British trucker blockades the French

[kscarbel2]

The Daily Mail / July 4, 2015

The British trucker who blockaded the French! And, quelle surprise, they went squealing to the police. A rage-inducing dispatch from the Calais frontline.

• Doug Wilson told to off-load his cargo when caught Calais ferry protest
• He was one of thousands caught in 30 mile queue caused by union strike
• Turned tables - parked his own lorry to block workers from leaving meeting
• Took action at the start of Calais chaos which now shows no signs of improving

Stuck in the worst cross-Channel chaos since World War II, one British lorry driver decided he had simply had enough. The port of Calais had been closed by striking French ferry workers who, for good measure, also blocked the alternative route to the UK by setting fire to the entrance to the Channel Tunnel.

With queues of trucks up to 30 miles long outside Calais, Folkestone-based driver Doug Wilson, 57, was having a bad week in France. His client had given up waiting for his cargo of beer and had told Doug to off-load it. So he drove to the offices of the union whose members had started the tunnel blaze.

The comrades had just gathered for a rally and, in a delicious moment of revenge, Doug parked his truck across the car park entrance and switched off his engine.

‘I blocked them in just like they’d blocked us in,’ he tells me. ‘They threatened me with a jack handle and I got pushed around a bit.’

His one-man blockade was lifted only when, with glorious irony, the strikers called the police. At least Doug had done something — which is more than can be said for the French authorities during a week of deplorable lawlessness bordering on anarchy at France’s busiest ferry port. For several days now, trapped lorry drivers have been besieged by migrants trying to hide on their vehicles and enter Britain illegally.

The queue of lorries is stretching out of town and about to reach Belgium. There are feral gangs running everywhere — even though we are on the side of a motorway — and no police to be seen.

A well-built Eastern European fumbles with the back of a lorry belonging to Express Trailers Ltd of Malta, pulls open the door and waves to a group of Afghan men squatting in the shade of a nearby tree. Three come running, but there’s room for only one inside. Never mind. He’ll have a crack at another lorry in a minute.

One exasperated British lorry driver likens this week’s scenes in Calais to the post-apocalyptic thriller Mad Max. From where I’m standing — near the entrance to the Channel Tunnel freight terminal — I’d say it’s more like a David Attenborough wildlife documentary on the Serengeti.

Stretching miles into the distance, vast, lumbering beasts crawl in the same direction while gangs of predators lie in wait, pounce on the more vulnerable prey and then move on.

Their audacity is breathtaking — in every sense. They are not just risking life and limb as they leap between the moving parts of 44-ton trucks. They are brazenly breaking the law, sometimes with threats and violence, in broad daylight.

And they do so under the gaze of bus-loads of French police. The gendarmes have little enthusiasm for arresting stateless migrants desperate to get out of France and into the promised land of the UK. Too much paperwork, Monsieur, and besides, there are too many to deal with.

The police break up the larger gang assaults — and they don’t hold back with their batons — but then everyone is just sent on their way.

There is nothing new about the people-smuggling racket in Calais. But this week, it’s busier than ever, thanks to militant French ferry workers objecting to the sale of the MyFerryLink line to Danish rival DFDS. And, just like the migrant gangs, they seem to enjoy immunity from prosecution.

The tunnel arsonists received little more than a slap on the wrist, and there was not even a reprimand for another group who clogged the Calais car lanes by driving at a snail’s pace, a popular form of French protest known as ‘Operation Escargot’.

As a result of all this, a 25-mile queue of freight traffic has been a sitting duck for ‘les clandestines’ all week.

And the unions are promising more trouble to come. When schools break up in a few weeks, disruption and intimidation loom for millions of holidaymakers travelling to and from the Continent.

Yet, disgracefully, the only people risking any sort of punishment are the drivers of lorries and coaches who face a fine of up to £2,000 per stowaway. Last week, Laurie Bourne, a coach driver from Essex, whose locked bus was ambushed by a gang of 30 outside Calais last autumn, was fined £2,000 by the UK Border Agency following the discovery of two migrants in a storage compartment.

Although he had reported the stowaways to the port authorities, he was still quizzed for three hours and later punished. The migrants were given water and sent on their way.

The situation is even more ruinous for lorry drivers with perishable loads. If a stowaway is found in a cargo of food, the whole lot must be jettisoned.

A Home Office spokesman says the number of cross-Channel stowaways caught through security checks last year was 39,000 — more than double the number for the previous year and three times more than 2012-13. But officials refuse to divulge the number of fines issued.

In this week’s chaos, there wasn’t time to check every load anyway. At one point, I watched a trio of French policemen wave a lorry through to the freight terminal with a man’s head clearly peeking out above the cab.

Though the blockade has been lifted (for now), it will take days to return to normal. Until then, Britain continues to lose £250 million a day, according to the Port of Dover. Little wonder hauliers are demanding military intervention.

‘The UK and French governments must acknowledge their responsibilities and act,’ said Richard Burnett, of the Road Haulage Association, which represents 6,000 firms and 100,000 trucks. ‘If this means deployment of the armed forces, then so be it.’

Most of us will remember this week for the hottest start to July in history. Mr Burnett and his members will remember it for the worst blockade in living memory.

‘It’s not just lorry drivers who are suffering,’ he tells me. ‘There are supermarkets without food supplies and production lines on hold as they wait for components.’

He points out that on the British side of the Channel, Operation Stack — the emergency queuing system for lorries heading for Dover — went off the scale. Kent Police had never previously had to deal with a queue halfway back up the motorway to London.

If that wasn’t bad enough, he explains, the migrant situation in Calais is now endangering the lives of hauliers as well as stowaways.

Doug Wilson agrees: ‘People have been trying it on for years, but now they’re all armed — knives and worse.’

The smugglers’ usual tactic for slowing down lorries is to throw rubbish across roads — and even throw bricks at windscreens. In this sort of gridlock, they don’t need to. It’s a free-for-all for the marauders.

Driving along the western approach to Calais, I am struck by the discipline of the lorry drivers. They form an orderly queue down the outside lane of the motorway, leaving the other lanes open for cars.

Paul Joy, 49, from South London, is stuck here with 15 tons of German meat destined for a famous British supermarket chain, and says the whole lot will be worthless unless he gets it to his depot in the next 48 hours. Of all the places he drives to, he says Calais is by far the worst.

‘I reckon a few firms will go bust after this week,’ he adds.

One Oxfordshire haulier has announced that he is giving up cross-Channel operations altogether. ‘There were always stowaways at Calais but now it’s a serious problem and it has cost us thousands,’ says Sir Adrian Cooper, 54. Arguably Britain’s poshest trucker, the 6th baronet delivers crops in a pair of 44-ton trucks.

‘Every time a gang cuts through the cover, it’s another £150 repair plus all the delay,’ he says. ‘These strikes have been the final straw. I’m sticking to the UK for now.’

Back outside the Calais freight terminal, the police are nowhere to be seen as an African gang crack open a P&O Ferrymasters container on the back of a Dutch lorry.

Next, we stumble across an Afghan gang opening up a Romanian lorry operated by Vos Logistics. Another stowaway pops inside. A police car whizzes by without even slowing down. I find a party of Sudanese migrants sitting in the back of a Polish lorry carrying two German diggers. The door is wide open and they leap out when Mail photographer Mark Large starts taking pictures (a risky business, as the dents in his car testify). The driver, Jan Hajdecki, climbs from his cab and laughs. ‘All under control,’ he says, explaining that he deliberately leaves his truck wide open until he reaches the port.

Only then does he bother clearing out any stowaways. He’d much rather they climbed in through the door than cut holes in his expensive curtain around the sides.

Things are only going to get worse. As more migrants flee the horrors of IS and civil wars in the Middle East and Africa, more overcrowded boats are landing in Italy. From there, many will make their way to Calais where they will keep trying their luck.

They may not be in mortal danger any more. But Britain, not France, is where they want to be.

‘Look, this is my home town,’ says Jamal, 32, a former garden centre manager from Daraa, Syria, producing his mobile phone to show me a picture of a pile of rubble. He has been sleeping in a tent on a Calais industrial estate for 45 days and has tried to jump on many lorries. Jamal wants to go to the UK because he has family there and because France is increasingly unpleasant.

‘I won’t go to the Jungle. It is not safe,’ he says. The ‘Jungle’ is the local name for the main campsite housing some 3,000 migrants in the dunes to the east of Calais. Jamal talks of drugs and gang wars.

When I arrive mid-morning, most residents are sleeping after a long night of lorry-jumping. French charities provide a meal at 5pm every day and there is a standpipe and a row of grisly-looking portable loos. But the situation is not sustainable.

Here I meet Masaret, 20, a business student from Keren, Eritrea. He speaks excellent English and explains that he has spent more than £3,000 getting this far, via Libya and a perilous voyage to Italy. ‘I have seen 15 people killed by IS and my home is a war zone. But there is nothing for us here in France. We want to go to Britain where there is potential. You have services for immigrants.’

His trousers are torn in several places after a botched attempt to climb under a train. ‘I am going to die or I am going to reach England.’

It is a tragic situation with no easy answers. But I can think of a few. After all, if I can stand here in broad daylight watching the smugglers at work, why can’t the French and British authorities have spotters doing the same?

And the next time French militants set fire to the Channel Tunnel, is it too much to ask for them to be put on trial?

This week, their leader, Eric Vercoutre, likened Tunnel security to ‘a sieve’ and has said he might do it again.

If so, one thing is certain. The people who will really pay the price for this bedlam will not be the militants or the people smugglers. It will be the hauliers and coach drivers going about their work, the tourists heading off on holiday — and, ultimately, the British consumer.

Photographs and video - http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3148953/The-British-trucker-blockaded-French-quelle-surprise-went-squealing-police-rage-inducing-dispatch-Calais-frontline.html

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[BC Mack]

this is not NEW news..... been going on for years...

this driver drove home a point, but it's not about one thing, it's a frustration brewing everywhere.

France is full of "financial refugees" and the govt wants them gone, home country doesn't want them back nor pay for repatriation, UK pays the best welfare in the EU... you don't see them heading for Germany or Poland, no, their handlers know where the best deal is and the underground jobs are working for like people.

France has built up a history of government financial supports, farmers, vacation time, hours of work etc, ok when things were good but it's belt tightening time everywhere and the people are trying to find someone to blame, Greece now maybe Spain or Italy next... where will it end?

of course, the US has a similar situation with "refugees" by the millions... the UK press seems to have missed that point.

the word "immigrant" used to have a meaning, a value... all a controlled flow, but now, it's a world wide movement towards "have" countries until they then explode with internal strife over race relations, jobs, handouts..

we are having a large influx of Chinese into Canada, they pay their "entrepreneurial fee" to the govt ($400k) and then buy a nice house, a couple of Mercedes and keep to their community... we are not seeing it here in the volume others do... maybe it's too cold? (95F today)... but we do let our undocumented refugees wander around the country while their extradition case grinds away.

I think the Australian PM recently put it very succinctly... "fit in or f**k off".... a true Australian...!!!

is it right? is it fair?? I can't judge that here, but it's going to lead to problems, economic and other, if it continues as the financial balance of the world starts to move and the "haves" become "have nots".

can't blame Bush for this one... right?

BC Mack

[kscarbel2]

Now French authorities are attempting to halt the flow of asylum seekers on their way to Britain by offering them temporary visas if they promise to leave Calais.

Just unbelievable. These illegals needs to be escorted out of France.