Second English village considers independence vote over asylum seeker camp plans

A second village is considering staging a “Piddington-style” independence referendum to protest against plans to house 1,250 asylum seekers on an RAF base just one mile away.

Parish council leaders in the Suffolk village of Barnham are meeting Piddington residents on Tuesday to discuss whether they should follow in their footsteps and stage an independence vote.

Piddington residents last week voted by 285 to 26 to “secede from the UK and pursue self-determination” in protest against plans to house up to 1,256 asylum seekers in a former Ministry of Defence (MoD) garrison half a mile away from the village.

John Bauer, the chairman of Barnham parish council, said: “We’ve seen what Piddington has done and they’ve had a fantastic impact. They’ve really raised the profile of the whole issue.

“We would like to add our weight. If two villages work together, it would be far better than both villages working independently. We’re aiming not to duplicate what they’re doing but to learn from it.

“If a second village were to vote, even symbolically, to secede from the UK, it would be equally powerful.”

Piddington’s referendum carried no legal or constitutional weight, but villagers wanted to register their concerns about the threat the camp represented to their way of life.

The village’s 350 residents said the male migrants would outnumber villagers by nearly four to one and increase the risk of crime.

Residents in the Domesday village of Barnham, just three miles from Thetford, said they too would be overwhelmed if plans to establish an accommodation for lone, male migrants nearby were approved. Barnham is home to fewer than 600 people and has no shop or pub.

Along with MoD Bicester in Piddington, RAF Barnham was earmarked by the Home Office in June as part of proposals for accommodating 3,750 migrants across three sites. The third is the village of Linton-on-Ouse in North Yorkshire.

An encampment has been set up outside the gates of RAF Barnham with protesters’ placards reading: “Thetford says no!” and “Don’t trust Home Office – it’s all lies”.

Mr Bauer said: “Tomorrow will be a fact-finding mission. Having talked to residents in the village, there is, not amongst everyone, but amongst many a sense of ‘fait accompli’. They say they feel powerless.

“In response to that, we feel the need to do something to draw more attention. If this results in more attention being brought to bear on those making the decisions, then it won’t do our case any harm whatsoever.”

The Barnham asylum plans have led to riots in Thetford, where properties believed to house migrants were targeted for more than three consecutive nights in August. Five men were removed from homes after a mob stormed the properties. Homes were pelted with eggs and one police officer was bitten during the unrest.

Meanwhile, Kemi Badenoch urged Piddington villagers not to quit the UK, as she described the plans for an asylum camp as a “women’s issue”.

The Conservative Party leader on Monday met more than 40 women from the village, who told her that they had begun organising self-defence classes. They also told her that police had told them they would need to “run and hide” if an incident were to take place.

Mrs Badenoch said she understood the poll was “just a sign of how desperate the situation is for young people here, for the women here – to be honest, even the men”. However, she urged them: “Please don’t leave.”

“We have 133 women in this village. I’ve been speaking to quite a lot of them right now, I had a meeting with about 40 to 50 of them, and being outnumbered 10 to one by men whose background is unknown on a site that is not well-situated, it’s right next to this children’s park, this is a safeguarding issue and a Conservative government would intervene,” she said.

Mrs Badenoch said the residents in the village had been “dismissed” by the Government.

She said: “I saw a very pro forma letter coming from Andy Burnham to these women and I thought it was disrespectful.

“Not a single Government minister has bothered to come down here and talk to these women. They haven’t been offered a meeting. They have been dismissed.

“The Government tells us that it has a violence against women and girls strategy, but if they’re not taking the issues of Piddington seriously, then I think that that strategy is not worth the paper that it’s written on.”

The Home Office has been approached for comment.