IT WAS announced this week that the illegal Channel crossings record has been broken, with more than 1,000 arrivals on Saturday. In response the Home Office uttered platitudes about strengthening measures to tackle people-trafficking.
I have never, in any media, read or heard an informed, honest and sensible assessment of the issues involved in preventing the migrants on the small boats from illegally entering Britain. As a lifelong seafarer, here is my take on the matter to explain facts, deception and options.
The public are being systematically deceived by government and the media saying that to prevent the crossings is too difficult for the agents of the French government on the coast of France, and too dangerous for the migrants for the boats to be physically confronted at sea either by the British or the French. Neither is true.
The crossings could easily be stopped once and for all if either the British government or the French government wanted it to stop. Both have the physical capability and both have existing laws which prohibit the crossings. The clear implication is that this immigration flow is taking place because it is British government policy to facilitate its continuation.
The worst aspect of the deception is that the trips are still potentially extremely dangerous, so government actions (or inactions, depending on viewpoint) are unquestionably causing loss of life.
The current farcical status quo is that the migrants launch the boats on French beaches or in French rivers. They simply wade out and climb in over the side of the rubber boat. The boat, powered by a small outboard motor, sets off for England helmed by one man.
During the first half of the trip the migrant boat is often escorted by at least one vessel operated by French authorities. At the same time one of five UK Border Force fast catamarans stationed at Ramsgate, Ranger, Volunteer, Typhoon, Defender, Hurricane, puts to sea at high speed and heads to a mid-Channel location where it makes a rendezvous with the French vessel and the migrant boat. The Border Force boat takes on board the migrants and ferries them to Dover. Many of the authorities’ vessels can be observed on the tracking websites Vesselfinder and MarineTraffic. For anyone knowledgeable about small boat operations it is easy to work out and record what is going on.
To address the business of putting a stop to the crossings, obviously the French police should not be allowing the rubber boats to launch, embark passengers, and depart. It is a clear fiction that there is difficulty in getting police, coastguards or army to the launching location in time to prevent the departure. Only a limited number of locations on the French coasts are suitable for the launch and to keep these under constant surveillance during the calm weather periods when the voyages take place would require only a small number of watchers. There will be a conspicuous, large, easily observed group of people carrying a large unwieldy boat down to the water’s edge and then climbing into the boat. All that is required to stop the voyage is to puncture the boat and destroy the outboard engine. To suggest this cannot be accomplished by a small team of lightly armed French officers without hazarding anyone is laughable. Unlike the British, French authority personnel routinely carry small arms and one shot from a 9mm pistol will disable any outboard motor.
Such a beach launching is contrary to a long list of French laws concerning small boats and commercial boat operations in particular. (The migrant traffic is obviously a commercial operation irrespective of whether it is criminal or not.) Strict safety features are mandatory for any boat, and clearly trying to cross the English Channel in an unsuitable, unsafe and overloaded rubber boat has extreme safety hazards. It is also mandatory that the skipper for a commercial voyage must hold valid qualifications. It is fair to assume they don’t.
By intentionally neglecting to enforce their laws the French authorities are facilitating, this traffic. Hence they are knowingly putting the lives of migrants at risk by hypothermia, by drowning, by trampling and by suffocation. It is the weakest people, the few women and children who are amongst the migrants, who are most likely to die (and they have) and the French must know this. Once the boat is loaded and on passage the prime objective of the French would seem to be to ensure the migrants get to Britain alive or dead! Only if the migrant boat gets into serious difficulties in French waters, such that occupants face death, will the French intervene and rescue the migrants and return them to France. It is reported that migrants refuse to be ‘rescued’ by the French unless their boat is incapable of reaching British waters. On occasions when the migrant boat is genuinely in difficulty migrants can also be picked up by a British RNLI lifeboat and a helicopter may also be called in.
Clearly the shepherding of migrant boats by the French and the mid-Channel transfers to the British vessels is an established routine procedure co-operatively arranged by French and British authorities. Only on rare occasions are migrants truly ‘in distress’, and migrants who really do find themselves ‘in distress’ are usually in French waters due to a voyage being started in unsuitable or deteriorating weather. The great majority of those who reach Britain cannot logically ever have been ‘in distress’.
Numerous options exist whereby British authorities could safely ensure migrants do not proceed into British waters and do not land in Britain. Why are they not intercepted at sea and ordered to return to France? Normally at the point of contact the migrant boat (low-powered and not very manoeuvrable) is not ‘in distress’ and could be easily be stopped and ordered, by loudhailer, to turn back. Should the man driving the boat disobey and continue heading under power into British waters the boat should be boarded by armed British officers and the person in charge should be arrested and the boat should be returned to a location inside French waters, under tow, or under temporary command of a British officer and small armed crew if necessary. The French authorities should be advised by VHF radio of the location and the British crew should designate a migrant to take charge of the vessel and instruct him either to return to France or await arrival of a French rescue boat. Should the French fail to co-operate the French should be informed that the British crew will return the boat to a French beach.
There is discussion in the media as to whether or not the migrants are ‘mariners in distress’. Argument is advanced that the law of the sea obliges mariners to rescue them. The authorities advance this argument, rightly or wrongly, as it conveniently relieves them of the obligation to enforce their laws at all regardless of whether force is necessary or not. However, even if it is accepted that other mariners are obligated by the ‘law of the sea’ to ‘rescue’ these people if they are in distress, the next obvious question is where should the ‘rescued’ persons be taken? A rescued person has no right to dictate where he is taken. The rescuer may be obliged to save life but he is not obliged to provide a ferry service. If the rescued person has set out from France without authorisation to enter Britain, the sensible place for him to be put back on land is in France, the safe country of departure. He will knowingly be an illegal person, a criminal, as soon as he enters Britain. If, as is generally the case, the migrant was not actually ‘in distress’ at the time of being taken on board a British vessel, it would surely be against British law for him to be taken on a British boat by a British citizen to a British port? Consider what happens to a British driver who knowingly or unknowingly lands a migrant who has hidden on a vehicle! The driver is charged with the offence of bringing the migrant in and is heavily fined. Why is a Border Force person who knowingly brings a migrant into Britain not subject to the same laws and penalties as the unfortunate lorry driver? The seafarers and the enforcement officers at the ‘coal face’ must all know that the boats can easily be stopped yet they continue, ‘jobsworth fashion’, to follow the orders (presumably ultimately from politicians) which are guaranteeing the continuation of the trade.
Another ‘red herring’ frequently unchallenged in the media is that British authorities cannot, legally or otherwise, enter French waters to land migrants. This is an obvious nonsense because if a British Naval vessel simply advises the French authorities of its intentions, the French will not dare to try to physically stop the British vessel. For sure a diplomatic incident could materialise but no reasonable person could claim that the British action was not proportionate and made necessary by French negligence in enforcing their own laws. The likely result is that the French would be embarrassed and might even start enforcing their own laws.
Another hypothetical situation which is discussed is the possibility that a British enforcement vessel could order the driver of a migrant boat not in distress not to enter British waters and threaten to open fire on it if the person in charge disobeys. It would be feasible to kill the man driving the boat with a single rifle shot. Another migrant could then drive the boat away from British waters. After one such intervention it is probable that the entire trade would collapse at the cost of one criminal life. This could be weighed against the fact that in seven years over 130 migrants have died, over 70 died last year, and the trend of death in the Channel is increasing year by year. Is it better to threaten a criminal with death in order to put a stop to a dangerous and illegal activity or morally justifiable to facilitate the crime and knowingly indirectly cause an obviously increasing death toll to escalate? A moral issue which the media is too squeamish to discuss. I think it is obvious that if migrant boat drivers understood that they will be shot, the number would rapidly shrink to zero.
The other issue which is drawn into the argument as a reason not to use the Navy to physically stop the boats is that the UK courts would not allow it. One of the principal reasons for having a Navy is of course to defend the nation from invasion and unquestionably Britain is being invaded. The courts, national or international, are staffed by lawyers and do not have under their command any personnel who could physically intervene against the British Navy to prevent an action in the British Channel. This issue reduces to the simple question: Are the British armed forces going to obey orders from a democratically elected Prime Minister or is Britain and its military personnel really under the direct control of unelected lawyers? If the latter is the case Great Britain is no longer a democracy, a serious matter in its own right.
To sum up: It is plainly ridiculous to suggest that the cross-Channel migrant trade cannot easily and safely be stopped. The Prime Minister must order the Navy to stop the boats and return the occupants to France, then manage any political and diplomatic fall-out. Meanwhile the taxpaying British public is being deceived.
This is my experience which justifies my opinion that I am qualified to write this article. I am 79 years old, son of a WW2 submarine captain who taught me seamanship as a young boy. I am an Engineer, Master of Arts, Cambridge University 1963-1966. My working career was spent mainly with oil, construction and defence industries. I am the designer of one of the British Army’s assault boats suitable for beach landings of troops of which 600 were built. I have lived on a boat (as owner/skipper) sailing transatlantic and around the Atlantic coast of Europe and Africa for over 20 years and I know the French coast and coastal waters intimately. My wife of 58 years is the daughter of an Admiralty chief engineer of the Coastal Forces in WW2 who operated his own boatbuilding company after the war. She also grew up able to handle small boats and shares my understanding of this issue. We both have happy memories of times past when Britain was Great.
