Encompass Harmondsworth – Finish Immigration Detention – Saturday eleventh July 2015
As a boy I spent a lot of my leisure time biking round south-west Middlesex, both by myself or with a few mates exploring each the quiet lanes and busy roads such because the A4 Bathtub Highway, then heavy with site visitors, most of which now prefers the M4 a mile or so to the north right here.
As we got here to Longford we got here to the Peggy Bedford, a pub on the junction the place the Colnbrook Bypass, which had been opened in 1929 to take site visitors away from the slender streets of quiet villages of Longford and Colnbrook. The streets have been nonetheless pretty slender again within the Nineteen Fifties (and stay so) however the quiet was then usually changed as planes taking off or touchdown at Heathrow, a stone’s throw away, thundered overhead. And what had been annoying however bearable within the age of propeller-driven plane quickly grew to become deafening as these have been changed by jets.
The Peggy Bedford was a typical fake-tudor constructing of 1930, full with mock half-timbering and exaggerated chimneys, however the title (and licence) had a protracted historical past, courting again to a tavern round half a mile west in Longford, The Kings Head Inn. This was the primary of a protracted string of teaching inns via Longford and Colnbrook the place coaches out of London picked up their second change of horses, having made their first change in one of many hundred inns of Hounslow Excessive Avenue.
In 1782 Peggy Bedford was certainly one of six kids born to the licensee of the inn, and later she owned and ran it from 1807 till her demise in 1859. All of the locals got here to name the pub by her title, and it grew to become often known as the Peggy Bedford, although formally nonetheless the Kings Head. When the bypass was constructed, the brewers realised it could bypass the pub, closed it and constructed a brand new pub on the junction and have been persuaded by its patrons to formally title it so. For some time within the ’30s it was a well-liked roadhouse for a few of London’s idle younger good set, who would drive out and race alongside the bypass. And when it was pulled down – to some native disgust – in 1995 the title was given to the McDonalds which changed it.
After we selected to take the bypass – a somewhat smoother and sooner journey for us too – we quickly handed on the north facet of the Bathtub Highway a authorities website – The Highway Analysis Laboratory. A monument on Moor Lane on the north of this massive website now data “Assessments carried out by the Highway Analysis Laboratory in opposition to mannequin dams constructed on this website throughout 1940 – 42 assisted Barnes Wallis in his improvement of the bouncing bomb (Repairs), utilized by No. 617 Squadron Royal Air Power to breach the Ruhr Dams 16/17 Might 1943.” However the primary enterprise of the RRL was to search out methods to make roads sooner and safer for automobiles and lorries – if somewhat much less protected for pedestrians and cyclists.
The RRL moved out to Crowthorne within the late Sixties and the a part of this website closest to Bathtub Highway is now the location of two of the UK’s heinous immigration prisons, Harmonsdsworth and Colnbrook Immigration Elimination Centres (now collectively known as Heathrow Immigration Elimination Centre.) An space behind them is in use by BT.
It was outdoors the detention centres on the Bathtub Highway that I met with a big group of people that had come from London by underground to Heathrow terminal 5 after which a neighborhood bus to protest in opposition to the unfair therapy of asylum seekers and refugees, together with some nonetheless being held underneath the Quick-Monitor system then just lately discovered illegal by the Excessive Courtroom.
The current change of title of those prisons from ‘detention centres’ to ‘immigration elimination centres’ makes clear that the federal government’s intention is to not correctly examine asylum claims however to easily deport these making them as quick as they’ll. Though the ‘quick monitor’ system, designed to make it unattainable for individuals to correctly battle their case to remain has now been declared unlawful, these held within the centre are nonetheless underneath risk of being bundled onto a aircraft and not using a correct probability to current their case.
This protest at Europe’s largest detention centre complicated was the eighth organised there by the Motion for Justice, who’ve additionally organised protests at different immigration prisons together with Yarls Wooden. MfJ have additionally labored with many detainees while they’re contained in the centres, offering help and stopping many instances of untimely deportation. Thanks largely to the efforts of them and different our bodies which additionally work with detainees many have finally been launched and allowed to stay within the UK, and most of these participating within the protest have been former detainees.
Safety had been stepped up vastly on the Heathrow centre since some earlier protests and police and safety employees confined the protesters to an space in entrance of the administration block, effectively away from the place detainees are held. However the protest made plenty of noise, shouting and dancing with megaphones and a small public handle system, and telephone calls with the detainees confirmed they might be clearly heard inside.
Detainees aren’t held underneath the identical circumstances as prisoners in jail, although the Colnbrook centre is constructed and largely run on jail traces. However whereas making an attempt to argue their instances the detainees want cellphones to attempt to contact their authorized advisers and MFJ have been in a position to contact a few of them and amplify their messages to the protest.
After a prolonged protest in entrance of the Harmondsworth administration constructing the protesters moved off and walked down a public footpath that runs beside the 20ft fence on the east of the Colnbrook blocks. Right here they have been a lot nearer to the individuals inside however the tall fence, a hedge and a few timber prevented us from seeing them on the home windows. However once more they might be contacted by telephone and advised these outdoors in regards to the poor circumstances and therapy they have been experiencing and gave profuse because of the individuals outdoors who had come to go to them.
Lastly the protesters determined it was time to start their hour and a half journey again into central London and I stated goodbye to begin my shorter journey dwelling.
Extra on My London Diary: Encompass Harmondsworth.
Tags: A4, asylum seekers, Barnes Wallis, Bathtub Highway, Colnbrook, Colnbrook Bypass, detainees, finish immigration detention, quick monitor, former detainees, Harmondsworth, Heathrow, Hillingdon, immigrants, immigration jail, Immigration Elimination Centre, London, Longford, MfJ, Middlesex, Motion for Justice, Peggy Bedford, peter Marshall, protest, Highway Analysis Laboratory, Encompass Harmondsworth
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