Lewisham has become the first council in Britain to openly declare it will not help enforce the nation’s immigration laws, a decision that hands a symbolic and practical victory to a fringe activist network with a taste for incendiary imagery.
Under Green mayor Liam Shrivastava, the council has not only barred its own staff and resources from assisting Home Office raids, it has pledged to work hand in hand with Lewisham Anti-Raids, a group whose online output includes an illustration of a Home Office van engulfed in flames beneath the slogan “resist.”
It is difficult to read this as anything other than a council aligning itself with an organisation cheering on the destruction of government property used to enforce the law.
Shadow home secretary Chris Philp did not mince words, branding the image “tantamount to incitement to violence” and demanding a police investigation. He drew an unflattering but pointed comparison: Lucy Connolly received a 31 month prison sentence for a single social media post calling for migrant hotels to be set alight. Why, Philp asked, should a council funded by taxpayers be allowed to cosy up to a group publishing near identical imagery aimed at law enforcement, without consequence?
A Council More Interested in Activism Than Governance
The motion, driven through by councillor Hau Yu Tam, arrives against a backdrop that hardly inspires confidence in her judgement. Tam was recently the subject of a conduct complaint after describing two of Britain’s most prominent ethnic minority politicians, David Lammy and Priti Patel, using a slur typically levelled at those accused of betraying their own heritage. She was also investigated for comparing Zionism to Nazism. On both occasions she escaped sanction, and on both occasions she later apologised, a pattern that suggests a councillor more comfortable making inflammatory statements first and walking them back later.
This is the same councillor now steering Lewisham’s immigration policy.
Rather than working constructively with the Home Office, Lewisham’s Greens appear intent on building what they grandly call a “sanctuary corridor,” roping in Lambeth and other Green run boroughs to shield illegal immigration enforcement targets from the law. Shrivastava himself has a track record of prioritising activist causes over local governance, from pledging to twin the borough with a Palestinian town to pushing for pension divestment over claims of “genocide.” Green membership in the borough has surged sixfold in a year, from 500 to 3,200, a statistic that will likely alarm anyone hoping Lewisham might one day return to focusing on bins and potholes rather than culture war positioning.
Home Office Presses On Regardless
The Home Office has made clear that a single recalcitrant council will not be permitted to derail national enforcement efforts. A spokesman pointed to an 83 per cent rise in illegal working arrests and a 77 per cent increase in raids between July 2024 and December 2025, figures that suggest the Government’s immigration crackdown is gathering pace with or without Lewisham’s cooperation.
The Green Party have been approached for comment.
