In winter, the English sea kills quickly. A handful of exhausted volunteers face abuse from their neighbours for rescuing migrants crossing the channel
n the early hours of October 9th 2021, about 30 pagers went off in bedrooms along the Kent coast in the south-east of Britain. They were ringing to tell the crew of the Dungeness lifeboat station thatLess than half an hour after the first alarm, the blue-and-orange lifeboat slid from its metal cradle and headed out onto the water.
The three men in it were barely conscious. They had left France the previous morning in an inflatable canoe that official reports described as a “kid’s toy”. The lifeboat crew took them to an asylum processing centre near Dover, 21 miles north-east of Dungeness, where paramedics were waiting to treat them. The men, who were Sudanese, were then taken into custody and disappeared into Britain’s backlogged and under-resourced asylum system.
Ministers have repeatedly pledged to stop the crossings, and the crossings continued regardless. And since no government agency was capable of rescuing hundreds of people a day, thestepped in. It had no choice. The charity was expressly founded to save lives at sea, regardless of nationality. If the coastguard calls, thehas existed beyond reproach and above politics. Its founding meeting in 1824 was chaired by the Archbishop of Canterbury.
Though the exact figures aren’t known, over the past 20 years tens of thousands of people have come to Britain by such means. Other European nations face similar challenges. Since 2014, millions of people fleeing conflict have crossed into the. Each country has responded with different levels of generosity. Germany took in around a million people. Sweden, with a population almost seven times smaller than Britain’s, hosts almost twice as many refugees.
On still evenings when the English Channel was flat and reflective, volunteers would look towards Calais and wonder when their pagers would sound Residents of Dungeness repeatedly discovered small boats filled with people landing on the beach. Sometimes the authorities were waiting; sometimes they weren’t. Occasionally a chase ensued. At the end of 2019 the’s statistics showed that the Dungeness lifeboat had helped 78 people, most of them migrants in small boats. It was twice as many people as in the previous busiest year in the station’s history.
Over time, the nationalities of those crossing changed. Some came from west and central Africa, others the Middle East, depending on which migration routes were operating, which gangs controlled the French side and which crises were driving people from poorer countries to richer ones. “People would say, ‘Why don’t you kick them in the water? I’d say, ‘How about you go out and look at them and kick them in the water?’”
Protesters began to picket the Dungeness lifeboat station. They told volunteers they were “going to hell”; some screamed at arrivals, calling them “paedophiles” and “rapists”. This brought further attention from the press. Images of the Dungeness boat became a staple of newspaper front pages.opted not to comment proactively on the rescues. Volunteers were asked not to post messages online about their work and reminded never to speak to the press.
The most high-profile intervention came from Nigel Farage. The politician-turned-talk-show-host is well known in Dungeness, where he’s been going fishing for decades. Many in thea “taxi service for illegal trafficking gangs”. Shortly after, the charity’s chief executive made a statement saying thedeny that this comment was prompted by Farage’s outburst, but many at Dungeness felt that, after months of silence, the charity had been forced to declare its position.
In winter, the English sea kills quickly. Cold water exhausts the body, draining heat much faster than cold air. Blood vessels constrict. Blood withdraws from the body’s extremities and you begin to shiver. Your teeth chatter with such force it becomes impossible to speak. Your lips turn blue. Within 20 or 30 minutes, your limbs are exhausted. Even strong swimmers lose the ability to stay afloat or cling to a raft. You go under. The first time you inhale water it burns your lungs.
If Britain’s government wanted to prevent dangerous crossings, it could help people travel safely, without recourse to armed traffickers, inflatable boats and sealed refrigerator trucks. With the exception of a few specified groups, such as Ukrainians and Hong Kongers, there is currently no way to enter Britain legally simply to claim asylum. You have to go through another legal route, such as tourism or work, then claim asylum once you’ve arrived.
The rest of Europe is also trying to turn itself into a fortress. In Greece and Italy, arrivals languish in refugee centres that are indistinguishable from jails. An analysis by thecountries to 2,000 migrant deaths. In Niger, previously informal borders are now manned and surveilled, paid for with European money.
They chose Britain for different reasons: some because they spoke English, some because they had relatives there, others seemingly at random. Few had more than a vague sense of what Britain would be like, let alone the niceties of its immigration policy. A former labourer from Kuwait told me how happy he’d been when he was officially documented on arrival: it was the closest thing to a passport anyone in his family had ever had.
The boats are inflated inland then carried, coffin-style, down to the water. It takes several men to lug the huge outboard motor. One person is nominated to navigate. Normally, a few people have to wade waist-deep into the water to push the boat out. Then a vessel would appear. I showed one man a picture of a blue-and-orange boat and another of men in yellow uniforms, and asked if it was they who rescued him. He gave an enormous smile of recognition. “I can’t describe it,” he said. “Once you see their faces. When people try to help you. They give you warmth and water. They’re everything in that moment.”e’re not their dirty little secret anymore,” one volunteer told me recently.
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