It has been described as Guantánamo-on-Uus: a huge one-stop-shop for asylum seekers to open in weeks in the middle of a quiet, bucolic village in North Yorkshire.
“When we first heard about it, they told 500 people, and we thought it was almost bearable,” said Taff Morgan, 67. “Then last night we heard 1,500 and that may not be the maximum. It depends on how much they can fit. “
Morgan lives in Linton-on-Ouz, and like most people in the village, he is still absorbing the enormity of the government’s new immigration plan.
Most of the attention and controversy has been focused on the proposal to send people to Rwanda. Refugees not sent there, according to the government, will go to a new reception center at the former RAF base in Linton-on-Oz, where they will live while their applications are processed.
The base is not near Linton, it is part of Linton.
Taff Morgan, former squadron leader and instructor of pilots at the base. Photo: Mark Pinder / Guardian
“People keep saying there are 1,200 people in the village,” said Morgan, a former squadron leader and pilot instructor at the base. “Back then, the neighborhoods were fully occupied and it was a fully operational military base. We are now only about 500 people. They want to double the population. It just won’t work. “
RAF Linton closed in 2020 and has a history that locals are proud of.
“The interior ministry has done more damage to this village in one week than the Germans in six years of war,” Morgan said.
The meetings of the parish council, held in the village hall, usually attract a handful of members of the public. There was only room for standing on Thursday as more than 120 residents crowded in to listen to an Interior Ministry official giving more details about the plan.
Residents were told they would be mostly elderly unmarried men from Syria, Iran, Iraq and Eritrea sent to Linton. They may have to live in temporary Greek-style containers. They can live there for up to six months. They will be free to come and go, but are expected to return to the site by 22:00.
The villagers point out that they do not have the infrastructure to cope. There are four buses a day to York, 10 miles away. There is a shop. The village pub closed a few years ago.
“When we had the floods, it meant 52 miles of going back to Tesco’s in York to shop,” Morgan said.
Refugee charities have called the planned center a cross between a dormitory and a low-security prison. Daryl Smolly, an adviser to the Liberal Democrats on the York Council, described it as “a plan for Guantanamo of Uus” and “a ill-considered, cruel and morally bankrupt trick to reduce our obligations to the most desperate people.”
Linton-on-Ouse has a shop and no pub. Photo: Mark Pinder / Guardian
The villagers insist they are not racist or impudent, objecting to the proposal. The new center, they say, should not be in anyone’s backyard.
People at the meeting expressed fears that they would become “prisoners in their own home” because of the center. “They say they’ll give us video surveillance,” Morgan said. “But we never needed him. They say they will give us extra police… but we never needed them.
The plan for the center was surprisingly announced last week. The interior ministry says a radical plan is needed, as some 37,000 poor migrants are housed in hotels that cost taxpayers 4.7m pounds a day.
Kevin Holinrake, a local Conservative MP from Thirsk and Malton, initially suggested he supported the plan. But he now strongly opposes, citing the Interior Ministry’s own guidelines, which say asylum seekers should be accommodated in urban areas with easy access to support and services.
The interior ministry wants to open the center within weeks, but Holinrake believes planning permission is needed. He said he would also support a judicial review of the plan.
Yvonne Cavanagh owns the village shop. She was unable to attend Thursday’s meeting, so she is waiting to hear more details about the plan for a meeting hosted by Hollinrake on Saturday.
“I still don’t have an opinion,” she said. “They peed a lot of people. Most of the village is against it, but I think we need to hear the facts first. “
Add Comment