At first glance, a Yorkshire village, an affluent Oxfordshire town and a corner of rural East Anglia adjacent to a one-time nuclear weapons storage facility would appear to have little common. But, all three communities have now been united by indignation at their inclusion in a controversial shift in Government policy for housing asylum seekers.
Three Ministry of Defence sites at Linton-on-Ouse, a small village north of York, the commuter town of Bicester, and Barnham, a village on the Suffolk-Norfolk border, have been selected by the Home Office as sites to house 3,750 asylum seekers – if planning permission is granted.
A planned protest on Sunday outside the gates of RAF Barnham, which once stored some of Britain’s nuclear weapons, and a rash of petitions and announcements of public meetings this weekend were an indication of the strength of opposition in each of the affected communities.
Shorts
Campaigners in Linton-on-Ouse accused Sir Keir Starmer of “galling hypocrisy” after comments he made in 2022 about the then-Conservative government’s plans to house asylum seekers in the Yorkshire village.
