Citizen Power: Shaping the Future of Wethersfield

Ever wonder how citizen power can influence government decisions? Join me, your host Michelle Chapman, and my esteemed guest, Alan McKenzie, Chair of the Field Association, as we delve into how a collective voice can shape the destiny of a community. We'll take you through the birth and mission of the Field Association, an organization formed to counter the proposal of establishing two mega prisons at the Wethersfield Airbase. We'll also shine a light on other groups rallying for the same cause - SWAP, WASC, and Wetherfield Protest. We'll dive into some heated discussions on the pros and cons of a prison and an asylum centre and question whether the size of the proposed asylum centre suits the local community.

Let's examine this closer as we navigate the potential impact of these mega prisons and the proposed mass scale asylum centre on the lives of the local residents of Wethersfield. We will unpack the diverse opinions within this tight-knit community and scrutinize the attempts made by the Home Office to engage with the local populace. Above all, we'll highlight the power of facts and the damage caused by speculations in such a sensitive scenario. Join our conversation and see how a community can become a formidable force in influencing government decisions.

Chapters

• 0:06 Development Challenges at Weathersfield Airfield
• 9:57 Resident Association Power Stop Mega Prisons

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:06

Hello and welcome to the Field Association on AIR. We are a group of residents who are passionate about tackling all aspects of local and national government decisions that affect local communities. In each episode, various members of the Field Association will be exploring a range of subject matters, discussing all the angles of each issue and interviewing those who can add an expert or helpful point of view. So grab yourself a tea or coffee and listening as we look to navigate through these current challenges.

Speaker 2: 0:39

Welcome. My name is Michelle Chapman and I'll be presenting today's podcast, which is the first of a series that we'll be holding over the coming weeks and months to help provide more insight and clarity around the developments at Weathersfield Airfield and other associated topics. So, alan, do you want to introduce yourself?

Speaker 3: 0:57

Sure, I'm Alan McKenzie. For the purposes of this, I'm chair of the Field Association. And well, a little bit of background. I worked in the city or my working life, first as an analyst looking at technology companies. I then did some back bedroom work on motors and acquisitions for those self-same companies, bought an office in London, scotland, and Semi retired now I suppose.

Speaker 2: 1:27

So tell us a bit about the Field Association. When did it form? What was its original purpose?

Speaker 3: 1:33

Well, you have to go back now to well, september 21, if not a little bit before, and that's when the Ministry of Justice decided to reveal that they were interested in building two mega prisons up on the airbase, and that obviously concerned everybody in locality. Given the size it was being proposed two prisons totaling 3,430 inmates would have been the biggest prison complex in the whole of Europe. So it was a bit of activity, with people taking the streets of Weathersfield and being on the television and ITV News Anglia, and a Facebook group was set up at the time with people chatting on that. So not very happy about the prospects. The Ministry of Justice held some presentations locally in the village halls, which didn't go down very well because the people from the MOJ who were representing them really didn't have an appreciation of the area at all, and on the Facebook groups, people wondering what on earth are they going to do.

Speaker 3: 2:46

I happened to say, well, you need to get organised. And from that a number of us went down to the pub, as you do, and decided that we needed to form something more formal and we started looking for names. Banding names about and stop Weathersfield Airfield prison sounded a good catchy tag to have, but when we thought about it, that was a great campaign name, because SWAT was a nice acronym and SWAT was something which could be used in terms of well, we don't want prisons, we want to swap it for something else. So we decided on the Fields Association and we gave the Fields Association a bit of a border remit, not just to be anti-prisons we're not anti-prisons as such, we're just against putting something totally inappropriate up on the airbase, which is out of character with the area and is unsustainable. So we really formed something which was looking at how to offer something that was going to be better not just to Weathersfield but to the surrounding areas, to Essex, and promote that rather than having two mega prisons on an airbase in the middle of nowhere.

Speaker 2: 4:06

So I guess, even though the prisons was the main focus at that point in time, you always had a broader view.

Speaker 3: 4:13

Yes, I think we all needed something in common because now everybody's an individual, everybody has different opinions, everybody has different backgrounds, but we need the commonality of interest. So it was to focus on what could you make of the airbase, what could be good for the community, what was most appropriate for there, because it really isn't an isolated site, so having something huge as a development there is totally inappropriate and unsustainable. So we were looking at things like the Country Park, things that we could do with some of the buildings up there for light industrial purposes, for businesses. There are offices up there which could be utilized. There's a gym up there. I mean, there are plenty of things which could be used for the benefit of the community and we were focusing on that.

Speaker 2: 5:07

Okay. So there seems to be quite a few groups popping up, especially recently. As residents, I think there's a bit of confusion on social media about which groups are doing what and how they're all linked. Can you try and demystify this? So we've got the Fields Association, swap, wasc, the Neighbourhood Plan. We've also got Weatherfield Protest. How are they connected?

Speaker 3: 5:28

Well, the Fields Association is the overarching group for us. It runs the SWAP campaign, which is related to the prisons. That's obviously taken a bit of a diversion with the asylum center which has been proposed by the Home Office now. So there would be a little bit of confusion in terms of well, why do you still have SWAP, why don't you have something else, a different name for it? But in fact the trouble is the Ministry of Justice hasn't gone away.

Speaker 3: 5:54

We know that there are two decisions coming up by Michael Goh's Department of Levelling up on appeals on two prisons elsewhere. And if the Ministry of Justice doesn't get either of those, then Weathersfield is looked upon by the MOJ as a backup site and we could therefore be facing a planning application for the Ministry of Justice and having to fight that alongside the inappropriate asylum center. But we're not against the asylum centers, we're not against asylum seekers. What we're against again is something as big as is proposed. There are 1,700 men up in Weathersfield airbase. It's just too large for the airbase and for the surrounding population. You know there's only 700 people in the village of Weathersfield, so it totally dwarfs them.

Speaker 2: 6:48

Yes, that's quite an interesting point, actually, because one of the things that I've been hearing quite a bit is this Would you rather have you know, would you rather have the prison? Would you rather have the asylum center? And some of the people who seem to be very opposed to the asylum center would be hinting that they would rather have had the prison, as though it's a choice. Does it look like a choice?

Speaker 3: 7:07

No, it's not. It's not a choice. I think an asylum center For a person one of you is probably preferable to a prison at the moment, because an asylum center can always disappear. One day the government might actually get on top of the situation and we can revert back to not having an asylum center there at all. A prison, once it's there, is a huge construct and will be there forever, and it attracts the wrong sort of people to the area as well.

Speaker 2: 7:40

Yeah, so how is the Fields Association connected to the asylum center legal challenge and how's that progressing?

Speaker 3: 7:47

Well, we're obviously supportive of Gabriel Clark Holland, who's leading on the legal challenge on behalf of people locally. We have been encouraging people to donate to the Crowd Justice Platform, which is raising funds for his legal team, and we've been lending as much support as we can to that and just general support for the legal process which is going through and trying to convey to people what's been happening through the court so that they can understand and follow the process too.

Speaker 2: 8:24

So, in terms of finances, how is the Fields Association funded and resourced and how is that money used? Are they connected there, the Fields?

Speaker 3: 8:31

Association is entirely driven by volunteers, so day-to-day expenditure only relates to maintaining the website, the domain names, some emails. There's very little day-to-day expenditure. We've spent money on some bans, for example, the funds which are raised, which have come predominantly from people who are members of the Fields Association and some very generous domers and businesses, those funds have been provided to the Wellesfield Air Base Scrutiny Committee not all of them, but we've been funding some of the consultative work that they've been undertaking, because we work very closely with the Wellesfield Air Base Scrutiny Committee, which is the combination of those 13 parishes who are scrutinising the prisons and are scrutinising the asylum centre proposals, and they undertake a lot of the technical work related to the planning process and are funding some of the consultants that you really do need to counter the Ministry of Justice's consultants that they've employed. Unfortunately, the Home Office has managed to steamroll its way onto the air base without having to go through the similar sort of planning process that the MOJ has, but we have been helping to fund those consultants.

Speaker 2: 9:57

So, in truth, has a residents association got any power to stop either the mega prisons or a mass scale asylum centre? Because it's one of the government's main five priorities is to stop the boat. Sometimes it seems an impossible task.

Speaker 3: 10:11

Yeah, a lot of people have said when the Ministry of Justice came along that it was a done deal. A lot of people will look upon the asylum centre as being in place now as being a done deal. However, good old fashioned people power really does have an effect on people in government, because they don't like being criticised for things which they're helpably doing, which are incorrect. It is just totally wrong to be looking to put huge developments up on that site and it's so easy to criticise and pull apart that once you exact that pressure on those individuals who have the power to make the decisions, it does have an impact. It undoubtedly has an impact and if you keep up that pressure and you do it in a logical, sustained, informed manner, it does have an effect and an impact and you can change this. I was really confident that we would have seen off the Ministry of Justice before this asylum centre came up when you talk about people power.

Speaker 2: 11:25

There's a lot of posts on social media at the moment expressing worrying and starting to argue. Presumably people power relies on people sticking together. What's your personal feeling around?

Speaker 3: 11:37

that I think the asylum centre has brought about a number of people's attention from outside the community onto Weathersfield because it is a very emotive subject. It is a national problem in terms of dealing with asylum seekers and it has grown into a situation where the government seems to be in a panic about it. That attracts attention from all sorts of groups who don't really want to be involved, and we've undoubtedly had quite a number of people who have joined some of the Facebook sites in particular, who are not locals and have a particular opinion, which isn't very welcome and isn't very useful in terms of trying to get across our objections but in a sensible, informed manner. There are certainly in Weathersfield some people who have a diverse of opinion over this as well. It's pretty much more emotive than prisons, quite frankly.

Speaker 2: 12:39

You talk about the objections. What is the Fields Association asking the government to do in relation to Weathersfield airfield? Is there a compromise somewhere to move this forward?

Speaker 3: 12:50

I think if the Home Office had come to the community in Weathersfield and asked whether an asylum centre could be utilised in the airbase and perhaps two to three hundred asylum seekers could be put up there, there wouldn't have been the sort of level of objections that there are now, because the community would have realised that it probably needs to do its bit. It's willing to help out in difficult situations and it could provide some support to the individuals up there. But when you have one thousand seven hundred it totally dwarfs what small individual groups from a small community can do, and I think that's where the Home Office has made a very large mistake. They should have had their site set an awful lot lower and engaged with the community to see what they might have been willing to do beforehand If they go back to that situation, then they might get that support again.

Speaker 2: 14:00

Yes, what do you make of the engagement, because there was obviously a recent meeting at the Village Hall which didn't seem to go well for all parties concerned. How would you like to see the engagement and collaboration going forward? What's your message to the Home Office and to the police?

Speaker 3: 14:15

Well, I think the Home Office made a huge mistake to begin with, because they actually had a directive, which was revealed in court, not to engage with local communities prior to these centres being opened, so they started off on completely the wrong foot to begin with. The engagement so far has been forced upon them to intense and purposes because we have an MP in James Cleveley who's foreign secretary and therefore can exert a bit of pressure behind the scenes in order to get some of the engagement that we've had. The last meeting was a debacle, sadly, and reflected badly on everybody who involved, and I came away feeling quite despondent about the whole thing afterwards. Fortunately, I think people who are involved have rallied a bit and realise that that sort of meeting really can't be held again. But there are other ways of engaging.

Speaker 3: 15:12

The Home Office is going to be issuing, I believe, a weekly update.

Speaker 3: 15:17

We haven't seen it yet, but that might be able to be done.

Speaker 3: 15:21

They might be able to hold meetings, perhaps remotely, for people to log in and listen to what's being said. They really need to be transparent about this because the trouble is there are people who know people and we know people on the air base, we know people in the Home Office. We know people in the MOD and you get these rumours flying around, the speculation, and it's far better for the Home Office to actually grab hold of the narrative, be open and honest about what they're doing and tell people what they're doing and then you don't have all the rumour and speculation about and it calms things down greatly. They should go on to social media. They should get their own Facebook page up and be posting on there on a regular basis and if they see things which are ridiculous being posted on other social media pages locally, they should put up what the facts are and that will give people an ability to actually see that they have some sort of control and understanding of what they're doing up there.

Speaker 2: 16:22

Do you think the lack of facts is the biggest issue? Because it seems like when the facts aren't being clearly presented that the rumours spread and people kind of start making up their own facts. Are you seeing that a lot?

Speaker 3: 16:34

Yeah, there's been a lot of speculation about how much TB was on there. Some of these said they'd heard that there were 50 people with TB. Well, there aren't even 50 asylum seekers up there, as far as I'm aware. If the Home Office has said, look, as part of what we're doing, we have a health centre, we actually have to legally put an isolation centre up there. It makes sense. By the way, we found somebody already who's got latent TB and that's our only case and we're dealing with it. We're giving them antibiotics and there's no problem. I mean, if they capture that sort of narrative, there are positive footing and it gives people confidence that they're actually looking at the situation and got it under control, whereas if it gets out of control in the public arena, on social media, it gets blown out of all proportion and that's the risk that they've got going forward.

Speaker 2: 17:35

We're just coming back to the Fields Association. Then it was nationally praised in a recent GB News interview for the way that it's organised itself to represent residents on all of these difficult issues that it's faced. Have you learned anything that might be helpful to other residents' groups around the country who are facing similar challenges?

Speaker 3: 17:56

I think the secret is you have to be organised. You have to have an entity for a focus to draw people into it. Whether that's a residents association or some other form of organisation, I don't think really matters, but you have to have something to draw people in. You do have to find people who are willing to enable to run the social media side of things. I mean, it's so important to be able to get your message out there and for people to see that message as well. I think we organised ourselves very well to begin with. I mean we organised ourselves into different groups so that people knew what they were doing and concentrated on doing something. We had a direct engagement group so they were writing to MPs or writing to district councillors. We had a social media group which was concentrating on the website and Facebook and Twitter and organising events and gatherings. If you get yourself organised properly and concentrate people on what they do best in little groups, I think that really works very effectively.

Speaker 2: 19:03

And it all sounds a lot of work, though. I mean, how do you keep motivated, how do you find downtime, still work in progress? That one, god, that's a good question, michelle, isn't it?

Speaker 3: 19:17

As you know, I think you have to have some other things which occupy you, I mean, whether it's your family. We've got a small farm here which has a lot of attention needing on it, and we've got a very old house which needs a lot of repair on it. So there needs to be other things which, on occasions, you have to be able to divert yourself away from the focus that you give to campaigning against something that you don't believe in. I think that goes for the rest of the Fields Association as well. I mean, sometimes people get drawn into this so intensely because they believe what's being proposed by a government is so wrong that they're determined to do something to thwart some of these proposals, and they can really concentrate too much on the campaigning and forget that they do need to relax a bit as well.

Speaker 2: 20:22

Yeah, I mean, without a doubt, that that's the difficult part, isn't it? I mean, when you talk about the fact that it's wrong, if you could paint a future picture for Weathersfield Airfield, what would it look like?

Speaker 3: 20:35

Oh well, this is something which is not just for me and the Fields Association. It's going to go out to the residents of Finchingfield and Weathersfield through the Neighbourhood Plan which has just begun. I'm not sure whether it's completely unique, but it might be that the fact that two parishes are combining to produce a combined neighbourhood plan but that encapsulates most of the airfield Most of the airfield is actually in Finchingfield Parish, a bit in Weathersfield, a bit in Sybil heading on, a bit in Toppersfield. But Finchingfield and Weathersfield have combined together to produce a neighbourhood plan which obviously is looking at the villages as a whole, the parishes as a whole, but also there's this opportunity to encapsulate the airbase and what people want on the airbase for its future. So there will be consultations going out asking for feedback from people as to what it is that they would like to see on the airbase and there are a few ideas which are already being put out there.

Speaker 3: 21:54

Obviously, a country park, a heritage area, because there's so much history in relation to World War II and the Cold War up there. Opportunities for encouraging some business up there. There are some existing houses up there from the military. There's a possibility of putting a little bit more housing up there. So it's not all about not building houses and not having houses around, where it is being looked at in sensible manners to what's there and what can be done. So the feedback from the community is going to be very important in this respect. Going forward, alan, that's brilliant.

Speaker 2: 22:31

Thank you so much for giving up your Sunday afternoon to record this and, on behalf of us, the residents, thank you for all your hard work and all your dedication. Know how much you've put into this, and for everyone at home. Thank you for listening. Watch out for the next podcast where we'll be talking to DPG, who are the legal firm who are managing the forthcoming Weathersfield Legal Judicial Review. Thanks for listening. Goodbye and see you soon.

Speaker 1: 22:56

Thanks for listening. We hope that you enjoyed this episode and found it informative. Please make sure that you subscribe to our podcast so you don't miss a single episode. If you have a question that you would like to raise, or if there is a subject that you think would make an interesting episode, please email us on the link below. If you would like to support the show further, you can do so by clicking on the link below as well. Until next time, goodbye.