Coalition to Close Campsfield

TUEsday 1 September

📣 Organising meeting

Tuesday 1 September, 18:00-19:30

Our monthly hybrid organising meeting, now scheduled for the first Tuesday of the month, both in person at Oxford Town Hall and online via Zoom. It will be an open meeting.

Oxford Town Hall, St Aldate’s, Oxford OX1 1BX

Or join via Zoom (contact the Coalition at contact@closecampsfield.uk for the Zoom link)

On June 14, the Coalition to Close Campsfield and Oxford Student Action for Refugees (Oxford STAR) held the fundraiser event Break Down the Walls.

Over 200 people came to Tap Social Taproom in Botley during the afternoon to dance, eat, listen to music, and learn about the border industry, immigration detention, and the long history of campaigning to close Campsfield.

Acts included a ceilidh, Drag Down the Borders, live music by local bands and artists, a speaker from Right to Remain, the piece 39 Alpha 39 Bravo by Earrational Measures, and DJ sets. Some of our acts and speakers travelled into Oxford for the occasion! Food was provided by Damascus Rose Kitchen, and we sold prints and T-shirts made especially for the fundraiser.

We are immensely grateful to everyone who made the day possible and who attended, helping us raise over £2000 to keep our campaign running as we continue to fight to close Campsfield and every detention centre!

We also encourage those who learned about Campsfield and the Coalition because of this event to get involved, as there is lots to do! So new ideas, hands, and contributions are always welcome, and this work not only needs funds but also sustained time and energy.

Finally, we’re sharing the two audiovisual pieces that we listened to at the fundraiser so that people can listen to them in a more quiet environment, as well as watch the short film:

• 39 Alpha, 39 Bravo, by Earrational Measures feat. Pilo Moreno: https://earrationalmeasures.bandcamp.com/album/39-alpha-39-bravo
• BORDR (2026), by Emma Brierley: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E4ZHkQP36qk

Coalition to Close Campsfield campaigners, including the mighty Oxford STAR group, protested against the UK’s increasingly hostile environment for asylum seekers, refugees and other vulnerable migrants on Saturday 31 May.

We condemn Mitie, the private company charged with managing detention at recently re-opened Campsfield House in Kidlington, for its policy of exploiting detainees as cheap labour on as little as £1 / hour.

We condemn the Home Office for awarding Mitie the contract, despite years of reported abuse, self-harm, hunger strikes and deaths at Campsfield House under Mitie’s management before its closure in 2018.

We condemn the University of Oxford and at least 10 Oxford colleges for investing indirectly in Mitie through BlackRock and other investment funds.

The Coalition to Close Campsfield condemns all border profiteers of the detention-industrial system.

No to Mitie, no to border profiteers!

These walls must fall.

Coalition to Close Campsfield supporters protested on Langford Lane, Kidlington, just north of Oxford, against the re-opening of Campsfield House immigrant detention centre.

This Sunday’s protest followed a national Together Against the Far Right rally in London, the day before, reportedly 500,000 strong, coinciding with a huge 8 million “No Kings” rally across the USA.

From Minneapolis to Oxfordshire, we know that ICE, detention centres and deportations cause violence and untold harm. Yet the UK Home Office and the far right insist on telling us that making the lives of migrants increasingly unliveable and detaining those who have been illegalised by the system will make us safer? Lies!

Immigration detention creates harm not safety. Solidarity with those detained in Campsfield and in every IRC.

These walls must fall.

sunday 8 March 2026

International Women’s Day protest: Feminism Knows No Borders

The Coalition to Close Campsfield supported the Feminism Knows No Borders protest at the Clarendon Building, Broad Street, Oxford city centre on 8 March, International Women’s Day 2026.

On International Women’s Day 2026, we stood in solidarity with women and girls in every country, across and against divisive national borders, against racism, fascism, transphobia, war, patriarchal violence, state violence and exploitation.

Liz Peretz delivered the following speech for the Coalition:

“A political struggle that does not have women at the heart of it, above it, below it, and within it is no struggle at all” (Arundhati Roy)

And there is no doubt this is a key moment of political struggle; the world fragmented, the controlling powers both immoral and out of hand. There are signs of this everywhere. Key issues – from Palestine to the rise of the far right across the world, from Iran to Sudan – are eating into our communities’ principles, our sense of right and wrong, our very beings. It is a world where private profit is more important than people’s lives (look at our own water companies poisoning our water for profit)
One sinister sign – not eight miles from where we stand today – is a building with prison walls and barbed wire fences called Campsfield House  – where ordinary people are looked up, without trial, without time limit – in our name. Arbitrarily cruel to individuals, this is seen by our Home Ministry (the home office) as the necessary sharp point of an increasingly hostile immigration policy, designed to strike terror into anyone without papers. Have no doubt if it can be done for one part of our communities it can also be done for another – how long before that happens.

And have no doubt it is all done to divide us – we must be united strong work across barriers not build them. And as women we can lead the way – we not only hold up half the sky, but we at transcending boundaries, working with one voice.
So we need to stand up – stand up for all those families affected, anxious, with a man of the family locked up in Campsfield as we speak; for all those women across the world who have come here at enormous risk – of rape, trafficking, in constant fear on their hazardous journeys – only to be locked up, disbelieved, in other detention centres like Yarlswood or Derwentside; we, who are ourselves collectively, as women, so often subject to discrimination must raise our collective voice to stop this utterly immoral inhumane practice of immigration detention.

Fighting that sinister part of our successive governments’ barbarous activity  and winning – will begin to dismantle their regimes and start our own. We women have a sense of solidarity which transcends borders and transcends class and creed – a powerful sisterhood of belonging. a sisterhood of a huge oppressed half. Let us join the fight with the home office to reverse their policies and Close Campsfield Down.

Migrants are not criminals! Close Campsfield Down!

Saturday 31 January, 2026

Demonstration to Close Campsfield

Over 30 supporters of the Coalition to Close Campsfield gathered on Langford Lane, Kidlington, a few kilometres north of Oxford. We came to show our opposition to the re-opening and planned expansion of Campsfield House immigrant detention centre.

We used group chants and recorded music with powerful amplification to alert the men imprisoned inside that they are not forgotten, that outside the gates there is a strong support movement.

Again, we used banners and placards to help passing members of the public remember that detaining people is wrong.

Supporters of the Coalition to Close Campsfield gathered at Campsfield House, Langford Lane, in Kidlington, a village north of Oxford, at 4pm Wednesday 4 December, to protest as the first people were brought from other detention centres. They reached out to local people and to workers entering and leaving the detention centre with banners, signs, placards, and with chants. Most wore black, to in sorrow and solidarity.

At 6pm, the protest shifted to Oxford’s city centre. 50+ coalition supporters united to condemn this government’s needless performative cruelty.

Coalition supporter Bill MacKeith said:

“It is awful that now we’ll see suffering and abuse at this site again. It is truly shocking that this is being imposed on those who will be detained and on local people, all of whose elected representative bodies have long opposed it. Reopening Campsfield is a terrible step backwards. It ignores evidence, public opinion and basic humanity. We will be there tomorrow in solidarity with the first detainees as they arrive.”

Last year Cherwell District Council joined Kidlington Parish, Oxford City and Oxfordshire County Council, as well as local MP Calum Miller, in opposing the plans to reopen and expand Campsfield.

Campsfield has been ‘refurbished’ at a cost £70 million by Galliford Try. It will be run by MITIE, whose record at Harmondsworth elicited a scorching report from the Chief Inspector of Prisons only last year (‘the worst conditions [ever] seen in immigration detention’). The government has announced this 160-bed Phase 1 will be followed by a Phase 2 new-build to bring the number of beds up to 400 by 2030.

To get round the solid local opposition, the government plans to pursue a Crown Development (CDO) route that cuts out the local planning authority, Cherwell District Council. The CDO route effectively invites one government minister to agree with the wishes of another despite the clear wishes of local people.

Bail for Immigration Detainees also condemned the reopening of Campsfield.

22 november, 2025

National Demonstration to Keep Campsfield Closed

plus
organising discussion & refreshments

at Exeter Hall, Kidlington, to build the movement to end detention and deportations.

18 October, 2025, 11:00am-3:00pm

Public Meeting for the National Day of Solidarity to End Immigration Detention

Fusion Arts Centre, 15 Park End St, Oxford OX1 1HH