In a gesture to assuage mounting public and political disquiet at the use of costly hotel accommodation to house illegal migrants, Starmer’s government last week announced with some fanfare that military bases would be used instead.
Camps in Crowborough and Inverness were identified for initial placements. Those who are unfamiliar with Crowborough in East Sussex will nonetheless be familiar with A.A. Milne’s Winnie the Pooh stories, in which Winnie and his friends play pooh sticks on an ancient bridge in Ashdown Forest. The Forest is an area of 10 square miles of tranquil open heathland, a former royal hunting ground and a designated area of outstanding natural beauty. It is now home to 700+ commoners who graze animals and have the right to cut wood. Abutting this bucolic scene to the south east is Crowborough army training camp – which was first established by the War Office during WWI and was then used in WWII to prepare troops for the Normandy landings. For years it has been used for local cadets. In the far distance can be seen the South Downs, which border the Sussex coastline and in parts overhang the English Channel.
Next to the camp lies the town of Crowborough – a mild mellow Sussex town lying to the south of the better known Tunbridge Wells, best known for having been the final home of Arthur Conan Doyle. It is a largely residential town of substantial family homes, with seven primary schools and one large secondary school.
In the middle of last week a bombshell hit the town, when it was ‘leaked’ via social media – rather than any official statement – that Crowborough army training camp had been requisitioned by the Home Office to house 600 illegal migrants, and that they would arrive sometime this month. Given the information vacuum, residents were gratified when Sussex Weald Reform swiftly organised a public meeting in a large community centre. Such was the attendance at the admirably apolitical meeting that two sittings had to be held.
In the meantime, the local conservative MP Nus Ghani expressed outrage that she had not been advised of the plan, and there has been acerbic communication between Ms Ghani and the Libdem and Green leaders of the local Wealden District Council re who knew what when. Ms Ghani – who neither resides nor has an office in the constituency – holds the lofty position of Madam Speaker of the House, and therefore it was left to Mims Davies MP and Dr.Kieran Mullan MP from adjoining constituencies to raise questions in parliament. In the face of fierce ongoing protest by the local electorate (and concern for their positions), all parties are now expressing opposition to the plan – though the Green council leader yesterday exhorted the populace to ‘Let not fear and lies divide us’, and a local chap has instructed us to ‘be more thoughtful’ lest Tommy Robinson and his pals highjack the situation. After all if you think and then express dismay at such a plan you have to be ‘far-right’, don’t you?
What has emerged is that Wealden District Council will be paid per asylum seeker and that Clearsprings – one of the triumvirate of companies making millions from providing and servicing asylum housing – will be running the camp with the Home Office claiming that the contract with the MoD will be for just twelve months.
In the meantime, Crowborough residents are faced with the prospect of 600 males of mixed ethnicity being jettisoned into their midst. Some of the less thoughtful have surmised that, given the immigrants will be in a ‘military camp’, they will be contained behind barbed wire with dogs prowling the area. But of course, the new arrivals will be free to roam 24/7 and avail themselves of the pleasures of Crowborough – which has just one small High Street and one fast food outlet. Alternatively their free bus passes may encourage them to travel down to nicely diverse Brighton which is on the local bus route. The HO blurb indicates that the camp will be alcohol free. Drugs are not mentioned. It’s fair to assume anyway, that some of the residents will be indentured to gangs and will therefore be required to remove themselves to a cannabis farm or similar asap.
Meanwhile residents feel impotent in the face of decisions made by official bodies, and as such the Crowborough situation presents a microcosm of the situation in our country. Even as the 600 migrants are transported to the camp from Manston arrival and processing centre, given fair weather, another 600+ will arrive across the Channel. Where will they go? As the HO scours the country for other facilities to requisition, hotels will still be filled, more HMOs will be acquired, and communities like this Sussex country town will be browbeaten by officialdom into accepting the unacceptable. Once a facility preparing troops to defend our country, Crowborough camp will now prepare a large number of foreign individuals of unknown provenance and intention for life amongst us. The irony of this situation is self evident, but in the meantime the influx will continue unabated and more and more of our country will be placed in a comparable situation.
The only hope is that word spreads amongst the criminal gang fraternity and their clients that, rather being sent to a 4* city hotel, illegal arrivals may be sent to a camp next to a small town. Hopefully this will provoke them to protest via a human rights lawyer on arrival at Manston, and claim that such a green and pleasant location would be bad for their mental health.
Madeleine Gillies is a Crowborough resident with a career in language teaching in the UK and abroad.
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(Photograph: Robin Webster / No Public Admittance)
“Even as the 600 migrants are transported to the camp from Manston arrival and processing centre, given fair weather, another 600+ will arrive across the Channel. Where will they go?”
Nothing will convince me now that this influx of illegal migrants is not deliberately being encouraged, if not actually organised, by the Government. Nothing. For whatever crackpot reason, the politicians of recent years and especially currently, want to change this country – for worse. To not even care if there are criminals entering, violent criminals at that, in the context of Islamist terrorism being a real and present danger, is not just “odd” or “strange” – it is incomprehensible and so there must be a nefarious agenda behind the welcoming of these boatloads of migrants.
I keep hearing that the politicians do, indeed, want to change the culture of the country. That is a widespread belief now, certainly where I live in Scotland, and it would seem equally, if not more, true in England. But why? What the heck is going on… Conspiracy theorists believe that it is to prepare us for war, the classic means of keeping the population down. I struggle to believe that anyone, even the current crop of stupid politicians elected (not by me, I hasten to add) to supposedly look after our best interests (joke) and put the defence of the UK top of their “go do” list, would act in such a dangerous manner. Effectively recruit criminals to provoke social unrest and ultimately take us to war? Madness. I usually dismiss such theories but now I am seriously beginning to wonder. I am wondering why, for example, these arrogant criminals (and they are ALL criminals by virtue of breaking into the country) are not turned about and returned to their original departure point.
Only yesterday I heard about an attempted assault on a young girl not far from where I live. The attempt took place on an open road, plenty of passing traffic although not too many pedestrians. The assault did not progress, thankfully, because the girl escaped. The perpetrator, it turns out, was a white man in his 60s but as word spread so did the advice to buy a panic alarm. That conversation had already been underway in discussions about the rising crime and violence associated with the influx of illegal migrants. I’m going to place my order for a panic alarm today.
In my original comment, I meant to thank Madeleine Gillies for her detailed and thought-provoking article – yet more evidence of the dire situation in which we find ourselves due to the inability of the current (and previous) Governments to deal firmly with these illegal migrants. They seem determined not to respond to public concerns. It really is a mystery – or is it?
The same is happening in all Western countries at the same time. Coincidence or what?
Hotels, Army Camps, Tents – all the same – the sane majority just don’t want these people here for obvious reasons (with racism being probably bottom of the list).
None of this makes any sense at all. To facilitate the arrival of thousands of young men from backward third world countries who are mostly Muslims and all criminals of one sort or another makes no sense at all. The idea that this is part of some plot to destroy Europe doesn’t make sense either – where do the supposed elite think they themselves will go when their countries become uninhabitable? Why would they let this happen if they want to divert attention away from their uselessness by entering a war (presumably against Russia)? Who do they think would fight? Why would they want a civl war instead? How would they control that? I wonder whether this is all happening because not a single politician or civil servant anywhere in the Western World is up to the job of being a politician or civil servant. Can anyone imagine Mrs Thatcher, Winston Churchill, Charles De Gaulle or, further back, Wellington or Pitt or Gladstone allowing any of this to happen? Good times make weak men – that’s where we are, in the middle of the Weak Men phase. I just hope the arrival of the Strong Men doesn’t involve goose-stepping and uniforms.
Spot on, ineptitude far more likely than conspiracy.