‘Emmnon’ Revealed: New Anti-Immigration Pressure Group Emerges at 55 Tufton Street

A new entity has established itself at 55 Tufton St – home to many of the free-market, pro-Brexit, climate denial-linked think tanks comprising the right-wing lobbying scene – with the aim of “moving the Overton window” and operating as a “focal point” for anti-immigration sentiment in Britain. 

End Mass Migration (EMM) was incorporated on 17 October and has links to other groups operating out of the same address – the New Culture Forum and Migration Watch, as well as Reform UK. 

It describes itself as “a campaign organisation that has been set up by a group of immigration experts from academia, think tanks, politics and the media” to challenge “the myth that mass immigration is beneficial to the UK when it is actually causing enormous economic, social, cultural and political damage to our country”.

The organisation, which accepts donations on its website, blames migration for putting pressure on public services and the economy and plans on demanding a referendum on “limiting the number of immigrants who can come to the UK every year” – as well as claiming that the “political establishment, mainstream media [and] academia” are ignoring the public.

It sets out five key aims as a call to action: “a massive reduction in immigration”; “a referendum on legally limiting the number of immigrants who can come to the UK every year”, the UK’s “withdrawal from the European Court of Human Rights, the UN Refugee Convention and the UN Migration Compact”; “establishing an open and honest conversation about immigration”; and “exposing the pro-mass immigration lobby”.

This “lobby”, the group claims, “have no interest in the wellbeing of you and your family, your locality, or the country as a whole” – claiming some are motivated by narrow economic interests, while others “are just twisted ideologues who despise our country and Western civilisation generally”.

The “facts” page of the organisation’s website argues that “we are not, and never have been, a nation of immigrants” and that “you are told diversity makes us strong. The opposite is true”. It also claims “mass immigration has a negative impact on every aspect of life in the UK” and that “it is destroying your future”.

The project was launched at an ‘Immigration Conference’ event run by the New Culture Forum, at which its only director – Neil Philip Anderson – gave a speech entitled “Five Years Left to Save Britain: A Call to Action”. 

During the event, Anderson described how “we have to move the Overton window to make immigration and diversity a topic that we refuse to be coerced by” and that the right “need to create a separate ecosystem, or counterculture, through which our ideas can be promulgated”.

Formally introducing End Mass Migration, he described it as the means by which this new anti-immigration ecosystem could flourish, by creating “a grass-roots presence throughout the country by setting up local chapters and coordinating and messaging our activities centrally”. He added: “End Mass Migration wants to become that focal point. It needs to become that focal point.”

Anderson explained how the current lack of public trust in Parliament and politicians could be seen as “an opportunity” to apply pressure on parliamentarians, suggesting people might want to instead reject both Labour and the Conservatives at the ballot box, “lending their votes to a smaller party that opposes mass immigration”. End Mass Migration did not respond to a request for comment asking which “smaller party” it was referring to.

Anderson revealed “we have grand plans for this campaign” and that it will “evolve over the coming weeks, months, and years”. 

EMM also has links to other groups taking a hardline stance on immigration.

Anderson, for example, previously stood as a prospective parliamentary candidate for the Brexit Party (now Reform UK) in Ilford North in 2019, where he secured just 1.9% of the vote. Reform UK campaigns on a platform of “net zero immigration” and has recently faced scrutiny for allegedly offering money to Conservative MPs on the right of the party to defect ahead of the next general election. Leader Richard Tice has denied the claims while admitting he has engaged in “numerous discussions with Tory MPs”. 

Many ‘Red Wall’ Conservatives now reportedly risk losing their seats to Reform, with senior Conservatives calling it a “battle for the soul of the party”. One former minister claimed, after two disastrous Tory by-election losses, that “it shows that the failure to deliver on migration means they [Reform UK] alone could hand Labour the Red Wall”.

Anderson was also previously a director at the Migration Watch UK think tank, founded in 2001 by Lord Green of Deddington. It has historically led Tufton Street’s call for lower net migration and previously been criticised for presenting misleading figures to stoke anti-asylum seeker sentiment. 

EMM’s website also states that ‘End Mass Migration’ is the trading name of Emmnon Ltd’, which has its own Companies House listing and was established in February. Both companies feature Anderson as a director, but Emmnon also previously featured among its controlling directors Peter Robin Whittle.

Whittle is the former 2016 UKIP London Mayoral candidate and Deputy Leader of the party, under Paul Nuttall. He is also the founder and director of the New Culture Forum (which hosted EMM’s launch). 

The New Culture Forum states that its aims at “challenging the orthodoxies dominant in our institutions, public life and wider culture” to combat what it perceives as a “left-wing bias” and “woke ideology” in the media and academia. It has previously been described as part of the “infrastructure” of the broader conservative movement.

After initially being approached by Byline Times for comment for this newspaper’s first report on Emmnon, the company suddenly changed its registered offices to 71-75 Shelton Street in London’s Covent Garden – an address which houses organisations providing for-hire director and company addresses. The newly registered iteration of the company has, however, renewed its open affiliation with the Tufton Street address. EMM did not respond to a request for comment on the change of address. 

It appears that End Mass Migration will operate as a pressure group. On the website, it encourages individuals to “form a local chapter of EMM and arrange regular meetings” and to “provide information to EMM about how immigration impacts your locality in areas such as schooling, healthcare, housing, the use of hotels to accommodate migrants, local government policy favouring immigrants etc.”. 

“We are not trying to replicate the work of others, most notably Migration Watch UK,” Anderson said at the group’s launch event. “We are not a think tank, nor a political party, and neither do we advocate a political party… but we are determined to ensure that immigration policy works for the people of this country.”

Anderson added: “We don’t know where this is going to go, but there’s nothing out there doing this; there’s nothing offering this course of action.

“If we can emulate UKIP’s achievements, I’d be quite glad about that. If we can pull the conversation that way. If we can, even if it does take a decade or 20 years to force this onto the agenda of the political parties… we need action on the streets, we need grassroots local action.”

Responding to the emergence of EMM, Naomi Smith, chief executive of Best for Britain, said: “This is a new outfit in bed with the same old people. The people who championed a hard Brexit, leaving our economy in tatters, and household costs hiked, who were poster boys for the disastrous Truss-Kwarteng budget, from which ordinary Brits will be paying the price for years to come, and who choose to ignore every leading scientists when it comes to saving the planet.

“Given their heritage, it is clear that these are not serious people but their funding makes them dangerous.”

End Mass Migration did not specify to Byline Times whether it was going to primarily target Labour or the Conservatives. 

This article was published in partnership with Good Law Project. Read its version of this story here. Additional reporting by Josiah Mortimer