Village Votes On Leaving Buckinghamshire, With One Councillor Demanding A Wall To Keep Aylesbury Out

Haddenham will hold a referendum next month on whether to leave Buckinghamshire and join Oxfordshire, a vote that has no legal force, no legal mechanism, and no recognised authority behind it, which organisers say has freed them up enormously.

The motion was tabled at the parish meeting by an invented councillor who gave his name as Councillor Dennis Marbury, a man who has sat at the back of every meeting since 2011 with a laminated map and a biro. He told the room that Haddenham's "natural and historic alignment" has always been westward, towards Thame, towards Oxford, towards a county where, in his words, "the bins are collected by people who understand us."

"We are not anti Buckinghamshire," Councillor Marbury said, standing in front of a flipchart on which he had drawn Buckinghamshire as a slightly menacing shape. "We are simply pro Oxfordshire, pro self determination, and, if I am honest with you, pro wall."

It is the wall that has caused the difficulty. Councillor Marbury's amendment proposes a continuous barrier along the eastern approach, running from the roundabout to the other roundabout, specifically to keep out Aylesbury. He has declined to say what Aylesbury has done. Asked directly, three separate times, he said only that "they know," and then asked for the question to be minuted.

Pressed on who would pay for it, he said Aylesbury would pay for it. Pressed on how Aylesbury would be persuaded to pay for a wall designed to exclude Aylesbury, he said that was "a logistics matter" and moved to Any Other Business.

The parish meeting then heard from a resident who pointed out that Haddenham and Thame Parkway station already carries the name of a town in Oxfordshire, and has done for decades, which she described as "a soft annexation we all just let happen." This received the loudest applause of the evening and appears nowhere in the formal motion.

The referendum question itself has been through four drafts. The current wording asks residents whether Haddenham should "remain within Buckinghamshire" or "return to Oxfordshire, where it arguably belongs, as shown by the soil." An attempt to describe this as leading was voted down by the people who wrote it.

Opposition has been thin but determined. A counter campaign, operating under the name Haddenham Stays, has put up two posters and is understood to consist of a woman who simply likes the shape of Buckinghamshire and does not wish to discuss it further. She has rejected calls to debate Councillor Marbury, on the grounds that she has a lot on.

The paper put it to Councillor Marbury that a village cannot secede from a county, that no vote on the matter means anything whatsoever, and that he knows this. He said that was precisely the kind of defeatism that had held Haddenham back since the twelfth century, and that he would be answering further questions after Harvest Festival, as he is on the rota.

On which note, and in the spirit of a village that can agree on nothing except food: Harvest Festival is at St Mary's this Sunday, with the collection going to the local food bank as it does every year. Bring tins, bring packets, bring the things you would actually eat yourself rather than the tinned prunes that have toured this village since 2019 and are now, by common consent, a local landmark. Everyone is welcome, including Aylesbury.