Women of Oxfordshire village where migrant camp would see residents outnumber 10:1 pen open letter to MPs
Villagers are furious over the plans which could see 1,250 asylum seekers housed nearby
'Terrified' women living in a leafy Oxfordshire village, where plans are afoot to house around 1,250 asylum seekers, have launched a campaign urging female MPs to speak out.
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Proposals would see asylum seekers moved onto a former military base close to the village, whose population currently stands at 350, meaning residents would be outnumbered 10:1.
Government plans would almost quadruple the population of Piddington, according to the civil parish, with 133 women living in the village today launching a campaign appeal to female MPs for help.
The undocumented migrants would all be adult males who’d be able to freely come and go from the site, which borders a park used by local kids.
The campaign, which saw an open letter written today from the 'Women of Piddington' to the women of Parliament, describes how residents faced a "summer of anxiety", with a "climate of fear" surrounding the plans.
Read more: Asylum seekers jailed for raping woman on Brighton beach
Appealing to women in Parliament, the letter reads: "As fellow women, you will understand the serious risks this will expose us to. Our safety, our security and our freedoms will be under threat.
"Life as we know it will be destroyed. We will not feel safe walking our streets. We are already living in fear. As the women of Westminster, you have both the power and the responsibility to speak out and protect us from this plan.
Branding it MP's "duty to act", the letter explains that continued silence is "putting us at risk".
Adding: "There are no safeguards in place. You will be complicit. You will be to blame. We are issuing an urgent call for you to stand up for the Women of Piddington."
Jamie Perkin married into a family that’s been in Piddington for five generations. “For me and my family, this village means a lot,” he said.
“Our daughter is sadly buried down the road, which is the main reason we wanted to come back to the village, so our other children could go and visit her grave.
"That might not be an option for us to send them down the road alone, given the safety aspect of not knowing who these people are.”
“It's a huge amount to just dump on one village,” he added. “And this is the wrong place for 1,250 men to be living. These guys need a fair chance in life, but there is quite literally nothing here for them. Not even a pub.”
“Genuinely every single night I've woken up worrying. It's exhausted me; it's exhausted my wife. It consumes you.”
Many of his neighbours agree - 96% support calling a referendum to vote on whether to become independent from the UK.
The ballot would be largely symbolic because there is no legal mechanism allowing a village, town or city to declare independence from Britain without Parliamentary approval. But the village folk in Piddington are trying something different: process over protest.
“I'm actually going to be pushing this referendum, not just for the village of Piddington, but for the rest of this country,” parish chairman Tim McNally explained.
Because Cherwell District Council was stripped of its primary planning powers, the responsibility for fighting the decision has heavily fallen on his shoulders.
“To have 1,250 people brought into an environment where there's 350 people – that's like adding 32 million people into London overnight,” warned Cllr McNally. “I'm not saying all these guys are a problem. All you need is 1% of them who aren't great and you've got yourself a fair number of problems.”
“Why don't you use Buckingham Palace? That's an empty shell that no one's in – nicely secured, gated, controlled. That's another place you could put them.”
Cllr McNally has also written to Andy Burnham inviting him to visit Piddington. The new Prime Minister has promised to “take power out of Westminster and carry it into every postcode".
Cllr McNally wrote in his letter that he “cannot believe that any British government would knowingly place such a burden upon one of its own communities without first listening to those whose lives will be permanently changed” by the proposed development.
Mervyn Wynne, a farmer whose property backs onto the site, told LBC that “security is the biggest issue for us. Obviously we can't take matters into our own hands, but we don't even have a police station. So if there's no police in our area, how long are we going to wait for a response if there's someone trespassing? We've had 3 weeks of next to no sleep with worry.”
“We have developed our farm and our animals – and it's difficult to see all that getting flushed down the toilet. And for what? A government decision that's going to affect us for years. Our properties are going to be devalued completely. Who would want to live beside an asylum centre?”
Some residents are erecting a huge Hollywood-esque sign this weekend in a bid to “put Piddington on the map” and reclaim the family-focused campaign to prevent it being exploited by far-right agitators.
The Member of Parliament, Callum Miller, is urging everyone to put aside political rivalries. “We should stand united against this,” said the MP for Bicester and Woodstock. “My door is open to anybody who wants to collaborate to try and stop this proposal, including Reform UK. If we work together, we can build the strongest possible case and try to defeat the government.”
“This is a community with a big heart. There are a lot of people who've opened their homes and who have shown a lot of sympathy to those who have moved here from other countries. But they also look at the prospect of having 1,250 men placed here together with very little understanding of where they've come from, what they've experienced, and whether it's a suitable site for them.”
The Liberal Democrat MP says he’s “shocked” by the plans, criticising the “lack of warning from the Home Office.”
“And one of the real questions there is the value for money for the taxpayer. I'm worried it will be hugely expensive to get this site in the kind of order the government's talking about. Now that Parliament is in recess, we are waiting for the government to tell us the process they're going to follow. We will be responding to that and hopefully challenging it in every single way we can.”
The Labour government has announced it wants to end the policy of housing asylum seekers in hotels and instead scale up the use of “more suitable, managed accommodation” such as former military facilities, in an effort to reduce costs, community tensions and reduce the pull factors for individuals thinking of coming to the UK unlawfully.
As part of this, discussions are also underway to use two other new sites, at MoD Barnham in Suffolk and MoD Linton-on-Ouse in Yorkshire. Alongside Piddington, these in total could host about 3,750 asylum seekers.
The move to accommodate migrants at a former army training camp in Crowborough in Sussex is currently being challenged before the Royal Courts of Justice.
A Home Office spokesperson told LBC that “the concerns of communities are central to immigration reforms” and that it is “working with local authorities to fairly disperse asylum seekers across ex-military sites.”
"We are working to fairly house asylum seekers across the country, engaging with local authorities to reduce the impact on communities, and we have saved taxpayers over £1 billion on asylum support costs since the election."