Read my interview with The Telegraph: We stopped Labour housing migrants in our town – it’s a victory for ordinary folk
More than 200 years ago, what is now the unremarkable Hampshire town of Waterlooville, was founded by returning soldiers celebrating the defeat of Napoleon.
On a damp Wednesday evening over two centuries later, Waterlooville is the scene of another victory party, as residents descend on its high street to celebrate following the news that the Home Office has backed down on plans to house migrants in the town centre.
Union flags are draped over shoulders, Sweet Caroline (and AC/DC) blares out of loudspeakers, placards say “Keep our women & children safe”. Some are dressed head to toe in red, white and blue; even those who have stumbled across the rally by accident while running their errands are getting into the party spirit. The atmosphere is upbeat, but it’s also defiant: speakers are also lambasting the “woke liberal agenda”.
Residents’ anger at the thought of being neighbours with 35 unknown asylum seekers housed up in flats above a junk emporium on that inauspicious high street – and relief that they now, for the moment, won’t – has even been backed by local Conservative MP and former home secretary Suella Braverman who, with her husband Rael and family friends, and carrying a Union flag, is mingling and taking selfies with protesters.
Braverman’s appearance marks a defiant hit-back at her critics. Philip Munday, who heads up the local Havant council’s Labour, Liberal Democrat and Green coalition, had accused Braverman of seeking to “exacerbate fear in the hearts and minds of our concerned residents” on the migrant housing issue, and said her comments on it were “deeply inappropriate, potentially inflammatory and ultimately misleading.”
He argued that those earmarked for the flats were asylum seekers, not “illegal immigrants”, and joined the fuming chorus from Left-wing politicians and charities who disparagingly frame the protests over migrant hotels and accommodation as a far-Right cause.
Yet despite two weeks of outcry in Waterlooville, involving a protest by 1,000 people last month and a petition that has received more than 10,000 signatures, there have been no arrests or violent incidents.
Indeed, it is largely ordinary local people – shop assistants, carers, IT workers and pensioners – who have turned out for the evening rally next to Boots.
“These are not skinheads. These are mums and grannies and children,” says Braverman when we meet over a drink in The Denmead Queen, the local Wetherspoons, ahead of the gathering. “These are families who are feeling cowardice, who are feeling like no one speaks to them and who are feeling like they have no other option but to take to the streets in peaceful protest to represent their views. They feel powerless.”
She says the suggestion that her constituents were motivated by racism is “incredibly offensive.”
“It’s not racist to want to have a sense of control and safety in your own country. That is patriotism, that is love of our country, that is decency, and that reflects the vast majority of British people who are welcoming and friendly.”
Braverman says that there was always the risk protests would “attract provocateurs” and extremists, and admits she is “very concerned” about public order in the coming weeks amid growing anger over illegal immigration. (“We’re walking on glass in this country,” she says. “I think there’s a real simmering fury and fear of betrayal, and combined with a sense of powerlessness and the lack of anything on the horizon looking like there will be a solution, I’m very worried about public order to be maintained.”)
Yet the former Attorney General says that Waterlooville had shown peaceful protests could be effective, and the government should prepare for more demonstrations elsewhere.
“I think where Waterlooville leads, the country can follow. The fact that it’s been carried out very peacefully, zero arrests, zero incidents, zero offences, really reflects well on the people from Waterlooville who did this and took the action. I think it does provide a bit of a template for how objections can be successfully maintained.”
She says her constituents feel “a profound sense of fear, anger and betrayal” and claims that Munday is part of an establishment that is out of touch with local people and the country’s problems.
“The Labour leader wrote to me and was seemingly more upset that I used the term illegal migrant rather than asylum seekers. They’re more interested in terminology and faux outrage and trying to silence people and smear people as racist, xenophobic, divisive and inflammatory than actually being honest with the British people.”
As she leaves the pub for the rally, Braverman notes that Sir Keir Starmer could not expect a warm welcome at The Denmead Queen. “I don’t think Keir Starmer will get anyone offering to buy him a pint, let’s put it that way,” she adds.
“Keir Starmer is so far detached and insulated from the realities of what is going on that he does need to open his eyes as to what is happening in this country, on the ground amongst regular folk who go to Wetherspoons, because people are fed up.
“There’s a real sense of despair, unfortunately, and in the Westminster bubble this might look very, very different to him. He’s just deluding himself the more that he stays away from people. His arrogant dismissiveness of the British people is not good for him. It’s not good for the Government, it’s not good for our country.”
At the celebration, attendees share Braverman’s anger at being dismissed as racist.
“I’ve got seven grandchildren,” said Maria Jackson, 56, a shop assistant. “That’s why I’m here. I want them to live in a safe environment. We don’t have an issue with letting in a number of people who genuinely need to come here. But this will just be men, not even kids or women.
“These are flats right in the town centre. Why can’t they give them to people on the waiting list? If our children wanted to live there they’d be waiting for years. They talk rubbish about racism but Keir Starmer is not in the real world.”
Councillor Philippa Gray, deputy leader of Havant Borough Council, says legitimate concerns are not extremist, and the authority respected “healthy democratic debate”. However, she says Braverman was continuing to use “inaccurate and inflammatory language”, and that the flats were to be used by a mix of families and individuals who were “asylum seekers” and “not illegal immigrants”. But locals do not believe these reassurances.
“We have no idea about the history,” says 61-year-old IT worker Paul Crowley, who is joined at the party this evening with his wife Mel Crowley, also 61, who works in retail. “We don’t know who is coming in. If they came through with legitimate reasons because of persecution that’s fine, but this is now a concern for me as a grandparent. I care about my children and my grandchildren.”
“We’ve been slurred a lot with racism,” he says. “I’m not a racist, I am patriotic. I care about this country and I care about people entering the country who are completely undocumented.”
Mel and Paul Crowley celebrating the town’s victory against Labour’s plans Credit: Paul Grover
Genevieve Doury, 46, a refuse collector for the same council that criticised Braverman, says she would have been “neighbours” with migrants who would move into the flats and was worried about her teenage daughter’s safety.
“I live here with my 14-year-old girl. If they did actually come here I would have to leave here. I’m right across the road and I would know nothing about who these people are.
“I wouldn’t feel safe. There are people who try to get a visa, do the proper route but these people are skipping the queue and that’s unfair. There are rules for a reason.”
She adds that she will “100 per cent be back” protesting if there are any new plans to house asylum seekers in the town, and hopes similar peaceful protests would spread across the country.
“I hope there will be a domino effect,” she says. “We’ve started it and everybody else will follow.”
It certainly could provide a template for grounds on which to argue: ironically, for all of Munday’s dissent against Braverman’s protest, the council did raise concerns over fire safety in relation to the flats earmarked for asylum seekers, and in a statement the council later said that after a consultation, the Home Office “decided not to purchase the property as the accommodation”.
Many of the town’s 65,000 people now worry there will be a fresh application from the Home Office to house migrants elsewhere. However, for now Braverman believes residents have done the town “proud” by peacefully defeating the plans for the high street.
“It’s a victory for the ordinary folk who often don’t have a voice,” she says. “This is a victory for the people of Waterlooville.”
