As the numbers swell – this time to 3000 – it is clear from the footage of this weekend’s ‘Crowborough Says No’ protest march that this is no ordinary protest. There are no identikit placards, no masks, no rentamob, no scuffles with an opposition. A few police watch on benignly and stop the traffic, as the ever-lengthening snake of people wends its way up to the crossroads which lead into the small High Street. People carry homemade placards and there are flags: the Union Jack, the English flag and the flag of Sussex with its six mythical martlets against a bright blue background. 600 local men march in line with the numbers 1-600 on their backs to enact the number of illegal migrants, which the small town is supposed to accept into its midst without murmur or demur. ‘Crowborough says NO!’ resounds around the streets as the march wends its way to the end at Chapel Green.
This protest is a rare thing; it’s an expression of care and concern. It isn’t generated or funded by an activist organisation or NGO and filled with paid-for apparatchiks. It is paid for by no-one and disadvantages nobody. This is an organic expression of unity in a common cause – that of protecting people and place. It has its leaders: they are local people who are fighting relentlessly to have dialogue with the Home Office, and enjoin the Green/Lib Dem alliance which runs the local Wealden council to support their initiative to present a legal case against the use of the camp. A legal initiative whose main player is Crowborough Shield, a grassroots organisation which has already raised a substantial amount to fund the legal challenge.
This is a visceral reaction to an imposition that seems unjust, unfair and which threatens the fabric of a town or village – wherever it is. Whether it’s an old pit village or a town in the suburbs or a seaside resort or a once-fine city centre, an increasing number suffer from an enforced influx of strangers who look different, who speak strange languages and who behave as if still in their places of origin. It’s disorientating. People don’t know what to make of each other. It seeds resentment, it creates discord and nowhere is enhanced.
People feel threatened; they feel things are being done to them, not for them. Crowborough was not consulted about the use of its training camp which has been home to local cadets until now. Nobody asked them if they were accepting of having 600 single, unemployed young men jettisoned into their midst; young men who have different backgrounds, different ways, and different attitudes. What will they do with themselves – billeted in a camp next to a forest and on the edge of a town with no leisure facilities? The man from the Home Office says activities will be organised for them. People hear of the ‘activities’ at Wethersfield camp and shudder. He also says they may choose to take themselves off at any time – in other words, disappear. Already the camp perimeter fencing has been strengthened and security guards patrol with dogs. This is to protect the camp – and the migrants – who to date have not arrived. Scant mention has been made of how the residents of Crowborough will be protected. Sussex Police have indicated there will be ‘reassurance patrols’. Will they patrol the town 24 hours a day – the same number of hours as the migrants will be free to come and go from the camp?
As the people of Crowborough express their care and concern, it dawns at a quickening pace that those who lead them, rule them, tell them what to do and grab their money really don’t care about them. In fact they don’t give a damn. ‘The men from the ministry’ will tell you what’s going to happen and if it causes a bit of havoc in your society and your life, well tough!
Even as the boatloads continue to flow into our country, it is clear that the government hasn’t got a clue what to do with them all. As they ladle out money to greedy companies – in this case Clear Springs – they still shovel them into hotels, HMOs and now any sort of camp. In so doing they take a battering ram to any protest or objection and blatantly prioritise the needs of illegal arrivals over and above the welfare and wishes of local people. As such they breach the social contract in plain sight. They act with cavalier arrogance and deny the rights of the individual and the society in which he/she lives.
Those who marched through Crowborough on Sunday may not be fully versed regarding the social contract, but they have a visceral understanding that this isn’t how it’s meant to be; this isn’t how it’s supposed to work in a so-called advanced democracy. They know that one of the basic roles of government is to protect its country and its citizens’ rights, and they know that this isn’t happening. As the chasm widens between the government and its people, dissent and dismay rise exponentially. Honest straightforward people who have been loyal to king and country feel increasingly betrayed by those who should lead them with wisdom and protect and care for them. Like a negligent absentee parent the PM of the country flies off at every opportunity to schmooze with other leaders who are equally unpopular domestically. It’s not just the optics; it encapsulates how the protected privileged elite behaves. It epitomises the disconnect. It displays the disdain with which they view the electorate and lays bare the fact that… they just don’t care.
Crowborough does care and it will continue to protest in its quiet, dignified but heartfelt way until this decision is reversed and the camp is restored to its core purpose – that of training local cadets who are currently threatened with being ejected from the site. The government has recently announced a £70 million initiative to expand and create cadet forces. Oh the irony…
Madeleine Gillies is a Crowborough resident with a career in language teaching in the UK and abroad.
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(Photograph: MoD Sign, Near Crowborough, Sussex by Peter Trimming, CC BY-SA 2.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0>, via Wikimedia Commons)
1. The people of Crowborough must have voted in the Green/LibDem Council, it’s a bit late to have second thoughts and not to have realised that these parties are totally against acting on public or voter opinion.
2. Protest marches are useless and only serve to let the marchers feel that they are doing something – whilst everyone else either ignores them or mutters support (but not that much) from the sidelines.
It’s a sad state of affairs all round.
Madeleine writes: “Crowborough does care and it will continue to protest in its quiet, dignified but heartfelt way until this decision is reversed and the camp is restored to its core purpose…”
Is it not better to arrange a personal meeting between a small group of the “protesters” and the decision-makers? I think Nathaniel is, sadly, correct in his assessment of protest marches, which, increasingly (unless they are pro-Palestine/anti-Israel/Jew) do not have any genuine or lasting impact.
Maybe a meeting has been tried and failed at whatever level – maybe any such request has been denied, but that is where we need to change the “stiff upper lip” mentality and make demands, loudly and clearly.
If this approach has been tried and failed, then I’m afraid the residents of Crowborough might just have to accept, as I’m afraid I have forced myself to do, that there is just no point in objecting any more. What will be, will be, as the song goes. And the residents, whether of Crowborough or the wider UK population, will just have to accept it. Life as we knew it, has gone. As the Americans tend to say, we just have to “suck it up.” So much for alleged democracy.
The irony of the Green/LibDem council in Crowborough – West Kent bashed the useless Tories and voted in the more wishy washy version. Good luck to the residents in their battle – We Are All Crowborough Residents now