If you’ve read an interview with a Labour MP or councillor from Southampton you’ve probably seen the phrase ‘City of Sanctuary’ cropping up again and again. Darren Paffy, Satvir Kaur and multiple Labour councillors use it time and time again, but what actually lies behind these warm words? Is it just about compassion – or is there a political agenda at play?
The phrase itself might sound Holy, but it actually emanates from America’s so-called ‘sanctuary cities’, a policy platform originally championed by US Democrats to shield undocumented immigrants from national authorities. The definition of a Sanctuary City is “a municipality that limits or denies its cooperation with the national government in enforcing immigration law.” If you follow the US news you’ll be informed President Donald Trump is now trying to dismantle the City of Sanctuary in America to restore law and order, and defund these groups.
In the UK this movement began in 2005, when Inderjit Singh Bhogal and Craig Barnett founded the City of Sanctuary charity in Sheffield. By 2007, the idea had grown from a loose network to a formal campaign, with Sheffield becoming the UK’s first official ‘City of Sanctuary’. The goal: to encourage cities up and down the country to roll out the welcome mat for refugees and asylum seekers.
It sounds innocuous on the surface. But the scheme has drawn scrutiny – and criticism – for the way it spreads its message. City of Sanctuary UK offers grants to local groups, and one of its most high-profile offshoots is the Schools of Sanctuary Network. This network now claims to include more than 1,200 primary and secondary schools nationwide. Southampton has a School of Sanctuary Network where multiple schools have achieved “School of Sanctuary status”, committing to creating a welcoming environment for asylum seekers and refugees. The City of Sanctuary Southamptongroup works with these schools to support the initiative. Several Southampton schools, including Bitterne Primary School, Oasis Academy Sholing and Oasis Academy Lord’s Hill, have achieved this accreditation.
A recent controversy in Labour-run Birmingham put the spotlight on how young this outreach goes. Schoolchildren as young as five were asked to create Valentine’s Day cards for asylum seekers. Some cards carried slogans like “You are welcome here!” and “I love refugee rights, stop the Rwanda scheme.” One group of children crafted heart-shaped messages, and a greeting read: “Roses are red, violets are blue, refugees are people, just like me and you.”
Journalist Charlotte Gill covered the story for GB News, calling it “tiny children writing Valentine’s cards” for people they’d never met. “You will see in the corner it says ‘welcome to the stranger’,” she observed. “Children are normally told, ‘don’t talk to strangers’, but this scheme is the complete opposite.”
The card-making wasn’t just about arts and crafts. The programme encouraged teachers to lead classroom discussions about “sanctuary seekers”, promoting values such as kindness, humanity, and equality. Students were also asked to fundraise for charities and design “displays of kindness” for their schools. Many cards included an orange heart – a symbol linked to the refugee nation flag and the Together With Refugees campaign.
But for critics like Gill, what’s more concerning is the funding. Her investigation found that significant sums of taxpayer money flow to organisations that support open borders. She cited the Paul Hamlyn Foundation, which reportedly received £1.4 million in government funding between 2020 and 2023, even as it backs groups openly advocating for unrestricted immigration. “Taxpayer funding going towards what I would deem open border ideology,” Gill said on GB News. She pointed to grants for organisations like Hope Not Hate, and suggested that British taxpayers are inadvertently subsidising groups that label them racist for opposing open borders. “Absolutely,” she confirmed to presenter Matt Goodwin.
The debate sits uneasily alongside government messaging. While ministers promise to crack down on people smuggling gangs, Gill argued that a well-funded charity sector is quietly advancing “the opposite of what taxpayers say they want.” “Keir Starmer goes on about smash the gangs, but it’s more like smash the charities,” she quipped, describing “a whole industrial complex fuelling the opposite of what taxpayers say they want.”
Southampton’s own ‘City of Sanctuary’ status was achieved in 2014, after a coalition of local charities and ‘for good’ groups – including CLEAR Project, Southampton University, and Solent University – put forward the case. CLEAR Project is a charity which employs advisors, in its own words to helps refugees “with things like immigration, benefits or housing,”. The process with becoming a City Of Sanctuary began with grassroots activism: local community groups, faith organisations, and charities working together to raise awareness, win support from schools and businesses, and lobby the council to make a public commitment.
Southampton’s journey mirrored that of Sheffield, Bristol, and Swansea, which all embraced the status after years of campaigning. The movement’s stated aim is to foster welcoming communities for refugees and asylum seekers – but as the debate over its methods and funding intensifies, it’s clear that ‘City of Sanctuary’ means very different things to different people.
For its backers, it’s a moral mission. For its critics, it’s a sinister political charity network, quietly shaping policy and trying to pressure public opinion under the banner of compassion. Either way, it has become a fixture in local and national politics – and, for now, shows no sign of going away…..until the UK gets it own Donald Trump in charge?
