Community of Portland March Together to say: No Barge – Refugees are Welcome Here!

Around 100 people took to the streets outside Portland Port this weekend to voice support for adequate provision for refugees while opposing the immigrant barge being foisted upon the communities of Weymouth and Portland. This was at the same time as a hate march that showed the grizzly underside of the community.

Meeting at the gates outside of the Langham Industries owned Portland Port on Saturday, key community leaders and members of the public came to show solidarity with refuges. Local trades union leaders such as Ali Chown of the National Education Union, Becci Brookman of Unison and Secretary of the Dorset TUC Jenny Lennon-Wood spoke of the unethical behaviour of the port in taking the barge for several million Pounds’ profit. 

The Langham family who own the port are known far right activists, supporting the Conservative Party’s Brexit programme and lesser political parties like UKIP. It is of no surprise that they are willing to take the King’s Shilling to pack up to 500 traumatised immigrants, two each in cabins the size of a car parking space. 

Many of those attending have got together to create a welcoming environment for the victims being packed onto the barge. Amongst other things, moves are afoot to invite them to a music event and to gather at a community centre close to the port during their stay. Dorset Councillors and Portland Town Council are working behind the scenes to try to get adequate health provision not just for the victims on the barge but for the community as a whole. 

As a signifier of these efforts, the march ended at Portland Community Hospital. Many of those at the march put up a huge fight to successfully keep the community hospital when it was at risk of closure. Now woefully under-utilised as the local Tories try to close it as quietly as possible, it would be an ideal location to provide health and social care to the victims on the barge as well as the wider Portland community. 

A Word on the Haters 

At the same time as the ‘good folks’ march, there was a gathering of haters. Observing their comments online, suggesting amongst other things that the barge should be taken out and sunk with the asylum seekers still on it, they aren’t really worth commenting on. Good parenting should have knocked the impulse to hate someone they don’t know anything about, out of them. Perhaps children’s social services should get involved? 

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