On Friday evening, Wethersfield village hall in north Essex was packed with concerned local residents firing questions at Home Office officials about the potential imminent arrival of hundreds of asylum seekers. A military airfield close to the picturesque and remote village has been earmarked by the Home Office to accommodate up to 1,700 asylum seekers as an alternative to hotel use.
At the meeting, one resident asked attendees who were opposed to the plans to stand up. All 160 locals in the room leapt to their feet.
The panel addressing the anxious villagers included Home Office officials, along with Braintree constituency MP and foreign secretary James Cleverly, who organised the meeting, and two Essex police chiefs.
But if the aim of the meeting was to allay fears about everything from attacks on women, theft and vandalism to pressure on health services and sewage systems, it failed. Several residents I spoke with after the meeting said that they didn’t receive the answers they wanted from Home Office officials, and that they left the meeting more worried than ever.
Their fears about the arrival of the asylum seekers in what one resident described as “our hidden bit of paradise” were in part generated by the home secretary, Suella Braverman, herself. She has repeatedly trashed asylum seekers, secure in the knowledge that they have little opportunity to answer back. In October she described their arrival in the UK as an “invasion”, and last week came under fire again for saying they were linked to “heightened levels of criminality”, including drug-dealing, exploitation and prostitution. She did not cite any data to support these assertions, but said she had spoken to police chiefs. Critics accused her of inflaming race hatred.
In Wethersfield village hall it seemed that Braverman’s scaremongering message had hit home forcefully. She had become a victim of her own success. Home Office officials attempted to backpedal and persuade residents that it wouldn’t be so bad after all to have a large group of asylum seekers as their new neighbours. They offered an alternative narrative, saying that the asylum seekers were actually an unthreatening and decent bunch of humans, many of them professionals, such as medics, simply fleeing war-torn countries and looking for a better life.
The Home Office can’t have it both ways. How can asylum seekers be both malign criminals and benign healthcare heroes? Home Office sources said the home secretary was clear that those who entered the UK on small boats were breaking the law by definition of their route of entry.
Braverman has promised all manner of things that she has not yet delivered – including forced expulsion to Rwanda and decanting people from allegedly plush hotels to spartan military bases, in addition to prime minister Rishi Sunak’s big promise to “stop the boats”. It seems that the negative narrative about asylum seekers has been selectively softened in a bid to get the unpopular accommodation-on-military-bases policy over the line.
Wethersfield is not the only site that has been earmarked by the Home Office. Several others are in the frame, including RAF Scampton in Lincolnshire and Bexhill in East Sussex, along with up to 10 disused cruise ships, ferries and barges. Braintree district council is the first to progress legal action against the Home Office. High court judge David Waksman rejected its application for an injunction to prevent the Home Office moving asylum seekers on to the site. The council is appealing.
Meanwhile, Gabriel Clarke-Holland, a Wethersfield resident who has lived across the road from the airfield since he was a baby, has applied to the high court for a judicial review against both the home secretary and Michael Gove in the department of levelling up. He argues that the need to source new asylum-seeker accommodation is not the emergency the Home Office insists it is, that consultation has not been carried out with local residents, and that the government assessment of there being no likely impact on the environment as a result of the arrival of 1,700 people on to the site is flawed.
There is a simpler and cheaper solution than overblown promises and costly, protracted legal battles. It’s much closer to home than the draconian punishment of either remote military bases or Rwanda dumping. It will save tens of thousands of air and road miles, and millions of pounds. There’s a catch, though. It will disappoint those politicians and voters wedded to the eradication of asylum seekers from this land.
A majority of those seeking asylum in the UK – often arriving via irregular means, in the backs of lorries or in small boats – have their applications granted once they are finally processed. With more resources or a simpler application process, people could be awarded formal refugee status much more quickly.
The asylum backlog stands at almost 140,000 people. A truly sped-up asylum decision-making process, granting leave to remain to genuine refugees, would make Rwanda and military bases redundant, and allow refugees to seek their own accommodation, enter the workforce, pay taxes and participate in society.
• Diane Taylor writes about human rights, racism and civil liberties
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