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Guy reports from RAF Scampton

Efforts to save the home of the Dambusters look doomed by a Home Office decision to turn the site into an immigrant detention centre
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LAST WEEK, I headed to Lincolnshire to write a piece for the Daily Mail on how RAF Scampton, the former home of the Dambusters squadron and the Red Arrows, may soon become a detention centre for asylum seekers.

Locals, including those I found at the excellent Dambusters Inn, are dead set against the plan, not because of anti-immigrant feeling or nimbyism, but because the site was about to be transformed into a hub for business and innovation, as well as having its wartime heritage preserved. Now, all that is to change, which will be a devastating blow for the local economy and for efforts to save the site’s historical features.

While researching the piece, I shot this small video with the legendary photographer Murray Sanders, and which was edited by his son Jack Sanders. Although I wasn’t allowed access to much of the site, I hope the video gives a flavour of why Scampton is utterly unsuited to ‘house’ some of the most desperate people on the planet.

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Guy Walters