In the 1949 British comedy Passport to Pimlico, an unexploded bomb from the Second World War detonates, revealing a long-forgotten cellar. Inside are documents which, when examined, show that this small area of London was ceded in the Middle Ages to the Duchy of Burgundy. As the medieval charter has never been revoked, local people declare independence from the rest of Britain and soon thrive, as with their newfound freedom they can opt out of postwar rationing. In doing so, they anger the government, which surrounds them, and a standoff ensues.
Now, more than three-quarters of a century later, a similar David-versus-Goliath struggle is unfolding. The small village of Piddington, of Anglo-Saxon origin and old enough to be mentioned in the Domesday Book of 1086, has voted for independence. Its parish church dates back to the 14th century. Yet the village now faces a threat that would have seemed outlandish to most who have lived there over the centuries.
That is because the village lies near a ministry of defense site in Bicester, which has now been earmarked as a camp for asylum seekers. With over 200,000 migrants crossing the English Channel since 2018, successive British governments have struggled to find places to house them while their cases are heard. The use of hotels has been especially controversial, sparking protests every summer for the last few years.
The current Labour government has committed to ending the use of hotels by shifting asylum seekers into other sites, such as homes converted into flats and military bases like the one near Bicester. The site is planned to house as many as 1,250 migrants, all men aged 18–65. That prompted the adult inhabitants to gather in their village hall, where 175 voted for independence and seven against.
The parish council chair, Tim McNally, has vowed that he will take the plan for independence to US President Donald Trump if necessary. He said the villagers had been “ignored and driven into a corner”, making self-determination necessary.
Churchill and the Dogged British Love of Democracy
Winston Churchill once quipped that “democracy is the worst form of Government except for all those other forms that have been tried from time to time”.
Unlike Switzerland, Britain is not a country known for its referendums. Under the unwritten British constitution, Parliament is sovereign, so any referendum is advisory rather than legally binding. Nonetheless, British governments have always implemented the results.
The most famous examples are the referendum on joining the European Economic Community in 1975 and the referendum on leaving the European Union, as it had come to be known, in 2016. Both were controversial, but in each case the vote was ultimately honored.
Other important referendums include the 2011 vote on changing the voting system, which failed, and the 2014 vote on Scottish independence, in which a majority of Scots decided to stay within the United Kingdom.
Britain remains a representative democracy rather than a direct democracy, however. That means that although the village has voted in favor of independence, it lacks the power to implement it.
Instead, their elected representative, Calum Miller of the Liberal Democrats, is advocating on their behalf. He has criticized the decision to use the ministry of defense site to host asylum seekers, calling on the government to pause the plan and publish an impact assessment.
The fears of locals are understandable. Those housed at the site will be free to come and go as they wish, and most will lack any documentation proving who they are, not least because many asylum seekers discard their papers to make removal harder. Cases of sexual and physical violence by asylum seekers have received widespread publicity, among them the murder of Rhiannon Whyte, who was stabbed 23 times with a screwdriver by Deng Majek from Sudan. Majek was later seen on CCTV footage laughing and dancing.
Piddington has a children’s play area and many local families, who worry about the potential danger to them. As the site is planned for use over 10 years, many locals are also deeply concerned about the effect on property prices. The average detached house in the village is worth about £695,000 ($945,000), well above the national average. But who will want to move there if more than a thousand young asylum seekers are wandering around?
International Law Exposes Democracy's Limits
At the heart of this dispute is the question of how far democracy extends. The asylum system is increasingly unpopular, with two of Britain's major parties vowing to exit the European Convention on Human Rights if they win the next election.
That is because international law increasingly binds the hands of national governments. The British Parliament is supposed to be sovereign, yet efforts to tackle illegal immigration have repeatedly been frustrated by international courts. The last Conservative government’s plan to remove illegal immigrants to Rwanda was thwarted at the last moment after a Rule 39 judgment from the European Court of Human Rights blocked flights from taking off.
Nobody in Britain currently doubts that a majority of people do not want asylum seekers housed near them, as shown by the well-attended protests in Bicester against the move. Yet their views are being overruled by a political class that clings to international law, and by international judges who seem determined to favor the rights of asylum seekers over those of local residents.
Anger will keep building at a national level until the political class feels it has no choice but to reject whatever international law prevents small villages like Piddington from having to host large numbers of foreign young men.
