By Giuseppe De Santis
The small Cumbrian town of Millom has recently attracted the attention of the mainstream media because the Home Office planned to buy eight abandoned properties to house 40 asylum seekers.
This small town has no hospital, no NHS dentists and no police station but it does have a solitary GP surgery. The town also has 112 families on a waiting list for a council house and yet the Home Office wanted to move asylum seekers to the area without consulting local people.
This is not an isolated case as the government bought 16,000 houses around the UK to house asylum seekers and unfortunately, many small towns and villages are in the same situation.
This bad story, however, has a happy ending. The residents of this Cumbrian town in the grips of a housing crisis have claimed victory after plans to house asylum seekers in eight rundown properties were shelved following a protest. Almost 2,000 people joined an action group and public meetings were packed to the rafters as locals banded together to demand that the plans were scrapped. This action shows how furious the residents were about this plan.
One of the locals, working as a safety adviser, started Millom Community Action Group after residents discovered at least eight houses across the town were being bought up by developers to be converted into Houses of Multiple Occupancy (HMOs). The Community Group quickly obtained nearly 2,000 supporters. Because the town came together with a common goal, their meetings were full.
The town’s efforts forced the Home Office to change its mind and scrap its plan to house asylum seekers in this small town. Action groups from other parts of the country are now in touch with the campaign leaders for advice on how to force out developers intent on securing lucrative Government-backed contracts for asylum housing.
The happy conclusion of this story demonstrates that local activism can achieve a lot and hopefully, other towns and villages will achieve similar victories. The British Democrats will play their part to stop the government from forcing local communities to accept asylum seekers as part of our community based political strategy.
Image: “THE OLD TOWN OF MILLOM” by summonedbyfells is licensed under CC BY 2.0
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