Housing migrants in military bases ignores the real root of public anger

For the third weekend in a row, hundreds of residents in the east Sussex town of Crowborough have protested against the government’s plans to house asylum seekers at a military site.

It is no surprise that the Home Office’s plans, announced in October, have provoked such a fierce backlash. According to the BBC, up to 540 single male asylum seekers are to be housed at an army training camp on the outskirts of this small town. At last Sunday’s demonstrations, protesters chanted ‘Crowborough says no’ and ‘protect our community’. They also wore individual numbers, each number representing one of the immigrants soon to arrive.

The ongoing small-boats crisis is a public-safety issue of the highest order. Many new arrivals come from deeply patriarchal societies and tend to have little desire to integrate into Britain’s secular, liberal culture. The prospect of hundreds of young men – from countries such as Iran, Afghanistan, Sudan, Somalia and Eritrea – being plonked on the edge of a small Sussex town has naturally made many residents anxious.

Their concerns are more than justified, as recent events have shown. In September, Ethiopian asylum seeker Hadush Kebatu was found guilty of sexually assaulting a teenage girl and an adult woman in Epping, Essex, mere days after he had arrived on a small boat. Just last week, an Afghan asylum seeker admitted to raping a 12-year-old girl in Nuneaton, Warwickshire. Who could possibly blame the parents of Crowborough for being protective over the safety of their daughters?

This is not merely some trumped-up, ‘right wing’ talking point, stoked by the likes of Tommy Robinson and Elon Musk. Wealden District Council, the local authority, is led by an alliance of Lib Dems, Greens and Labour councillors. Yet on Wednesday, it passed a motion sternly opposing the Home Office’s plans. It seems even those parties who pose as ‘pro-migrant’ have reached the limits of their generosity towards illegal migrants, especially in their own back yards.

Placing English Channel migrants in military sites is arguably preferable to their accommodation in local hotels or HMOs. Two former military sites are currently being used for asylum seekers – Napier Barracks, in Kent, and a former Royal Air Force base at Wethersfield in Essex. But really, these illegal immigrants shouldn’t be in the UK at all. The issue isn’t the type of accommodation they are housed in – the issue is that Britain’s weak border controls mean people can easily enter the country, but are only rarely removed. Illegal immigrants frequently disappear into the wider population as soon as they arrive. Back in 2023, the Home Office admitted that it did not know of the whereabouts of more than 17,000 asylum seekers.

The British public did not vote for this. There has always been strong popular support in the UK for legal immigration in critical sectors of the economy, but that is a far cry from what is happening in Crowborough, and in countless other communities across Britain.

Crowborough residents are right to vent their anger at the government. They have joined a chorus of voices that Labour ignores at its peril.

Rakib Ehsan is the author of Beyond Grievance: What the Left Gets Wrong about Ethnic Minorities, which is available to order on Amazon.