A PRETTY village branded the “ground zero” of Britain’s illegal immigration crisis is demanding answers over fears a local migrant camp could DOUBLE in size.
Newly-seen documents suggest that 3,510 asylum seekers — up from the 1,256 specified in the official application — could be housed yards from tiny Piddington in Oxfordshire.
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But the Home Office last night insisted that they were just early drafts, despite being dated 2026.
The fresh twist for the 350 villagers battling to halt the arrival of the migrant camp has poured new petrol on an already tense uprising in the most unlikely of places.
Images of men in black balaclavas shutting down the port of Dover for hours last weekend were rightly shocking.
As was footage of the hundreds of local residents spontaneously blocking new boat migrants leaving Portsmouth in the early hours of Monday morning.
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Both scenes pointed to a government losing control over the growing backlash against Britain’s illegal immigration disaster, with ministers and cops braced for further unrest.
PM Andy Burnham insists that all parts of the country “must do their part” to handle the massive influx, despite not a single vote being cast in favour of his ideas.
Yet when people take to the streets, questions of what that means in practice are going to be far harder for the Labour Party to try to bat away with cries of racism.
In this quaint corner of England, the anger is boiling from the ground up and from the most unlikely of revolutionaries.
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“We are definitely ground zero for this problem,” says Piddington parish council chairman Tim McNally.
Softly spoken in a check shirt and trainers, McNally says he used to spend his days “fixing benches, potholes and roads” in this beautiful thatched bend in the road in the rolling hills just north of Oxford.
Now, he references Spartacus and looks to US chief Donald Trump for inspiration.
McNally has spearheaded the campaign against the housing of male asylum seekers in an old Ministry of Defence base some 750 metres away from scores of family homes.
He has even sought to hold a referendum on leaving the UK in a desperate bid to show Westminster how seriously his village objects.
On July 4, America’s Independence Day, he got the nod from 175 locals to push for a full vote in the village, due to be held next week.
And he believes that, despite the ballot on September 15 having no legal bearing, it will help others fight the Government’s new policy of shifting asylum seekers from hotels directly into communities.
With support from around the world, including from Elon Musk, McNally’s campaign lit up the internet this summer, but so far it has fallen on deaf ears at No10.
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And the council leader is still seething with anger over the day his life was turned “upside down”.
That day in July was when the Home Office gave notice that MoD Bicester, a stone’s throw from his house, would be a major test case for asylum accommodation policy.
“This notice says your life’s going to turn upside down, and it was that day I realised we’ve got to do something about this,” he told me just yards from the security fence of the site, which backs on to the local kids’ playground.
“I can’t just sit back and let it happen. We’ve got to find a way forward.
“The village was depressed — mentally, shocked. They felt trapped and they had no way out.”
On the road into the tiny hamlet, signs have gone up declaring this would-be republic a hotbed of resistance. “We talk about Spartacus, right?” says McNally.
“That is the fact that we’ve got others behind me wanting to ensure we’re delivering against this.
“We did this in solidarity for American Independence, respecting their situation 250 years ago.
“And for us, we’re now being shut down in our democracy, and I think it’s a message back to the world.”
Appealing directly for Donald Trump to take up their case, McNally says: “He’s a leader in terms of shoring up and controlling borders, and every man and woman should be able to do the same. We should be in a controlled and safe situation.
“He’s making that his primary statement. We should be doing the same.”
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And McNally warns this revolutionary spirit will spread across the country unless the Government urgently rethinks its proposals.
He adds: “This is giving people the confidence to actually say, ‘I’m going to speak out. We don’t like this’.
“And we have a blueprint on the website which helps other parishes do exactly the same.”
Home Office proposals for the Bicester site are deeply redacted and offer little real insight into who is coming and what safety measures will be put in place for the villagers.
McNally says the 1,256 arrivals face “challenges in their home territory, and I feel actually we have a problem in our home territory because we don’t have any right to examine all of the content that we should be entitled to examine. All avenues for us to review are hidden, and that puts us in a really difficult situation.
“How can a government do this to us? Our children — our children’s lives — are the ones that are being undermined.”
A fresh row has broken out this week after published documents showed the Government had scoped out using the site for 3,510 migrants — more than ten times the population of the village.
The Home Office insists that the number was a preliminary draft published in error, but for the villagers it is yet another chilling element to this dangerous farce.
Joe Marshall, a local resident and planning expert, warns the infrastructure is completely unsuitable and the Home Office is hiding the true costs and potential impact.
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Millions will have to be spent installing power, beds and internet at the camp for the new arrivals.
Oil-fuelled generators, temporary sewage treatment plants and streams of buses risk turning Piddington’s single lanes into a noisy, polluted and dangerous spot.
“We’re expecting there to be some promises,” Joe says, “some risk assessments, some things saying we’ve looked at this and it’s safe.
“And actually, the application is full of inconsistencies. There’s typos.
“And there’s some really crucial documents missing.”
But it goes back to safety, with the young dad warning: “We’re not scared of the high number; what we’re scared about is the low number that may have ill intentions.
“And obviously, if they come out with the intention to do harm or look to satisfy themselves, it’s going to pose a big risk to our village. We’re sitting ducks. The police have come and had a look and said that we’re sitting ducks, and we’ve not been given any reassurances.”
In another bizarre twist, locals have been warned that their streetlights will be turned off between midnight and 5am as part of the county council’s push to reduce its carbon footprint.
Local mum Victoria Hubbocks says: “It doesn’t matter at the moment if the lights get turned off because we all know each other, and if you walk down the street at night you feel safe.
“I go for runs at 5 o’clock in the morning and I don’t feel scared. I will have to change that.
“And having no lights at all is just crazy.”
She warns that the current plans will effectively be a death knell for the village, telling The Sun she is “scared, sad, frightened — all of those things”.
She adds: “I think it effectively takes away my children’s childhood. My eldest is 11 and he’s at the point where he will come down here by himself to walk the dog, and that will no longer be possible.
“I just think it will completely change our lives. This year has been our ‘yes year’ for him.
“We’ve slept outside. We have done all of those things because I don’t believe that we will feel safe enough to do that in the future.”
Local dad Mario Terzino agrees.
“I’ve got an 18-year-old daughter,” he says. “She likes to walk the dog on her own.
“We’ve already had a conversation with her, and she won’t be able to walk the dog on her own if this goes ahead.”
He adds: “We’ve got no shops. We’ve got no public transport. We’ve got no pub. There is nothing here.
“It’s not about who’s going to the base. It’s about the scale. We’re talking about 1,250 people, or males, going into a site which is literally adjacent to our playing field. It’s just bonkers.”
Taking aim at Andy Burnham’s order that everyone has to step up and play their part, Victoria sums up the feeling of betrayal in Piddington: “Step up? Fair enough, but ten men to each woman in Piddington isn’t a fair proportion in any way, shape or form.”
A Home Office spokesman said last night: “It is categorically untrue to suggest we are seeking to house 3,510 people at MoD Bicester.
“As our planning application clearly states, we are considering the site to accommodate up to 1,256 asylum seekers.
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“The concerns of communities are central to our immigration reforms.
“That is why we are closing every asylum hotel and moving asylum seekers into alternative accommodation, including former military sites.”