Sally-Ann Hart’s claims of “illegal migrants” contested

Eye-witness account of how refugees live in northern France

Healthcare worker Brian Bostock writes about a trip to Calais to deliver food and clothing collected in Hastings for refugees in northern France.

In January, once again, the people of Hastings outdid themselves in a collection of food and clothing to send to Calais and our own foodbank. I joined councillors Antonia Berelson, Paul Barnett and Ruby Cox to take our collective donation to the charity Care4Calais. We filled up two cars to the brim and set off very early the next morning for the boat trip.

Poster in the Care4Calais warehouse (photo: Antonia Berelson).

The Care4Calais warehouse, a short drive from the port of Calais, is stacked high with donations from all over the UK. Volunteers sort these and prepare packs for distribution to the refugees now occupying irregular camps all along the French north coast. The formal camps at Calais have been removed, but the people are very much still there – men, women and children.

We learned that one of these camps had been raided that morning by the police and literally everything – clothes, possessions, papers, tents, documentation and shelters – had been put into skips, and hundreds of people put onto buses for ‘processing’ and likely deportation. The volunteers told us that several of those sent away are former British Army interpreters.

That afternoon we drove in convoy to a country park near Dunkerque. On arrival, we noted several police minibuses with ‘CRS’ printed on the doors: we had been assured that with our Care4Calais bibs on we were unlikely to be troubled by the police, but a quick Google on a mobile revealed that the CRS are the riot and crowd control arm of the police service. They seemed nonchalant about our arrival, and we moved through to a parking area where around 300 refugees were gathered.

Barber station

Other volunteers were already distributing food and hot drinks, and we began giving out hot drinks too, and firing up a generator so that people could charge mobile phones, offering first aid and – a surprise to me – setting up a barber station, where we  provided mirrors, clippers, scissors and razor blades.

We walked a little distance to find women to whom we could give the feminine hygiene packs we had brought, but found none. Under French law, women and children are entitled to housing if the temperature drops too low, so we were not surprised as it was bitterly cold. But there were several children, all under the age of ten, and all boys.

Then three of the CRS minibuses raced past us with blue lights flashing, and as we came back to the parking area, I saw two more already parked side by side, backed up towards the crowd. Policemen with SJ-102 tear gas launchers and hand-held trigger-operated pepper spray canisters poured out of the buses and formed a sort of cordon. We could hear music and, moving past the police, we saw men dancing, queueing peaceably for a cup of hot tea, and barbering. I couldn’t see any reason for this intimidatory response.

For ten minutes the cordon shuffled about, one of the officers apparently filming proceedings, but the dancing men ignored them. Eventually, the police all climbed back into their buses and drove off. The dancing just carried on.

This was the epitome of the spirit of the men caught here in woodlands on the border of France. I expected heartache, pain, suffering, desperation – but I got no sense of that from the crowd at all. The most popular attraction was the barber station, because the men wanted to look their best, hair and beards trimmed. They may be trapped but they have not lost their humanity.

Men dancing in a line (photo: Antonia Berelson).

One man stripped to the waist to have his hair and beard trimmed, and I noticed the unmistakable scars on his right arm of a shrapnel wound that has not had primary closure. You could see where the pieces of shrapnel had entered his flesh, travelled though his arm and exited. The wounds had long healed but bore the hallmarks of a wound that had not been treated and had not closed well.

I had several faltering conversations with the men there. They told me they were mostly Kurdish, with no government of their own; they are in Iran, Iraq, Turkey, Syria – and nowhere do they have parliamentary representation. They are for the most part well-educated – one was a mathematics teacher. Most had not brought their families, and now feared greatly for their safety back at home.

Polite and welcoming

They were polite, warm and welcoming, sharing conversations with each other. The dancing was quite a joyous affair, and others played football together. They shared a joke where they could – the one I really understood was whether it was “all me” or did I have a lot of clothes on. They told me that they saw Britain as a place of acceptance, peace, freedom – not free houses or free benefits, but just a freedom to be.

The humanity of these people – surviving in this informal campsite in the middle of nowhere in the freezing cold – astounded me. As we left, they helped us pack up the generator, the tables and the cables. It was a bit of a struggle to close the barbershop – one man was desperate to have the razors out again to even up his beard. His friends took some delight that he would have to wait for this. I lied horrendously and told him it looked beautiful, which only made his friends laugh even more. That spoke volumes to me – these men want to feel human and be proud of their appearance.

I will remember one man – Yah – who told me he had been there for four months. He has tried to enter the UK several times. He doesn’t think he will ever make it. I asked him if he could go back – but there is no back for him. Just persecution, at worst death. He has no way forward and nothing to go back to.

How can we be living in a civilised world when we have people, ordinary human beings, effectively stateless at a border and living in a tent?