Published
A second English village is considering a referendum on leaving the United Kingdom, four days after Piddington voted 285 to 26 to do the same.
Barnham, a Suffolk village of about 600 people near the Norfolk border, faces a government plan to house up to 1,250 asylum seekers at MoD Barnham, a former military site on its doorstep. At a village hall meeting this week, the leader of the parish council, John Bauer, said a referendum was on the table. “I’m certainly not ruling anything like that out,” he said, according to the East Anglian Daily Times. Bauer said he had spoken with organizers in Piddington, and he credited the Oxfordshire village with what its vote had achieved.
The paper’s straw poll of villagers found 60 percent would vote to leave.
The Home Office confirmed the proposal in June. Its factsheet for the site says it would house “single adult males between the ages of 18 and 65 who have applied for asylum,” that residents “would not be detained,” and that “the site would be used for a minimum of 10 years.” The department says occupancy would build in phases and that the plan still depends on feasibility assessments and planning approval. A decision is expected this autumn, the Daily Times reported, and villagers were told men could arrive before Christmas. West Suffolk Council has voted unanimously that the site is not suitable.
Barnham has a primary school, a 13th-century church and a village hall. It has no pub and no shop.
Not every resident is sold on the idea of a vote. “The referendum is rubbish. It can’t go anywhere, it’s got no legal standing,” James Hollins, 76, told the paper. Andrew Smith, a Conservative member of West Suffolk Council, called Piddington’s approach “in some sense performative” and said Barnham was choosing a different route.
Piddington’s vote on September 15 carried no legal force either. It was a message from a village that says it was never asked before the government chose a site on its doorstep, and it drew attention across Britain and beyond. Barnham is weighing the same tool. When the decision is made far away, the people who live with it can still hold their own vote and publish the number.
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