The asylum seekers sent to live on the Bibby Stockholm complained of the same recurring dream. As they slept in narrow bunk beds on the barge, they dreamed they were disappeared from the UK in the dead of night, the boat slipped from its moorings by the Home Office, drifting into the open sea towards Rwanda.
The dream was not surprising. At the time, in 2023 and 2024, the Conservative government’s two highest profile schemes to “stop the boats” crossing the Channel were the barge and a plan to send asylum seekers to Rwanda.
Both policies prompted eye-catching headlines. Neither succeeded.
But while no Rwanda flight ever got off the ground – thwarted by a series of legal challenges and the end of the Tory government – the Bibby Stockholm policy was actually rolled out. The first asylum seekers moved on to the barge on 7 August 2023 and the final group moved out on 26 November 2024.
One of the first things the incoming Labour government did after they were elected in July was to ditch both policies.
The arrival of the barge in the port of Portland in Dorset was greeted with dismay both by residents who supported and those who opposed asylum seekers. It floated there for a year and a half – a symbol, according to its critics, of all that is wrong with government asylum policy. This week, it will finally move on, unmourned, to another location and another purpose, somewhere outside the UK.
In the time it was used as asylum seeker accommodation, it was steeped in controversy. There were numerous mental health crises among those housed on the barge, including the suspected suicide of one young man; the discovery of potentially deadly bacteria in the water supply; concerns about fire safety; rotten food; bedbugs; flooding; and accounts that, despite their right to leave the gigantic triple-decked structure during the day, asylum seekers felt they were being held in prison-type conditions.
Consternation about the prospect of the barge began on 29 March 2023, when the then immigration minister Robert Jenrick told parliament the government was exploring this form of accommodation.
Announcing the bombshell development, Jenrick said: “We need to suffuse our entire system with deterrence.”
It was the first time a barge had been used to accommodate asylum seekers in the UK. An old cruise ship had been used for the same purpose in the Netherlands in the spring of 2022 but it had faced an outbreak of typhoid, with 72 cases confirmed. The disease was traced to raw sewage.
On 9 May 2023, the Bibby Stockholm, previously used to house oil and gas workers, arrived in the UK from Italy. Work began in Falmouth to convert most of the 222 small single cabins into double occupancy spaces.
A few months later, the vessel arrived in Portland and the Home Office arranged a media tour, which captured on camera the cramped cabins, narrow corridors and prison-like qualities of the giant structure. The Home Office doubled capacity simply by installing bunk beds. Each of the blue cabins had a small shower and toilet, a basic wooden desk, a chair, cupboard and iron-framed bunk beds which, according to the asylum seekers, emitted high-pitched squeaks every time one of them turned over on the thin mattresses.
The asylum seekers banished to the barge were a particularly vulnerable group of people, many of whom could not swim and had a phobia of water after near-drowning incidents on their journey across one or more seas to the UK. They were given a choice of going to the barge or being made homeless.
One asylum seeker I spoke to thought he would be safe from being sent to the Bibby Stockholm because there was a rumour only those who had reached the UK on a small boat were to be accommodated there. “I hadn’t arrived that way,” he says. “But then I received a letter telling me I was going.”
Another says his solicitor told him if he didn’t agree to go to the barge, it could damage his asylum claim. When he saw the Bibby Stockholm for the first time, he was horrified. “Nobody wanted to go inside, but we had no choice.”
Many of those earmarked for the barge had physical and mental health conditions, among them PTSD, kidney problems and disabilities including blindness. The charity Care4Calais documented these conditions among a group of 56 people. Some were able to successfully challenge the move.
The asylum seekers who did go were shocked by the conditions.
“When we got there I was absolutely bewildered by what I saw,” one person told me. “I thought I was going to have a heart attack. It’s truly a prison. You cannot imagine how high the walls are.”
Another said being sent to the barge had destroyed his hope for the future.
A third said, presciently, in that first week: “This ship is like a prison … I promise you, if its capacity is filled there will be a disaster.”
The first disaster came on day one. As asylum seekers boarded, it was confirmed there were traces of legionella in the water supply. The bacteria, spread by aerosol droplets, can cause a rare form of pneumonia. Those who had reluctantly agreed to board were the last to find out about the presence of the bacteria, with many hearing about it only from breaking news alerts. They had to Google “legionella” for an explanation.
A flurry of activity began behind the scenes, with ministers hoping the legionella problem could be resolved without the media finding out. It wasn’t to be. Accounts differ of who in government was told what and when, but by the end of the week the story had hit the headlines and the 39 asylum seekers who had been moved on to the barge were removed. The experience terrified them, and the images of asylum seekers leaving the barge with their bags after just four and a half days were a PR disaster for the government. After they were evacuated to hotels and the full extent of the legionella problem emerged, one of the asylum seekers said: “The trust is completely broken.” Former Brexit secretary David Davis described the incident as “startling incompetence”.
That set the tone for a series of mishaps and tragedies. The then government was desperate to get plenty of asylum seekers on to the cramped barge in time for Small Boats Week, which began on 7 August 2023. This was designed to provide a summer boost for the flagging policy. Ministers hoped the boat’s spartan conditions would not only help deter Channel crossings but also help end accusations from some voters and sections of the media that the government was allowing asylum seekers to live in the lap of luxury in hotels.
It didn’t help that on 10 August 2023, during Small Boats Week, 756 people crossed the Channel in dinghies, the highest weekly number so far that year. Two days later, at least six people died while attempting to cross.
The optics of cruelty clearly didn’t work – and it wasn’t long after the legionella problem had been addressed, and asylum seekers had returned to the barge, that the next disaster unfolded.
A young Albanian asylum seeker called Leonard Farruku was found dead, locked in the bathroom of his shared cabin, on 12 December 2023. He is thought to have taken his own life. People who knew him before he was moved to the barge said he suffered from mental health problems while accommodated in a Home Office-managed hotel prior to being moved to the barge against his will. Preparations are being made for an inquest into his death. Farruku’s family have blamed the government and called for an independent investigation. His sister, Jola Dushku, 33, said: “We feel the UK government should be held responsible for Leonard’s death. Our desire is to understand the truth about what happened to Leonard and to make sure that the same thing doesn’t happen to other asylum seekers.
“The way to do that is for government to carry out a full and independent investigation into Leonard’s death.”
The asylum seekers on board were devastated and feared the oppressive conditions would lead to more of them taking their own lives.
One asylum seeker who was moved to the barge in April 2024 – and has now been granted leave to remain in the UK – says: “So many people cried and had panic attacks during their time on the barge. We were made to feel like livestock. Before I went to the barge I was a happy and sociable person. But after living there I felt broken. You can’t leave that place unscathed.”
Many raised concerns about the poor conditions: having to go through airport scanner-type security each time they left and returned to the barge; long queues for often inedible meals, frequently consisting of small portions of undercooked chicken and rice; and a pervasive feeling of boredom and inertia.
Two former staff who worked on the barge, Levana Coker and Bella Basstone, went public to describe conditions on board. Both said they witnessed a sharp deterioration in many of the men’s mental health and said most complaints about the living conditions were ignored. The whistleblowers said the men were treated “like cattle” and had to endure rancid food, bedbugs and flooding inside the barge. They showed me screenshots of conversations on a barge WhatsApp group for asylum seekers and staff. One asylum seeker wrote of the food: “The fish was so uncooked that it was talking to me.”
Another said: “There is no such thing as private space here. Staying on a boat is beyond the imagination of asylum seekers. The sound of people’s conversations can be heard in other rooms. My only means of communication with the world is my cell phone which is also dying … In short, this is a prison whose prisoners are not criminals. I still have the lingering feeling of being less. I never felt that way before I came to the UK.”
Those who found themselves dispatched to the barge developed different coping mechanisms, the most popular being to spend as little time as possible on board. A Somali asylum seeker called Salah is the subject of an Al Jazeera documentary being released this week, about how a passion for long distance running helped him survive.
Describing his experience on the barge, he says in the documentary: “It feels like a prison. We can’t go out after 10 o’clock … We only enter or leave through security. We are not allowed to work. I felt a lot of stress.”
The barge residents were faced with racist protests from some members of the local community, bolstered by visits from prominent national figures on the far right.
“Our community has become radicalised by hate,” said one local anti-racist campaigner who monitored the far right protests and social media posts. “Some on the far right use Nazi terminology such as ‘sub-human’, ‘vermin’ and ‘Channel rats’ in Facebook posts about the asylum seekers on the barge.”
But many others stepped up to welcome the reluctant residents, planning a thoughtful and useful programme of support for them.
Laney White, of the Portland Global Friendship Group, says reactions in the community have been mixed. Parts of Portland are among the most deprived areas in the UK and some people blamed the asylum seekers for their economic challenges.
But White adds that a lot of compassion and kindness was also shown by local residents who helped provide English, art and music classes and outings. There were organised community litter picks and, for asylum seekers interested in growing things, a “community larder” was created on an allotment, with free surplus produce going to people in Portland.
“Being on the barge was a hideous experience for the asylum seekers,” says White. “But they dealt with these exceptional circumstances in an exceptional way, demonstrating great humility and resilience.”
She says the community remains fractured by the experience of having the barge thrust into their lives by the Home Office, something nobody wanted.
Neither the Home Office nor the barge contractors responded to inquiries about whether any impact assessment was carried out before the decision to move a group of asylum seekers, largely people of colour, into this poor and predominantly white area.
The Home Office has now reverted to accommodating asylum seekers in a mix of hotels and shared housing. Although ministers continue to pledge to end hotel use, there are now more than 30,000 asylum seekers accommodated in more than 250 hotels across the UK. Several hundred asylum seekers remain at the other mass accommodation site for asylum seekers, Wethersfield in Essex. Conditions there are poor and the location is bleak and remote, leading local residents to dub it a “stalag”.
As the barge is moved out of Portland, the asylum seekers who were forced to spend months living there say the scars remain.
One who was granted leave to remain says: “It was a failed experiment by the government. We were treated as less than human. For now, I can’t go anywhere near a boat. Although I have found a job and a place to live, the problem from the barge remains inside my head. I will carry it with me for ever.”
