Linton-on-Ouse - illegal migrant plan: 'I spent the day there - here's what I discovered'

There’s a shop. Which was closed. Empty, actually. To let. A pub – the College Arms. Which was closed. A village hall. Which was … you get the gist. Sleepy, they call villages like Linton. No services nor amenities to speak of, really. I didn’t see a bus while I was there. What I did see was another to let sign, this time on a house. A for sale sign. And another, and another. Loads of them, in fact, up and down Main Street, and just off it. I counted eight for sale or to let boards on Main Street alone. That seemed disproportionate to me.

But that’s not surprising, given…

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Nota Bene: Prime Minister Andy Burnham, just last week, was forced to defend a Home Office leaflet that has been drafted to be given to asylum-seeking men, who arrive on our shores illegally. You know, like those that might be headed for Linton-on-Ouse, should this wrongheaded plan not be seen for the folly it is. The leaflet, and this is absolutely true, politely informs its recipients that in this country we don’t rape women or children. That, it tells these new arrivals, is frowned upon. Helpfully, it lets them know, too, that sex with anyone under 16 is also not allowed, here. That, too, is rape. “You could get in trouble with the police,” it says. That’s verbatim.

NBB: The top result, when you do a quick Google search in relation to said leaflet, brings up the headline: “Andy Burnham defends Home Office booklet urging asylum seekers not to rape women.” ‘Urging!’ Were it not so painfully serious, you’d scoff with incredulity.

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…the Government plans to squeeze twice as many single, adult men into accommodation that sits right in the middle of the village than number local residents currently residing in Linton-on-Ouse. Around 1,300 single men, who have broken into this country illegally, from countries such as Iran, Afghanistan, Iraq, Albania, Syria, and Eritrea, earmarked to live alongside a small-c conservative, rural community of around 650 at the most.

With a primary school that has 64 children on its roster, it’s probably safe to say that of the 650 people living in Linton-on-Ouse, around 100 will be children under 16. That leaves 550 adults. If we assume that 225 – half – of the remainder are women, in my humble opinion, that ratio of single, adult, illegally-here, migrant men to women and children in the village, where the illegals will be free to come and go from the former RAF base as they please, amounts to a mistake.

Undeterred by the lashing rain, I was there to get a feel for the place, so drove through what was presumably once the security checkpoint of the former RAF base on which these men will be placed, and walked around. If this detention centre that isn’t a detention centre opens, remember, that 1,300-number will almost certainly never reduce. ‘Triage’ is the crucial word: i.e: the men will just keep coming; just as fast as those processed are moved either into the community or deported. If anything, particularly during the summer months when boat crossings peak, that number, I’d wager, will rise. It will be a revolving door. Government has stated it will be used ‘for a minimum of three years.’ It doesn’t say when it might be decommissioned.

I digress: beyond that now-defunct-but-still-there checkpoint is what appears to be a rather swish housing development: The Paddocks. Beautiful, detached, ready-to-let family homes, the rent for which is around £1,800pcm, however, there’s an offer on (I bet!) and you can move in immediately, with no rent to pay for your first month and no deposit required. As an added bonus, your neighbours may well be 1,300 single, adult, men who are illegal migrants that the Home Office feels compelled to remind that raping women and children in this country is illegal. That isn’t an inference or a cynical overreach on my part. It’s just a fact.

I wasn’t surprised, and you will not be either, to see that a number of the homes on The Paddocks appeared empty. Eerily so, actually. Where families ought to be pottering around, children playing. Pretty little villages on the outskirts of York are coveted. All except this one, it seems. I grant you, it was chucking it down, but the rain isn’t that which renders those gorgeous homes, and they are gorgeous, empty.

Slightly depressed, I headed off to the pub for a pint and to chat to some locals. With a Guinness secured and a bag of Seabrook (cheese and onion, if you must know) crisps for my lunch, I got chatting to the loveliest landlady-cum-proprietor in all of Yorkshire at the Linton Lock Inn.

“Come in my lovely,” she beckoned, spotting a bedraggled stranger soaked to the bone from the rain. It took Wendy Hood all of five minutes to suss out who I was before she began telling me how people were feeling. "It isn't fair, is it? Can you imagine being a parent of one of the children attending our primary school? And who would camp on my campsite, knowing there are more than a thousand single, adult migrant men in the village?

"I feel like I will have to employ additional security, and improve the boundaries, fencing and even consider barbed-wire where necessary. That would effectively make us prisoners in our own village and homes."

Again, do a rudimentary Google search and you’ll find a BBC article that quotes a resident as saying the migrant camp would effectively be an open prison on their doorstep. When you extrapolate Wendy’s heartfelt appraisal of the situation, she makes a good point: it isn’t the migrants who’ll feel incarcerated, but the good residents of Linton-on-Ouse. That is as cruel as it is criminal.

RAF Linton-on-Ouse, then, is not the right place for what is effectively a holding-pen for hundreds, upon hundreds of single, culturally-neophytic men who, frankly, we have already let down too much as it is. I do believe we must be more cruel to these would-be illegal migrants, before they contemplate coming here, in order to be kind to them. There is clearly an incentive, here, if not more than one, that seduces these men to risk dying for the prize of being here. Policy makers must find those incentives and remove them, before they claim the life of another innocent human being desperate to secure them.

RAF Linton-on-Ouse is an intimidating, imposing site that is not fit for inhabitation. It is crumbling on the outside, let alone on the inside. It is no place for anyone, least of all those seeking a new life; one filled with hope, optimism and opportunity. Things, incidentally, that nobody in the village of Linton-on-Ouse would deny asylum seekers, I assure you. The people of Linton-on-Ouse are not mean-spirited people. They’re nice, kind, community-minded people who care about one another – and about strangers. But the fact is this: hope, optimism and opportunity do not knock at RAF Linton-on-Ouse – and I am referring specifically to the former base itself. All that knocks, there, at the old military station, are the creaking pipes, the smashed windows and the ghosts of block-parties past.

The Prime Minister and the Government must think again, and fast. Put a line through this plan once and for all so that the for sale signs can come down, the homes can fill up, the primary school numbers can stabilise and so that the people of this tiny little North Yorkshire village can begin living their lives shorn of the fear and anxiety that is making people ill and making families flee.

It is the wrong plan, in the wrong place.

Knock it down. Turn it into a wind farm if you like; a solar farm if you must. Or, get this for ingeniousness, a farm farm. One that grows crops and rears animals and helps to feed the nation. Madness, I know.

James

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