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Falmouth locals up in arms over migrant ‘prison barge’
Local activist DAWN EVANS is back in the thick of it as Cornwall is in the news once more for all the wrong reasons, in light of the Tories’ planned floating prison for immigrants

THE rusting hulk of the Bibby Stockholm is an ageing engineless barge which during its 47-year existence has been used both as secure accommodation for asylum-seekers in the Netherlands, and more recently to provide accommodation for construction workers at the Shetland Gas Plant in Scotland.

 On Tuesday May 9 it was hauled into Falmouth docks in Cornwall to undergo a refit in preparation for its next incarnation as an accommodation/detention centre for refugees and asylum-seekers whom the Home Office deemed to be “illegal.”

The current accommodation capacity of the barge is just over 200. The refit commissioned by the government will see that capacity more than doubled to 500.

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