The Oxfordshire village planning to declare independence from Britain: As furious locals hit out at plans to dump 1,250 single male asylum seekers on them, ROBERT HARDMAN reveals extraordinary measures they're taking

Published: 00:59, 18 July 2026 | Updated: 00:59, 18 July 2026 The nearest shop is three miles away and there are no amenities beyond some swings and a playing field. Yet, apart from a pop-up traveller site, the 350 residents of the Oxfordshire village of Piddington seem pretty happy about life. Or at least they were until they woke up three weeks ago to be told that the population will shortly be quadrupling. The Home Office suddenly announced it was preparing to house 1,250 asylum seekers on the old Ministry of Defence storage facility on the edge of the village. A week later, a Home Office ‘factsheet’ revealed that these will all be ‘single adult males’. Oh, and they will be able to come and go, day and night, on a ‘sign in/sign out’ basis. So what sort of consultation preceded the announcement? None at all. If this sounds like an increasingly familiar story of everyday life in rural Britain, what has happened next is not. Instead of the usual community response – noisy but futile protests and petitions – Piddington has gone down a different route. It has just voted overwhelmingly for a referendum to seek independence from the United Kingdom. At four square miles, Piddington is already larger than two national territories, Monaco and the Vatican As the leader of this Piddington separatist movement points out, past experience elsewhere shows that there is no way that the Government will let a few pesky villagers block the reallocation of Government-owned property. However, since the state is happy to acknowledge the rights of undocumented strangers to insist on coming here, then it presumably has to acknowledge the rights of fully documented, taxpaying residents to insist on leaving. There is even talk of becoming a very small 51st state of the USA – or else a principality. Ring any bells? Back in 1949, Ealing Studios was nominated for an Oscar for its charming comedy, Passport To Pimlico. Starring Stanley Holloway and Margaret Rutherford, it tells the story of a pocket of London which declares independence from Britain after discovering a trove of buried treasure. This reveals an ancient document showing that Pimlico is still, legally, part of 15th-century Burgundy – and is, thus, exempt from post-war rationing. Much hilarity follows. There is a similar sense of the absurd here in Piddington, until you take a step back. After all, the incoming Prime Minister, Andy Burnham, likes to paint himself as the high priest of devolution and proud opponent of ‘the Westminster way of doing things’. How can he object? The Labour Government is already trying to give away the British-owned Chagos Islands, with a £1 billion dowry thrown in. Only this week, we have quietly handed over many key elements of British sovereignty over Gibraltar – including passport control and defence policy – to Spain. Surely, if Piddington wants to decolonise itself from the imperial regime of Westminster, Our Andy will not stand in its way? At four square miles, Piddington is already larger than two national territories, Monaco and the Vatican. And is Pixit – as I suppose we should call it – any more absurd than the prospect of a man being elected to Parliament wearing a dustbin on his head? So I have come down to Piddington – carrying my passport, just in case – to test the waters. Instead of the usual community response – noisy but futile protests and petitions – Piddington has gone down a different route, voting for a referendum to seek independence from the UK I notice very quickly that it feels different from the other asylum centre hotspots I have covered in places like Epping, Runcorn, the Isle of Dogs and Crowborough in East Sussex. First, Piddington is not festooned with flags on lampposts. Mind you, there are not many lampposts hereabouts, which is one of so many reasons why people are fearful of an influx of 1,250 strange men: how many women will want to walk these lanes alone at night? Another unusual feature of this story is the lack of howling rage. The village has seen that shouting and screaming achieves very little except to incur mutterings of ‘racism’. Here in Piddington – a pretty village with a Norman church just to the north of Midsomer Murders country – the strategy is to craft a cool, calculated response. And that is being orchestrated through the bottom rung of the democratic pyramid, the parish council. Locals tell me that they have little faith in their local (Lib Dem) MP, who has proclaimed that Piddington is ‘the wrong site’ for the asylum centre while signing a letter in support of the asylum seekers. Cherwell District Council (also Lib Dem) has voiced ‘serious concerns’ about the plans. Yet it has not formally opposed the scheme and merely refers me to the Home Office when I seek further comment. Fence-sitting seems the order of the day. ‘The MP held a meeting where lots of people said they are not happy about all this. But no one is coming up with a plan,’ says Tim McNally, chairman of Piddington Parish Council. ‘So we have come up with one ourselves.’ We are often told that parish councils can’t do much but this one has certainly got the bit between its teeth. As soon as the news was announced, Mr McNally, a management consultant, arranged a meeting of all his councillors plus those from surrounding parishes. ‘A lot of them seemed to have given up already and were listing all the things they couldn’t do,’ he says. ‘So we decided to get organised. The first thing was to get Piddington on the map.’ On July 3, residents were invited to a packed open meeting in the village hall where there was instant unanimity on the sheer madness of the asylum centre scheme. Observing that the following day was July 4, the 250th anniversary of the US seceding from Great Britain, Mr McNally asked if people would like to attempt something similar. There was an instant roar of approval followed by a resolution: all 200 villagers over the age of 18 would be asked if they would like to proceed to a proper referendum. The following day, a ballot box was placed next to the hall – under the watchful eye of CCTV – and the villagers cast their votes. ‘It was almost unanimous,’ says Mr McNally. ‘We had 178 saying “yes”, seven saying “no” – and one invitation to a barn dance.’ He stresses that this is not yet a vote to leave but a resounding endorsement of Piddington’s intention to hold a proper referendum. The parish council is now sourcing pro bono legal advice from the offers of support which have come pouring in from all over Britain – and the US, too. Here in Piddington – a pretty village with a Norman church just to the north of Midsomer Murders country – the strategy is to craft a cool, calculated response Assuming the referendum goes the way everyone expects, the village will send a delegation to the American Embassy to seek talks on possible secession. ‘We want President Trump to know about this,’ Mr McNally adds. After all, you do not need state approval to hold a referendum, as we have seen with recent separatist plebiscites in Catalonia and Venice. As for border control, Piddington already has some nice white fencing on either side of all the entry points into the village. They are designed to make cars slow down. It would be easy to add a lifting barrier. I arrive at Mr McNally’s house, in a converted farm building, to find the campaign team in fighting form – and growing. Electronics engineer Mario Terzino, for example, is a past parish councillor who is in charge of online communications. Planning consultant Joe Marshall is digging deep into the shortcomings of the Home Office plans and points to proven examples of radioactive and asbestos contamination on the site (a new half-hour video released by an activist trespasser features creepy footage of vast hangars with asbestos panels falling off the roof, three dozy guards doing nothing and a ghostly passenger train, marooned on a stretch of MoD railway, full of curious rubbish). Former motorsport boss Ian Phillips and wife Samantha, an ex-fashion editor, are helping with the media message. Samantha speaks for many women in the village when she says: ‘We will have 1,250 men, many from cultures which have been shown to have very different views towards women, cooped up with nothing to do. Do you think I am going to feel safe walking the dog on my own?’ Mr Terzino says he is so worried about the safety of his 18-year-old daughter that the family are thinking of renting a flat for her elsewhere. The Home Office is promising that all arrivals at the centre will be subject to ‘checks against policing and immigration databases’. As Mr McNally points out: ‘What use is that when, four weeks ago, the Home Office admitted it can’t be sure who these people actually are or even their age?’ All point out that many concerns would evaporate if the site was a secure unit, pointing out that HM Prison Bullingdon is just round the corner and has just doubled in size – with minimal local opposition. The group are well aware that the powers that be would be thrilled to link them to Reform or Restore or something darker. No one, however, seems to be a member of anything. Surely, if Piddington wants to decolonise itself from the imperial regime of Westminster, Our Andy will not stand in its way? Mr McNally says he has already had a visit from the Lib Dem MP, Calum Miller, who ‘seemed very keen to find out all he could about my background’. Mr Miller had also asked that the Piddington campaigners sign a ‘charter of behaviour’ whereby everyone promised to be nice to everyone. They declined, not least because of the inference that the locals – not the 1,250 strangers – are the problem. Mr Miller has been approached for comment. Mr Terzino is alert to potential troublemakers – from both Left and Right – trying to infiltrate the group’s Facebook page and is vetting applicants. While there has recently been a small protest in the nearby town of Bicester – where anti-migrant campaigners squared up to a counter-demo from Stand Up To Racism – Piddington is using different tactics. Next weekend, the whole village will gather on the Jubilee Reserve, its playing field, where children will be encouraged to decorate a big ‘Piddington’ sign modelled on the ‘Hollywood’ one in California – right next to the proposed asylum centre. Local farmer Alison Wynne has planted a huge ‘No To Bicester MOD Asylum Centre Here’ hoarding in her field next to the B4011 main road next to the site entrance. As you drive further on, there are three signs in quick succession. ‘One points to the right saying “Kids Playing Field”’, she says. ‘The second points to the left saying “Asylum Centre”. The third says simply: “Really?” ‘We were starting to think about selling up and downsizing,’ says Alison, who runs her small farm and landscaping business with her husband, Mervyn. ‘But we’ve had to completely rethink our life plan. Because we’re stuck here.’ I bump into another local farmer, Richard Priddle, 76, bringing in the harvest on his 800 acres. He raises the crucial issue of resources. ‘We already have a water shortage here in summer with 350 people. How on earth will the system cope with another 1,250?’ he asks. He says he doesn’t even want to think about the question of sewage. That sense of despair with government extends to the local authority. I arrive in the village to see convoys of lorries streaming on to a field next to the existing traveller site, right opposite the proposed asylum centre. They are spreading tons of rubble to create new pitches. There has been no planning permission (or even an application) to do this. Yet Cherwell District Council seems unconcerned, in the same way – say locals – that there was no enforcement when the same lot filled in a pond full of (endangered) great crested newts. ‘One councillor has been very helpful but the rest are nowhere to be seen,’ says Mr McNally. Almost every villager has a story of nitpicking council jobsworths quick to interfere with bona fide planning applications. It is hard to overstate the sense of resentment engendered by this sort of two-tier regime. Still, I do unearth one fan of the asylum centre. When I venture on to the travellers’ site, to some consternation, a man in a vest comes to the gate. I ask him if he shares the villagers’ concerns about the 1,250 new arrivals. ‘Well, the village wasn’t very welcoming to us,’ he says in a pronounced Irish accent. ‘So I say: live and let live.’ Unlike Passport To Pimlico, I sense this story is not going to have a happy ending.