Teessiders who resisted asylum barge plan say Home Office is out of touch

Residents who stopped 1,000 asylum seekers from being housed on a “prison ship” in the north of England say the government has misjudged the British public with its draconian immigration laws.

Teessiders were spurred to act in June, after it was reported that ministers were seeking to house asylum seekers on a cruise ship moored in Teesport, near Middlesbrough.

Feeling this “would cause significant harm to people fleeing war and persecution”, more than 200 locals and dozens of charities signed a letter asking the port operator, PD Ports, “not to take any part in plans to create a floating prison on the Tyne”.

“People seeking asylum should be able to live as members of our communities while they wait for a decision on their asylum claim, not warehoused in barges or ships,” the letter said.

The following day, PD Ports responded to the campaigners’ letter in a statement ruling out allowing the ship’s mooring. The port authority said its objection was on health and safety grounds, saying it could not “see a situation in which public services would be able to provide the appropriate support for such accommodation”.

But Jennifer Laws, the north-east campaigns manager at Asylum Matters, said she doesn't think the company would have acted if it wasn't for the letter. “By getting local folks involved, getting local media involved, and then approaching the company in that way, I think that triggered them to say, ‘Oh, it's not possible’.”

Just weeks later, it was reported that both boats acquired by the Home Office had been returned to their owners because the government had been unable to find a port that would accept them.

Teessiders have told openDemocracy that home secretary Suella Braverman is wrong to justify her crackdown on immigration by claiming it is the “will of the British people”. 

They hope others will follow their example and stand up to the government elsewhere.

Ian Jeffrey, a community activist and retired chemical engineer who worked at the local manufacturing plant throughout his career, said Teessiders are supportive of asylum seekers.

“People here have always been very welcoming to people from different countries and backgrounds. In my ward, we have the largest number of asylum seekers in the whole of the borough of Redcar and Cleveland, and they’ve always been welcomed and well-integrated into the community,” he said.

Middlesbrough and neighbouring Stockton-on-Tees have some of the highest numbers of refugees per head in England.

[Teessiders] understood that these things are floating prisons… and they don’t want people treated that way

Organisers said their ability to mobilise so quickly to oppose the plans was down to grassroots activism.

“I had people messaging me saying, ‘What are we going to do?’ as soon as we heard the news,” said Jennifer Laws, north-east campaigns manager at Asylum Matters.

“We only had [the petition] up for a few days, but hundreds of people signed it. [Teessiders] understood that these things are floating prisons… and they don’t want people to be treated in that way in their communities,” she said.

Satti Collins, the chair of Tees Valley of Sanctuary, a charity that aims to “build a more welcoming UK for people forced to flee their homes”, said the campaign’s success was partly down to years of community outreach.

“It’s just letting people know little by little what it means to be an asylum seeker and what these people have been through. We’re getting people to think and challenge the stereotypes,” she said.

The campaign in Teesside followed similar action by locals in Liverpool to oppose the Home Office’s plans for a barge in Birkenhead port.

In June, a protest took place outside a hotel in Liverpool where Peel Ports, the company that manages the port, was holding a meeting. 

Julia Savage, Asylum Matters’s north-west regional campaigns manager, said that although the protest was relatively small, it garnered a lot of support.

“When people stopped to talk to us they were horrified by the government’s plans,” she said.

Days later, Peel Ports released a statement ruling out hosting the barge saying that there was “no conceivable scenario where the local agencies are going to be able to provide the necessary support to make this solution work”. 

The Home Office did not respond to questions about whether it would consult locals before proposing locations for its barges in the future. Ministers this week admitted that plans to move 500 asylum seekers onto a barge moored in Portland, Dorset, have been delayed by safety checks.