The Green Party has said the Conservatives “are attempting to look just as cruel as Reform”
Kemi Badenoch’s suggestion that asylum seekers should be housed in camps instead of hotels has been slammed by historian Dr Tessa Dunlop.
The Tory leader made the comments yesterday while meeting locals in Epping, an area where there have recently been anti-migrant and far-right protests outside an asylum hotel.
Dunlop condemned Badenoch’s choice of the word “camp”, recalling Britain’s role in establishing the world’s first concentration camps during the Boer War in South Africa in 1900.
On the Jeremy Vine show, the historian said: “And how dare we revert to using that word camp, which got us unstuck way back in 1900 when we shoved Afrikaners and black people in South Africa into camps and they died in their thousands.”
Dunlop explained that this happened in the Boer War, “the first time concentration camp was coined as a phrase”.
She added: “Let us just then forward wind much more recently to Bibby Stockholm, another version of a camp, where legionella disease… by the way because the camps in Southern Africa in the Boer War, the reason people died was because of disease.
“Once again we had it much more recently [in Bibby Stockholm].”
The barge was used to house asylum seekers up until January 2025. In August 2023, everyone living on the boat was evacuated after Legionella bacteria was found in the on-board water system.
Refugee Action has called Badenoch’s comments “deeply troubling”.
Chief executive of Refugee Action, Tim Naor Hilton, said: “It’s deeply troubling that our political leaders appear to be in a race to the bottom for who can treat people seeking asylum the most cruelly.
“It is creating an incendiary atmosphere in our communities that is emboldening dangerous far-right groups and leading to racist attacks on people seeking asylum.
“Hostile policies and rhetoric must stop now. People must be treated with dignity and housed properly in our communities so they can rebuild their lives in peace.”
Imran Hussain, Director of External Affairs at Refugee Council, said: “The answer to failed asylum hotels isn’t failed asylum camps. Large camps are not only more expensive to the taxpayer than hotels, as the Government’s own spending watchdog found last year, they also risk isolating people who have fled persecution and violence in war-torn countries like Sudan and Afghanistan.”
Green Party MP for Brighton Pavilion, Siân Berry, said: “The Conservatives are attempting to look just as cruel as Reform. The Reform mayor Andrea Jenkyns suggested putting asylum seekers in tents back in May and now it seems the idea has been copied by Kemi Badenoch.”
Berry said the comments are “all part of an ongoing narrative that seeks to dehumanise asylum seekers and refugees and stoke division in our communities”.
She added: “Those who occupy the far right of politics in the UK seem to have abandoned any sense of basic humanity. Many of those coming to this country seeking asylum include mothers with their children fleeing terrible trauma. As a nation we have a duty to offer compassion and safe sanctuary to those fleeing persecution and violence.”
Olivia Barber is a reporter at Left Foot Forward
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