British Military families have been left “appalled” after they were given just a week’s notice to leave their homes at a former airbase in Essex to make way for alleged asylum seekers.
The Conservative government of Rishi Sunak has given some military families just a week’s notice that they would have to leave their home at a former air base outside the village of Wethersfield in Essex. They will be forced to leave so that the base can be converted into a migrant camp as the government continues to try to reduce the £6 million per day bill for accommodating asylum seekers in hotels across the country.
Speaking to Sky News, a member of one of the military families said: “We’ve almost been moved off the base now before the asylum seekers move on. Originally we were given a good time period. It was a good couple of months. But over the last few weeks that’s all shuffled.
“For some families, it’s a week’s notice. It’s obviously quite hard for them. They’re having to pack their whole lives up in a week.”
“The phrase I’d like to use probably contains a swear word. I think appalled – appalled is probably the nicer way to say it. Let down.
“They’ve railroaded everyone with this. I wish they’d have given us a choice and not made it feel so forced. If they’d had the conversations it would have been easier.”
The migrant camp is expected to hold up to 1,700 migrants, potentially threatening the way of life of the town of Wethersfield, which only has a native population of around 700. Currently, the former air base is home to around 18 military families.
Raising concerns about the impact on local society, Nick Godley of the campaign group Wethersfield Protests, said: “I think if you put the thick end of 2,000 people up on the base with no money and nothing to do, whoever they were – even if they were trainee vicars – I think you could well have problems.
“It’s only human nature if people get bored they start looking for something to do and that something to do with a proportion of people, whoever they are, may well involve some sort of mischief.”
So far this year, over 10,000 illegals have crossed the English Channel, adding to the approximately hundred thousand that have broken into Britain over the past three years.
This week, the government was dealt a significant legal blow, with its centrepiece deterrence strategy of sending asylum seekers to Rwanda being shut down by the London Court of Appeals, which overturned a previous ruling by the High Court, ruling this week that Rwanda is not a safe country and therefore the government cannot deport illegal migrants to a processing centre in the East African nation.