‘The Bibby Stockholm barge is a crisis of the government’s own making – and it’s encouraging the far right’

The government’s ‘Small Boats Week’ began with the first asylum seekers boarding the Bibby Stockholm barge in Portland, turned toxic with Lee Anderson telling migrants to “f*** off back to France”, and ended with the barge being evacuated because of legionella bacteria and the awful tragedy of six people dying whilst trying to cross the channel. 

The use of the Bibby Stockholm barge is emblematic of the government’s immigration policies, using divisive policy stunts and harmful rhetoric to address a problem of their own making. The government has failed to deal with a growing asylum backlog, meaning larger numbers of people must be housed for longer periods of time. This has been outsourced to private companies making huge profits, with thousands living in limbo. Wholly inappropriate accommodation arrangements have become the norm, from student accommodation, to hotels, to army barracks. Housing vulnerable asylum seekers on a marine barge is a particularly merciless move by the Conservative Party. 

Local opposition to the Bibby Stockholm has made national headlines. Much of this resistance is based on legitimate concerns both for the asylum seekers and for the Portland community. With plans to double its capacity, the Fire Bridge Union has called the barge a “potential death-trap”; ‘No to floating prisons’ has been a slogan used by protesters, highlighting its inhumane living conditions. And as the newly boarded asylum seekers were evacuated on Friday over safety fears about legionella bacteria, it shows that those concerns were not unfounded. 

Portland has also been unsupported by the government, left without the resources or infrastructure required to support an additional 500 people into their small community. Many local protesters have rightly directed their opposition towards the government’s complete destruction of a functioning asylum system and their failure to create solutions that work for anyone. The majority of these ‘solutions’ have been unsafe for asylum seekers, expensive for taxpayers and impractical for communities.

The far right have been quick to jump on the issue, stirring up hatred towards asylum seekers and attempting to boost their own profiles. HOPE not hate recorded a 102% rise in far-right anti-migrant activity from 2021 to 2022, and this activity has continued this year. The far right increasingly mobilises around asylum accommodation, exploiting local concerns to recruit supporters.

Portland has attracted the likes of Stan Robinson of Voice of Wales, James Harvey of Students against Tyranny, and the fascist group Patriotic Alternative. Incitements to violence against asylum seekers and regurgitation of anti-migrant tropes weaponised by the far right about criminality, safety, the ‘Great Replacement Theory’ and resource scarcity have become prevalent in community forums and overshadowed much of the conversation. Only a few days ago, threatening leaflets were distributed to local councillors and businesses. 

The far right have been able to infiltrate local groups due to their extreme views increasingly finding a home in the political mainstream. Our report ‘Stoking the Flames’ shows the links between the inflammatory language used by the Conservative Party, which fuels hostility to migrants, and an increase in far-right anti-migrant activity online. This is giving a green light to the far right to ramp up their anti-migrant hate. The government should be instructing the Home Office to tackle the threat of the far right, but until they drop this line of inflammatory language they will continue to leave the door unlocked for them to seep into the mainstream.

It doesn’t help that Suella Braverman and other senior Conservative politicians have continually used language that is very similar to that used by the far right on immigration. With the language around immigration becoming more and more extreme, the Labour Party needs to take the heat out of the issue in order to steer the political mainstream away from the extreme and dull the impact that the far right are able to have in communities.  

Inappropriate asylum accommodation impacts community relations, and crucially the asylum seekers housed there as they become targets for hate. A long term plan for community-based accommodation is long overdue, so that communities feel supported in welcoming asylum seekers, and are resilient to the far-right threat.

A new Labour government would inherit a broken asylum system with thousands living in inappropriate accommodation, therefore it’s vital that plans are put in place to end the use of barges, barracks and hotels so that those housed in them won’t be living there for a moment longer than necessary.