At the launch of a crackdown on knife crime in Birmingham<\/a> on Thursday, Mahmood said she wanted to distinguish between legitimate concerns felt by Piddington residents over a large-scale asylum centre and extremists who were \u201chijacking\u201d community concerns.<\/p>\n \u201cI understand the anxiety of local people when they\u2019re about to see a change to their community. But it is important to distinguish that anxiety, where reasonable people can have a conversation, and the far right and outright racists like Danny Thomas walking into town, hijacking an issue and then using that to divide our communities,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n \u201cTheir behaviour is completely unacceptable. And where they break the law, they will face the full force of the law.\u201d<\/p>\n Residents of Piddington, Oxfordshire, voted overwhelmingly to become an independent state in a symbolic \u2018referendum\u2019. Photograph: Joe Giddens\/PA<\/p>\n Piddington\u2019s local population registered their opposition<\/a> to the proposed asylum facility on Wednesday, casting 285 votes against 26 in a symbolic ballot to leave the UK and seek self-determination.<\/p>\n The parish has been approached by hundreds of other town and village councillors and residents for advice on replicating the campaign, which was backed by the Conservatives, Reform UK and the Liberal Democrats.<\/p>\n Thomas visited Piddington the day after the vote. He was dressed in a grey suit and white shirt and was not accompanied by people wearing balaclavas.<\/p>\n Joe Marshall, a parish councillor, said it was a private visit and Thomas was due to be given a tour of the village and a cup of tea by a resident.<\/p>\n \u201cIt is a closed meeting. We will engage with them and walk them around the village and have a cup of tea,\u201d he said. \u201cWe have also had an open invitation to Reform, Labour, Conservatives and Restore to visit.\u201d<\/p>\n Marshall said it was not clear that villagers would want security assistance from men in balaclavas, if it were offered. \u201cThis is a mild-mannered place,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n Piddington, Oxfordshire; MoD Bicester, the proposed site for the asylum camp, can be seen in the background. Photograph: Joe Giddens\/PA<\/p>\n Thomas visited the village hall briefly and later visited the entrance to the Ministry of Justice camp where the asylum seekers are scheduled to be housed. In an interview broadcast on YouTube with Dan Wootton, he said he had spoken to three residents.<\/p>\n \u201cThe people we are meeting are just normal mothers, normal grandmothers, normal men,\u201d Thomas said. \u201cWe have to start somewhere. Right now there are no men in that camp. We are going to put a legal, lawful plan in place to help this community in a way that has never been done before.\u201d<\/p>\n Asked how she would respond to Piddington residents after the vote, Mahmood said: \u201cI want to reassure the residents of Piddington that actually our experience from other large sites where we already have, asylum seekers accommodated, whether that\u2019s in Wethersfield<\/a> or Crowborough<\/a>, is that putting all facilities on to one site is actually the best way to manage pressures for local communities.<\/p>\n \u201cOur experience of other large sites where we are housing asylum seekers is that we\u2019re able to put on that site more of the facilities that asylum seekers need. It\u2019s a relatively self-contained facility, and the knock-on pressure to those local areas, I don\u2019t think we\u2019re going to see.\u201d<\/p>\n Mahmood said she understood the anxiety of people in the countryside towards large groups of asylum seekers, but she pointed out that many people in inner-city areas such as her Birmingham constituency had similar concerns.<\/p>\n \u201cI do understand the anxiety that people feel, when they\u2019re about to see a change in their community or they are reading misinformation on the internet, or when they\u2019re just concerned that a village is about to have a facility nearby that maybe they think may pose them some challenges,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n \u201cI also hear that concern from communities such as mine, where there are large numbers of HMOs [houses of multiple occupation] and accommodation in which asylum seekers are held as well. There is concern across every type of community. Not just in the countryside or in those sorts of areas, but in inner-city areas as well.\u201d<\/p>\n skip past newsletter promotion<\/a>Free newsletter |Every day<\/p>\n Sign up to Headlines UK<\/p>\n Get the day\u2019s headlines and highlights emailed direct to you every morning<\/p>\n after newsletter promotion<\/p>\n Shabana Mahmood said she understood \u2018the anxiety of local people when they\u2019re about to see a change to their community\u2019. Photograph: Gareth Fuller\/PA<\/p>\n Thomas and his supporters recently coordinated<\/a> disruptive protests in Dover and Portsmouth, where masked supporters blocked roads and attempted to intercept newly arrived people.<\/p>\n On Thursday, Mahmood summoned police chiefs and urged them to improve their intelligence gathering and use all powers at their disposal, including new laws that allow for a blanket ban on face coverings at a designated location.<\/p>\n Hampshire police then sought to impose the ban on Saturday as an anti-asylum demonstration<\/a> took place in Thomas\u2019s home town of Portsmouth. Thomas urged his supporters to stay away.<\/p>\n A former bodyguard for Stephen Yaxley-Lennon, also known as Tommy Robinson<\/a>, Thomas established his anti-immigration movement after serving a prison sentence for attempted kidnapping.<\/p>\n In an interview with Robinson, broadcast on Friday night, he said: \u201cHow powerful would it be if 5,000 men \u2026 surround the [Piddington] camp. We take tents. We sit there for days and we don\u2019t let them [the asylum seekers] get in. And then we reinforce [the blockade] with members from the north, from Scotland, from Ireland.\u201d<\/p>\n In the interview, Thomas said he was not racist and welcomed people of other nationalities into his organisation. \u201cRacism within our organisation is just not acceptable. That is the stance we have. We are not a white nationalist movement. I have friends that are black.\u201d<\/p>\n Thomas has been approached for comment.<\/p>\n Mahmood made her comments as she launched an anti-knife crime programme. More than 230 areas affected by knife crime will share \u00a326.25m to pay for police patrols, CCTV and early-prevention work as part of a knife-crime crackdown across 27 police forces in England and Wales.<\/p>\n Each area, roughly the size of 10 football pitches, will receive more police patrols, alongside programmes designed for young people most at risk of being a victim or a perpetrator of knife crime. Action in small, targeted areas was the most effective way of driving down knife crime, the Home Office said.<\/p>\n Mahmood launched the initiative at the Acocks Green boxing gym in south Birmingham, which plays a role in the local area in supporting vulnerable young people to stay away from crime. She was joined by the anti-knife campaigners Lynne Baird<\/a>, Lorraine Jones Burrell and Pooja Kanda<\/a>. Each has lost a child to knife crime.<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/1789695371_32_500.jpg\")
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