A campaign group in Oxfordshire has launched a petition opposing government plans to house 1,250 asylum seekers in a basic camp on a former Ministry of Defence site near Bicester, warning the plan risks turning the town into a focal point for far-right demonstrations.
Oxford Stand Up To Racism is calling on residents and community groups across Oxfordshire and beyond to support the campaign, arguing the accommodation plan represents an attempt by the government to appear tough on immigration in response to the rise of Reform UK, rather than a genuine solution to the asylum backlog.
You can sign it here.
The group’s case
Ian McKendrick, vice-chair of the group, said the plan was “inhumane” and represented “a desperate bid to win votes, and to divert people’s anger away from the government’s failure to address the decades of cuts and austerity the majority of people have had to endure.”
McKendrick placed the proposal in the context of a wider pattern of far-right activity targeting asylum accommodation over the past two years, including protests, some violent, outside hotels housing asylum seekers and a similar camp near Crowborough. “Isolating asylum seekers in basic accommodation far from amenities will benefit no-one but a government cynically exploiting people’s fears about immigration,” he said. “It will give the far-right and racists yet another target for intimidation.”
He drew a direct historical comparison to an earlier attempt to use the same Bicester site. “When a similar proposal was made in 2002 there was a surge of activity from Nazis in the National Front and British National Party that required a lengthy campaign to stop.” A related plan to house 750 asylum seekers on an MOD site near Bicester was ultimately cancelled in 2005, after improvements in processing asylum claims reduced the need for long-term accommodation.
The financial argument
The group’s central practical objection is that the camp does not address the underlying problem it claims to solve. “Scapegoating refugees only stirs up hate,” McKendrick said. “It won’t build a single house, or improve anyone’s wage or solve the NHS waiting lists.”
The campaign’s petition and accompanying statement note that asylum seekers currently receive less than £10 a week in support while their claims are processed, often for extended periods, during which they are legally barred from working. The group argues that money earmarked for developing a new 1,250-bed camp would be better directed toward processing the existing backlog of claims more efficiently, resolving people’s legal status faster rather than housing them indefinitely in isolated accommodation.
The wider national context
The Bicester proposal lands amid an already highly contested national debate over asylum accommodation and support. Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood has separately announced that asylum seekers will be required to repay up to £10,000 towards the cost of their accommodation once they begin earning, modelled loosely on student loan repayments, a policy that drew criticism from the Helen Bamber Foundation, which called it “more performative cruelty from the government” and warned it could actively discourage people from working once granted refugee status.
Lord Alf Dubs, who arrived in Britain aged six as part of the Kindertransport, has called on Andy Burnham to remove Mahmood from the Home Office entirely and dismantle what he described as a pattern of “performative cruelty” in the department’s approach to asylum policy, citing proposed changes to indefinite leave to remain, the suspension of family reunion visas, and plans that would make it easier to detain children before deportation.
Mahmood herself has previously drawn criticism for leaked WhatsApp messages in which she joked about wanting to “taser and deport” a number of prominent politicians, and told “white liberals” to “f— right off”, comments that illustrated the particular friction her approach to immigration generates even within her own party.
What happens next
Oxford Stand Up To Racism’s petition remains open for signatures, with the group urging residents to formally object to the plan before any decision on the Bicester site is confirmed. The government has not set out a public timeline for a final decision on the camp, nor detailed how the site would be resourced or staffed if it proceeds.
The precedent of the cancelled 2005 plan for the same site offers some indication that public and political pressure can shift outcomes on asylum accommodation proposals of this kind, though the current political and social climate around immigration, described by campaigners themselves as considerably more volatile than in the mid-2000s, will likely shape how this particular campaign unfolds.
9 responses to “‘Refugees welcome’: Oxford campaign group launches petition against planned 1,250-bed asylum camp near Bicester”
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What insufferable hypocrites these people are. Finally their chickens have come home to roost, and despite all their virtue signalling, they don’t want them. Who knew that ‘Stand up to Racism’ supporters are actually racist?
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The welcome refugees group are such hypocrites!!
You wanted them, you got them now
Lock up your daughters, refugees like em a lot!! -
At least my Aunt took an asylum seeker into her home. This “Refugees welcome” group want them anywhere but their posh neighbourhood.
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Hahaha, just shaking my head…. FFS, you guys, you made your bed, the fact that you are now having to sleep in it 🤷♀️
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Nothing to do with not having them on your doorstep then! Blame the dar right instead. Ask the people of Crowborough who demonstrated weekly whether they are far right.
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Sounds more like virtue signalling NIMBY hypocrites to me. Refugees welcome, but nowhere near my small posh neighbourhood.
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So the campaign group need to put their “money where there mouth is”. They all need to offer them rooms in there homes.
I’ve dealt with African boy soldier war trauma as a pysch in SA. It very complex and very difficult to manage and normalize.-
If you want them then you lot can have them. Get ready for your town to be ruined and your women and children to become un safe..
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