Location of the Gatwick No Border Camp disclosed — 20–23rd September

The organ­is­ers of the Gatwick Area No Bor­der Camp have announced the loca­tion of their camp site. The rent­ed field is locat­ed near the vil­lage of Sal­fords, Sur­rey, which lies approx­i­mate­ly 3 miles south of Red­hill on the A23 road that runs between Lon­don to Brighton. The site is close to both the M23 and Sal­fords Train Sta­tion.

The organ­is­ers of the Gatwick Area No Bor­der Camp have announced the loca­tion of their camp site. The rent­ed field is locat­ed near the vil­lage of Sal­fords, Sur­rey, which lies approx­i­mate­ly 3 miles south of Red­hill on the A23 road that runs between Lon­don to Brighton. The site is close to both the M23 and Sal­fords Train Sta­tion.

The protest camp, to be held between the 20th and 23rd of this month, is part of a cam­paign to stop the build­ing of a new deten­tion cen­tre at Gatwick Air­port. The four days of action will see demon­stra­tions in Craw­ley, Croy­don and Gatwick, as well as numer­ous work­shops and activ­i­ties on var­i­ous migra­tion- and deten­tion-relat­ed issues.

A spokes­woman from No Bor­ders UK, the net­work organ­is­ing the protest camp, said, “We were lucky to find the land in time. We have paid the rent and sent a Tem­po­rary Event Notice to the local author­i­ties and are in the process of arrang­ing oth­er logis­tics.”

Police have report­ed­ly been going around call­ing on farm­ers in the Sal­fords area, includ­ing the own­er of the camp site, ask­ing if they were let­ting the No Bor­der Camp use their land. “They have appar­ent­ly been try­ing hard to stop this camp,” Lisa Mor­gan added. “This is sim­ply a vio­la­tion of peo­ple’s right to protest and assem­bly.”

Camp organ­is­ers today called on local res­i­dents and hand­ed them a let­ter inform­ing them of the camp and invit­ing them to take part. The let­ter, which con­tained details about the camp, its aims and pro­gramme, said “We expect the media and local author­i­ties to dis­tort the truth and present us as ‘trou­ble­mak­ers’. Come and see for your­selves and take part in our activ­i­ties, and see why we are here and what we want to achieve. It is not our inten­tion to cause any dis­rup­tion or dis­tur­bance for the local com­mu­ni­ties or busi­ness­es.”

A new pur­pose-built immi­gra­tion deten­tion cen­tre is planned at Gatwick Air­port as part of the gov­ern­men­t’s five-year strat­e­gy for asy­lum and immi­gra­tion. The prison, to be called Brook House, is due to open in 2008 and will have a total capac­i­ty of 426 places for male and female detainees. It is being devel­oped by BAA Lyn­ton on behalf of the Air­port Prop­er­ty Part­ner­ship. BAA Lyn­ton had devel­oped the exist­ing cen­tre at Gatwick, Tins­ley House, in a sim­i­lar way. The gov­ern­ment has already seen the ‘ben­e­fits’ of locat­ing ‘removal cen­tres’ close to air­ports, with oper­a­tions at Colnbrook and Har­mondsworth, near Heathrow, and Tins­ley House at Gatwick.

There are 10 so-called Immi­gra­tion Removal Cen­tres in the UK. Sev­en are run by pri­vate com­pa­nies con­tract­ed by the Home Office’s Bor­der and Immi­gra­tion Agency (pre­vi­ous­ly the Immi­gra­tion and Nation­al­i­ty Direc­torate), while three are run by the Prison Ser­vice. As of July 2007, these pris­ons have a total capac­i­ty of 2,506. How­ev­er, the Labour gov­ern­ment, which inher­it­ed 700 places when it took office in 1997, is aim­ing for a total of 4,000 places. In addi­tion, there are many so-called Short-term Hold­ing Facil­i­ties at many ports and air­ports through­out the coun­try as well as at a num­ber of Immi­gra­tion Report­ing Cen­tres.

Web­site: http://noborders.org.uk
Mail­inglist: https://lists.riseup.net/www/info/gatwick07