Shabana Mahmood has described the anti-asylum activist Daniel Thomas as "a far-right and outright racist" who will feel "the full force of the law" if his organisation commits crimes near contested asylum sites such as Piddington. This was reported by Qazaqyia.kz citing The Guardian.
In an interview with the Guardian, the home secretary also "wanted to reassure" concerned villagers that asylum seekers due to move in to a neighbouring former defence site would not "put pressure" on local resources because they would be given "self-contained facilities".
Her intervention came after Thomas, a convicted criminal known as "Danny Tommo" and the co-founder of the Patriot Platform, said thousands of his masked followers could descend "for days" on to the Oxfordshire village to prevent male asylum seekers being moved in.
At the launch of a crackdown on knife crime in Birmingham 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 "hijacking" community concerns.
"I understand the anxiety of local people when they're 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," she said.
"Their behaviour is completely unacceptable. And where they break the law, they will face the full force of the law."
Piddington's local population registered their opposition to the proposed asylum facility on Wednesday, casting 285 votes against 26 in a symbolic ballot to leave the UK and seek self-determination.
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.
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.
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.
"It is a closed meeting. We will engage with them and walk them around the village and have a cup of tea," he said. "We have also had an open invitation to Reform, Labour, Conservatives and Restore to visit."
Marshall said it was not clear that villagers would want security assistance from men in balaclavas, if it were offered. "This is a mild-mannered place," he said.
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.
"The people we are meeting are just normal mothers, normal grandmothers, normal men," Thomas said. "We 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."
Asked how she would respond to Piddington residents after the vote, Mahmood said: "I want to reassure the residents of Piddington that actually our experience from other large sites where we already have, asylum seekers accommodated, whether that's in Wethersfield or Crowborough, is that putting all facilities on to one site is actually the best way to manage pressures for local communities.
"Our experience of other large sites where we are housing asylum seekers is that we're able to put on that site more of the facilities that asylum seekers need. It's a relatively self-contained facility, and the knock-on pressure to those local areas, I don't think we're going to see."
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.
"I do understand the anxiety that people feel, when they're about to see a change in their community or they are reading misinformation on the internet, or when they're just concerned that a village is about to have a facility nearby that maybe they think may pose them some challenges," she said.
"I 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."
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