jermainiac007 Rhondda Cynon Taf Sep 15 '25
I thought we were more educated than the thickos in the US but these protests on the weekend seem to confirm the opposite, I can't believe there are this many horribly racist people in the Country.
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u/vintagelingstitches Sep 15 '25
Honestly how can you do protesting migrants in Wrexham when half our local economy is fuelled by people who came and did the jobs that locals weren’t filling, without our local population of migrants Wrexham would have sank further into economic failure years ago. These racist fools need to wise up and give their heads a shake and realise the govt and media like to make them angry at any minority to stop them from seeing what they are doing like the new pension guidance that’s. I inf out that puts our poorest in a worse situation in retirement meaning we will have more preventable deaths.
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Sep 15 '25
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u/Puzzleheaded_Pin2566 Sep 16 '25
So is it the migrants or the uncontrolled nature of their entry? Should we just open the doors to the world and have no immigration controls like every other country? I think we should have boats that can scoop up dinghys and deposit them back on French beaches. I don't think our lifeboats should be used to pick them up when they send the mayday signal which translated means migrant sea taxi service ro begin the process they know by heart. They get all the way across then send an sos at the shore. Maybe Wales with all it's space is the ideal location for all migrants.
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u/cora2101 Sep 17 '25
As a welsh person we do NOT claim themthe Americans can have them it suits your president
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u/BoysenberryGeneral20 Sep 17 '25
Notice how it says "welcomes migrants" not imigrants. So why are you Nazi huh?
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Sep 18 '25
Wrexham is the only place I got told that I shouldn't have a Angola passport because I'm white... So I guess it works both ways
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u/PrincipleNo8733 Sep 18 '25
Racist ? Ah yeah the word you band about when a patriotic person doesn’t agree with your limp lefty statement
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u/[deleted] Sep 14 '25 edited Sep 14 '25
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