Truth Social

Now others might follow their example.

Crowborough in Essex is considering a similar referendum. Villagers in Barnham in Suffolk sent a fact-finding mission to Piddington on Tuesday to learn more about what their Oxfordshire counterparts achieved and what it took.

Give it a week and Piddington might start opening up embassies to process the villages keen on copying their publicity-grabbing efforts.

There is still no commitment to host the referendum in Barnham. There are no shops in this gentle, picturesque village. It is so small that the main street is simply called ‘The Street’.

The village hall was preparing for afternoon boules when I stopped by.

But this village has something different to all of the other communities facing the arrival of migrants who have crossed the Channel illegally.

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Barnham is a short drive away from RAF Lakenheath, RAF Mildenhall and RAF Feltwell, key airbases with longstanding links to the US military.

Mildenhall in particular has played a key role in the American war with Iran.

It hosts some 4,000 American military personnel, many of whom are posted to Suffolk with their dependents. The USAF refers to the base as a ‘power projection platform’, with its stratotankers central to the air force’s efforts to refuel fighter jets and bombers that are heading to Persia to drop their payloads.

A few locals here told me what I’d heard recently from a grooming gang victim near Piddington: they would not feel safe to go out at night if thousands of single men from countries with different values to Britain arrived in their area.

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But they also expressed their worries about the arrival of unvetted Iranians into a community that already deals with anti-American protests.

These concerns were best expressed by US Air Force veteran Charles Day.

He shared with me his concerns about the security risk to the US airbases in Suffolk if RAF Barnham becomes a migrant camp.

“Their slogan down there is ‘Death to America’, so they grow up on that. You have to take that into consideration. And to me, it’s a risk not to be taken.”

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Mr Day told me that Trump and Burnham needed to talk about the risk.

‘The President of the United States doesn’t run this country. Doesn’t want to. He loves this country, I’m sure, just like I do. But they need to have a serious discussion about this right here with all these troops.’

Trump has recently told Burnham that he disagrees with his policy on Chagos; now he might be forced to turn his guns on Barnham.

The fears of this veteran are wholly legitimate.

Iran has been caught sending suspected covert operatives via Channel crossings, some of which are managed by the IRGC.

An Iranian official told a newspaper earlier this year this menacing line: ‘These smuggling routes are more important and useful than the missiles for us – we do not need a missile to target London, it’s easier than that.’

And they issued this stark reminder: ‘At the moment we have people right there in London, revolutionary people who care about the world and the lives of children – they wait for us to tell them what to do.

‘We have not done that yet, but we can easily make London unsafe for you if we want to.’

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Suffolk County Councillor Simon Aalders told me that they had discovered that there appears to be no community safety assessment regarding the risk of placing men in this former base.

Cllr Aalders was speaking as two boat crossings evaded detection, with illegal migrants now on the run somewhere in Britain. The people smugglers are adapting to efforts by the French authorities to police the coast, with boats being launched further south and targeting different coastlines.

Smugglers and migrants are also boarding larger vessels, dubbed by GB News as ‘mega dinghies’, as they overcome the police.

It is easy to believe the claims of that Iranian official when you see the success that the smugglers are having. There are signs of military and intelligence support to keep them one step ahead of the state.

Cllr Aalders also claimed that there is disquiet among senior US Air Force personnel.

One high-ranking airman was reportedly shocked to learn what was planned for RAF Barnham.

‘They had no idea that 1,250 illegal fighting age men were going to be placed within a 15-minute drive of RAF Mildenhall. It seems incredible that the British state has not had high-level discussions with the Americans regarding their plans for RAF Barnham, especially considering the Americans are currently in a state of conflict with Iran.’

Aalders also told me that the situation also requires reflection on the safety of British and American service personnel and their families who live in the communities of West Suffolk.

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‘We don’t know what plans are in place to help service personnel stay safe but surely it is incumbent upon the government to make sure that the families of servicemen and women are safe while the country calls upon them to put themselves in danger in a foreign field.’

Now that’s a risk assessment I would not want to be tasked with.

Because the threat is real and has already been responded to with force at the highest level of British state security.

Last May, seven Iranians were arrested in two major counter-terrorism operations.

Footage in Rochdale showed counter-terror cops and what appeared to be soldiers removing a suspect from a house. Another was seen being detained on a street in Swindon.

In October 2025, Director-General of MI5 Ken McCallum said that British intelligencers had tracked ‘more than 20 potentially lethal Iran-backed plots’ over the year.

So who in Whitehall thought it would be a good idea to plonk over 1,000 men, many of them surely from Iran, in a quiet county packed with American military activity?

Since Keir Starmer gave Donald Trump permission to fly bombing missions out of the UK soon after the start of the war, Iran has announced that bases used by Americans were “legitimate targets.”

Britain still boasts some of the finest security services in the world. They are bolstered by intelligence-sharing efforts from allies who have deep penetration inside Tehran and the murderous regime.

Israel’s Mossad is chief among those allied agencies with such a specialism, but that relationship is weakening after Andy Burnham and Ed Milliband hardened the government’s stance against settlements in the West Bank and Israel’s war with Hamas in Gaza.

You only need to ask British Jews about the seriousness of being threatened by Iran. Groups claiming support from the regime have announced responsibility for a string of attacks of Jewish people and institutions this year.

The state responded to the terrorism with bolstered security.

Now officials need to get ahead of this looming threat before Tehran capitalises on the opportunities afforded by the migrant camp that Barnham does not want.