FRANCE – UK – Sometimes a picture paints a thousand words. Here we see the result of the continuing aggression toward road haulage drivers entering the Port of Calais just as we hear the views of a prominent MP who visited the port recently to witness the mayhem for himself. At the end of a week which saw six more people injured as French riot police were forced to use tear gas to stop migrants from climbing aboard UK-bound trucks Chairman of the All-Party Parliamentary Group on Freight Transport, Rob Flello MP commented:
“Despite Eurotunnel now becoming a fortress, the access roads have become like a virtual war zone, unsafe for motorists and professional drivers. If Calais is to survive as the most economically viable and convenient crossing for freight traffic between the UK and mainland Europe, this situation cannot be allowed to continue.
“The UK and French governments must get to the heart of the issue to establish safety on the streets of Calais and maintain this vital freight route. I will be raising this at the highest levels within government and also proposing some further mitigation measures that both Eurotunnel and the Port of Calais can take based on my recent experiences”.
The ongoing violence has led several hauliers in the UK and abroad to consider ceasing cross Channel operations, particularly when they can not only suffer from thousands of pounds worth of damage to equipment and cargo but are possibly facing thousands more in fines should a migrant successfully stowaway only to be discovered later.
Last week we wrote of the 24/7 Hotline initiated by the Road Haulage Association (RHA) which did not receive the enthusiastic welcome from some inward bound drivers one might have expected. Several commented that if migrants were content to ignore the batons and pepper sprays of the Compagnies Républicaines de Sécurité a UK telephone line wouldn’t deter them. The point of course is that every call received adds weight to the RHA’s case for more protection. The RHA chief executive Richard Burnett observed:
“Despite the implementation of a specific riot police unit based at Calais, the situation needs more ‘on the ground’ control. We are pleased that the mayor of Calais Natacha Bouchart has reiterated our call for the deployment of the military to secure Calais and its environs, but we are still waiting for this call to be acted upon.
“During the Summer I visited Calais and the refugee camps on a couple of occasions and the desperation and determination of migrants to reach the UK, regardless of any thought for anyone else was quite staggering. Now, with the appalling conditions in the camps and the weather deteriorating on a daily basis, the situation is getting worse. We have just received photographic evidence of an HGV that has had a steel bar thrown through the windscreen.
“This has obviously been thrown from one of the bridges on the port approach roads. Had this been a UK-registered truck and therefore right-hand drive, the driver would have suffered severe injuries and may have lost his life. The ensuing chaos that an incident such as this causes gives migrants ample time to board trucks that have been left with no alternative to slow down or stop.
“The migrants clearly see it as their right to attempt entry to the UK, regardless of inconvenience, danger or risk to others. Surely, it is also the right for hauliers to go perform their jobs unhindered and in safety. As things stand right now, UK bound hauliers are just sitting ducks.”
Photo: Courtesy of the RHA – Thank God this was Left Hand Drive!
Lorry drivers and medics have warned of escalating violence between truckers and refugees on the roads around Calais, as footage emerged of a Hungarian truck driver who filmed himself intentionally accelerating towards people attempting to board lorries outside of the French town, forcing them off the road.
Drivers are increasingly using social media and dashboard cameras to film clashes with people from the refugee camps outside the port, as well as to vent frustration about a crisis they say is threatening their livelihoods.
Hundreds of videos of confrontations have been shared on YouTube, with several showing young men hurling litter and rocks at lorries, and drivers punching people they have found hiding in their trailers.
More than 4,000 British drivers are members of the private UK & European Lorry Drivers Safety at or Near French Ferry Ports Facebook group, which shares videos and information about delays across Europe and potential threats to drivers.
The YouTube film of the Hungarian driver has been shared multiple times by the group, and has received more than 2.4m views since it was posted on Wednesday.
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Andy Stainsby, one of the group’s administrators who has been driving lorries across Europe for almost two decades, told the Guardian he could understand the Hungarian driver’s frustration, and admitted he had done similar things himself.
“I know people who do it, one of our own drivers did it this week,” Stainsby, a driver for haulage firm Harrier Express in Faversham, Kent, said of the video. “I’ve done it myself in the past though I would never do it now. If I was stuck in traffic later down the road, at the very least they’d attack the vehicle, or they could drag me out of my cab. I’m older now, my priorities have changed, I just want to get home.”
Stainsby said he felt a more aggressive atmosphere had developed between drivers and migrants recently. “For the first time in almost 20 years, I’ve felt intimidated this past week. I try to keep looking ahead, avoid eye contact because I don’t want confrontation.
“This situation [refugee stowaways in lorries] first started happening in the 1990s, but the atmosphere has changed a lot – previously people would try to get in, maybe there would be some angry words, but now they are so aggressive,” he said, citing the incident with the wooden pole. “They are desperate, but they attack innocent people just trying to make a living.”
The chief medic coordinating volunteer doctors at the Calais camp, Jean-François Corty from Doctors of the World, said tensions had increased because of heightened security around the ports and Channel tunnel terminal, leaving refugees with no option but to stow away on a lorry.
“We’ve treated more than 500 people wounded since July alone, but that is not just confrontation with drivers, it’s violence between migrants, or with police, or with traffickers or injuries from climbing into vehicles ... there are cuts, broken legs,” he said.
“Drivers do get very nervous, especially when we see the people running from the camps trying to create a traffic jam so they can get onboard. Some will get very angry when they see the people inside.
“Obviously confrontations occur, it’s the [right] conditions for violence when people are desperate. We cannot condone people trying to make an accident voluntarily but really it is the French authorities who need to tackle the situation.”
Migrants inside the Calais camp known as the Jungle. Photograph: Philippe Huguen/AFP/Getty Images
Corty said his medics in Calais regularly treated people with eye problems caused by teargas, but stressed that most had been in confrontation with police rather than drivers. Only police can legally carry CS gas in Britain, but France allows anyone over 18 to buy the gas in a limited concentration. At least one petrol station close to the port is reported to be stocking canisters of CS gas – which have been bought by British drivers, according to a Sunday People investigation last month.
In October, a Suffolk lorry driver was spared jail after police found a stun gun that doubled as a torch inside his lorry. Norman Garrett, 52, was given a suspended sentence after pleading guilty to possessing a prohibited weapon. He denied he ever intended to use it against people trying to get into his lorry, but admitted he felt intimidated passing through the port.
Stainsby said he took claims that many drivers were carrying teargas, stun guns or pepper spray “with a pinch of salt”, and said he suspected the real number carrying weapons was miniscule.
“You are taking a big risk if you carry something like that,” he said. “Even though people are coming at us every night, if we get caught with something, we can be prosecuted very quickly.”
Corty said the Paris terror attacks two weeks ago had also made organisations like his more vulnerable to a backlash.
Three days after the suicide bombers struck the French capital, Doctors of the World’s mobile medical unit was burned down in central Calais. “We do suspect it was criminal, because it happened so soon after the attacks, and it was far away from anything that could have caused it accidentally,” Corty said.
The Pas-de-Calais state has stepped up security measures at the Calais port ring road in response to the growing presence of migrants in the area and the increasingly regular occurrence of freight traffic being slowed down and stopped.
Local sources said a now-common pattern is that when police intervene to prevent migrants boarding trailers, skirmishes break out leading to long tailbacks of vehicles before public order is restored. The state prefect said the ring road was now off-limits to pedestrians until further notice.
Whether this will prevent migrants from targeting trucks to enter the port remains to be seen. Sources in Calais said the situation had now reached ‘crisis point’, with the move to restrict pedestrian access to the zone seen as a last-ditch attempt to maintain traffic flow into the port.
Meanwhile, a recently formed ferry and port workers collective calling itself ‘Working together to save the Port of Calais’, has called for the relocation of the town’s migrant camp ‘The Jungle’, which is situated only 800 metres from the port.
The collective warned that if this relocation does not happen, Calais risks losing its ferry services to Zeebrugge and Rotterdam as freight operators decide they are no longer willing to accept the threat to drivers and trucks from migrants.
A member of the collective said. “We are embarking on a €800 million port development project, 'Calais Port 2015,' at a time when the port is really suffering (because of the migrant crisis). Better to re-locate the migrant camp than see the port losing key customers.”
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