Weston Town scraps sanctuary plans for asylum seekers.
Plans to establish a Council of Sanctuary in Weston-super-Mare, which would have directed asylum seekers and refugees to services, have been cancelled.
The municipal council accepted a motion to pursue the reward in March, but the decision has since come under severe criticism amid increasing anti-immigrant protests this summer.
On Monday night, more than 100 protestors opposed the idea gathered outside the meeting, chanting “send them home” in the crowd.
Caroline Reynolds, the Liberal Democrat councillor who first proposed the proposal, said she was “disappointed” and said councillors had been persuaded by “misinformation and misunderstanding”.
Labour town councillor James Clayton refuted this, saying: “We don’t need a badge, we don’t need a certificate, we are a welcoming town, we’ve proven that historically, and we’ll continue to prove it in the future.”
More than 100 municipalities, including Bath and Bristol, have already signed up for the charity City of Sanctuary UK’s project. Councillor Clayton said that joining “would bind us to rules and expectations written elsewhere,” but the charity stated that it does not tell authorities what to do.
The award aims to make it simpler for asylum seekers and refugees to settle in the area by providing training and support through a network of local authorities that have already signed up.
Being a part of the project, which costs £150 for three years, does not guarantee that more asylum seekers will arrive in the area, as the government decides where people should be placed on a national level.
‘Loud minority’
The local Reform UK group, which does not have any councillors in the town, took up the campaign against the idea. “I’m concerned about the town,” said a protester named Matt outside the meeting.
“There’s a lot of unvetted people coming in, and we don’t want them here. We can be welcoming, but we don’t want to squander resources on a group of unvetted individuals.”
“People have been led to believe that the council of sanctuary will bring more people to Weston Town Council, which is simply not true,” Ms Reynolds told BBC Radio Bristol on Tuesday morning.
Despite her sadness, she remained “hopeful” because a “loud minority has woken up the compassionate majority of our beautiful town”.
Alison Bancroft, of The Other Place community centre in Weston-super-Mare, warned the meeting that “the message delivered to our community tonight will have far-reaching consequences.” In an interview with the BBC, she stated, “It’s incredibly hard, seeing what’s happening on the streets of Weston.
People are feeling less and less safe.” For a group of councillors to claim that this is a welcoming environment demonstrates a terrible lack of understanding of what it means to be visually different in this community.
The way the scheme was proposed in March was heavily criticised by Mr Clayton, who said Ms Reynolds had “steamrolled” the process and left councillors with less than a week to consider the ramification of signing up to the Council of Sanctuary award – an accusation Ms Reynolds emphatically denied.
“What I’m against is for an external organisation to dictate to Weston-super-Mare how we should behave or how we should demonstrate our compassion,” claimed Mr Clayton.
“We already know how to look after one another, we already understand what it means to be a good neighbour and just signing up to a scheme is replacing general local goodwill with ticking boxes and bureaucracy,” he further explained.
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