Dawn has yet to break and the rocks are already flying, followed by blazing bits of rubbish. The French police in riot gear are doing their best to hold the line, launching tear gas at the 50 rioters who then turn their attention to the parked car belonging to Mail photographer, Roland Hoskins.
With repeated cries of ‘Allahu Akbar’, they hurl a 20-litre plastic tank of petrol next to the car and then throw flaming projectiles at it in the hope it will explode.
Roland runs out from behind the police lines, kicks the tank aside and manages to drive his car to safety as the battle rages on. This is not some lawless inner city sink estate. It is Gravelines, a sleepy (and, at 5am, sleeping) French seaside town which happens to be one of just 287 in all of France to boast the highest four-rosette rating in the nation’s annual ‘Ville Fleurie’ contest for the prettiest communities.
Right now, though, it is more like a jihadi war zone. And it’s all because of a rubber dinghy. These rioters have been trying to launch an illegal inflatable and sneak 70 migrants across Britain, netting another six-figure sum for the human traffic gangs who despatch up to a dozen of these boats each day.
The smugglers are currently enjoying their best year ever – with more than 22,000 illegal entries to the UK thus far.
With this punctured boat confiscated and on the back of a police truck, the rioters finally concede defeat and vanish into the dunes (with no arrests).
Sadly, though, yesterday’s police victory was very much the exception, not the rule, as I have learned during my trip to Gravelines this week.
The town is a pocket of old-world charm next to the vast industrial complex of Dunkirk. This year is the 85th anniversary of Operation Dynamo, the heroic evacuation of the British Army after the fall of France. Now, a new fleet of ‘little ships’ are back on the coast around Dunkirk performing exactly the same role, but with a very different clientele.
A man was seen throwing projectiles towards police during clashes between migrants and police in Gravelines, France, on Friday
Riot cops descended to the area and were seen near a fire amid clashes with migrants early yesterday morning in Gravelines
The force responded as migrants hurled petrol bombs and rocks in the early hours of yesterday
They used to call these migrants ‘les clandestines’ back in the days when the smugglers hid them in the back of a lorry. There is nothing remotely clandestine about them any more. This is brazen lawlessness on an epic scale.
Rewind to the same part of Gravelines the previous morning. I have been here for all of five minutes when an outburst of Middle Eastern shouting is followed by the ‘thwup!’ of a 30ft inflatable people-smuggling boat with a huge outboard engine being dropped in the water.
The first passengers jump aboard. This is not happening on some remote stretch of windswept beach either. I am in the town centre on the banks of a canal between a main road and the smartest restaurant in Gravelines, L’Eclusier.
It is too early for breakfast here but this £1,500-per-person boat will be in Dover in time for brunch, having stopped off en route at a nearby beach to pick up more fare-paying passengers, including plenty of Afghans (the current nationality du jour) plus assorted Vietnamese, Sudanese, Palestinians and Eritreans.
They will include four women and two young children but this will be, overwhelmingly, a cargo of young male adults. ‘We are all the world!’ shouts one passenger, and he has a point.
It’s why this service has a new name, one which is instantly understandable in every language the world over. They don’t call this a ‘boat’. They call it a ‘taxi’.
To listen to last week’s bullish tones at the Franco-British summit between President Macron and Sir Keir Starmer, you might imagine that sights like this were a thing of the past.
We have been assured French police will now intervene up to ‘300 metres offshore’ to ‘stop ze boats’. This is in addition to a ‘one-in, one-out’ scheme whereby Britain can return rejected asylum-seekers to France in exchange for equal numbers of pre-approved asylum-seekers.
A group of men, some wearing masks, could be seen at a distance from police with a fire blazing in the background
Riot police could be seen running as they attempted to stop the unrest at 5am in Gravelines
On which point, I find miraculous agreement across the board, from the migrants, the charity sector and the French police to Nigel Farage.
All are adamant: it is not going to make the slightest difference. So say the locals, too. Expert migration lawyer, Olivier Rangeon, tells me that the new ‘300 metre’ rule still needs European Commission clearance. And, besides, the police have told him they cannot enforce it.
‘It’s not safe and the migrants are too numerous.’ I meet Bertrand Ringot, who has been mayor of Gravelines for 25 years through multiple migrant crises on this coast.
‘The only way to resolve the situation is for Britain to reduce its attraction to the migrants and to become more like France,’ he says. Nor is he some hardline Right-winger, but a proud member of France’s Socialist Party.
‘We believe in humanity but with firmness,’ adds this 59-year-old ex-member of the French rowing squad. ‘Britain needs more severe rules. And, of course, identity cards.’
Back at the canal, I seriously wonder if this latest boat will ever reach the sea, let alone to England. The skipper is an utter moron. He reverses the boat straight into the canal wall and it bounces off again just as two men try to jump in. They land in the water inches from the propeller and there is much Arabic shouting.
Captain Calamity is still trying to circle round for another go when a blue flashing light tells us the cops are finally on their way. He realises it’s time to head for sea. Pronto.
Police had shields and tear gas at the scene of the unrest where they could be seen with fire blazing behind them
The fires ravaged in the area as migrants faced off with cops and gathered in large groups
We know exactly where the boat taxi is going next – up the canal, out to sea and round to Plage de Petit-Fort-Philippe. This is two miles of beach next to Gravelines and France’s largest nuclear power station. It is flanked by sand dunes and bushes, a perfect waiting area for the migrants.
Even as we wait to see our boat, a much larger overloaded migrant dinghy is setting off with around 100 on board.
Its engine will have enough petrol to get the boat into UK territorial waters whereupon the fuel supply will deliberately run out, forcing the UK authorities to rescue them.
A coastguard speedboat keeps an eye on them but makes no effort to intervene, let alone uphold French maritime law. This clearly states that anyone operating an outboard above six horsepower must pass the test for a boat licence called a ‘permis bateau’, on pain of arrest and/or a fine of €1,500 (£1,300). This engine is at least 40 horsepower.
As Reform leader Nigel Farage tells me later: ‘Every dinghy should be stopped by the French as any private person would be.’ However, the coastguard just waves them off. There is absolutely no chance that Captain Calamity has a ‘permis bateau’. But, as he comes into view, the coastguard makes no attempt to check him out either.
Whereupon a small army suddenly comes swooping down from the dunes – instantly visible in bright orange lifejackets fresh from the local supermarket. Three smugglers are in charge, each covering his face with a black and white Arab keffiyeh, and trying to keep a semblance of order.
As the taxi boat gets within wading distance, a smuggler waves the first group forward, including all the women.
Far behind them all, I suddenly spot a family of four coming across the sand. Karwan and Sara Izadi, and their two children, Mohammed, six, and Alina, four, have none of the gung-ho confidence of the young men. Sara is in tears. Karwan appears to be hesitating.
Nigel Farage said: ‘Every dinghy should be stopped by the French as any private person would be’
They briefly explain they are from Iran, have come via Turkey and Germany, and have spent more than a week living in the dunes waiting for their taxi boat. Either they have paid well over the £1,500 entry-level price or the other migrants are being chivalrous but the Izadis go straight to the front of the queue.
Two smugglers hoist the children on their shoulders as the parents follow, their mother now up to her armpits in water. It takes half an hour to fill the boat but there are no police to be seen throughout. As Calamity points his bow vaguely in the direction of England, the coastguard crew come alongside.
Are they actually going to check Calamity’s papers? Of course not. They want to hand extra lifejackets for the migrants who never got round to buying one.
The dozens of punters who failed to get on board today trudge back to the dunes. Some try to remonstrate with the traffickers but there seems little in the way of a complaints department at People Smugglers Inc.
I try to talk to those who must wait for another day. One is Kuwaiti. A trio are Palestinian. Where from? ‘Gaza.’ I ask how they managed to get out of there and they bristle instantly. ‘Are you Hebrew?’ asks one, before a smuggler barks orders that no one is to talk to the press.
It is 6:37am French time and the action is over for another day. Captain Calamity clearly manages to get picked up in British waters because, at 10:35 UK time, the Mail spots the Izadi family stepping off the Border Force patrol boat, Defender, at the Jetfoil Terminal in Dover Harbour, the reception point for migrants. It’s been five hours door to door. That’s not dissimilar to a Calais-Dover ferry crossing in high season by the time you add in the queues and customs checks.
The British Government later confirms today’s arrivals: six small boats and a total of 398 new ‘irregular migrants’ in need of board and lodging.
People were seen scrambling to board a small boat near Wimereux in France on Thursday, July 17
Back in France, I still want to see if Sir Keir’s ‘crackdown’ is hitting morale. It seems not.
‘I will be in England soon,’ says Ahmed Babeker, 24, from Sudan, who arrived here via Turkey. He is buying food at the makeshift camp in the woods near Loon-Plage. It’s a rough spot. A Yemeni migrant was shot here the other day and a British photographer was chased off at knife point last week. But Ahmed is cheerful.
‘Each week my family pay a little more,’ he tells me, explaining that he has been here since November, waiting for his loved ones to pay a gang the requisite sum via the ancient money exchange system, ‘hawala’. Once the account is settled, he’ll be on his way.
His plan? ‘I want an education and then I want to be an electrical engineer,’ he says, ‘maybe in Liverpool or Birmingham.’
At a smaller camp in a disused Calais loading bay, I find another Sudanese migrant, Salah Abdul Salam.
He has already been granted asylum in Sweden where he has lived for six years and had a pre-Covid job at McDonald’s. He shows me his Swedish residency papers and ID card. However, he’s had enough of Malmo.
‘Sweden is too cold. I want to go England. The English system is good.’
As Gravelines mayor, Bertrand Ringot argues that is the root of the issue.
Sir Keir Starmer and French President Emmanuel Macron last week agreed a deal to tackle migrants crossing to Britain
He talks me through the problems in his town, where the daily mess left by the migrants requires six extra cleaners, costing €300,000 (£260,000) per year; where many women and girls are too scared to travel on buses, which are free to all and often full of gangs of foreign youths; where people are fed up with strangers in their gardens gathering firewood and peeping through windows.
‘My message to Starmer is: change the conditions for staying in England. Work with us in Europe and make it harder to work in England without a permit. This situation is a time-bomb.’
In the meantime, the French could at least enforce their own laws. As mentioned earlier, their rules ban unlicensed use of engines over six horsepower, meaning they could simply apprehend illegal ‘taxi’ drivers and tow their boats back to port.
That’s just what happens in European waters, as I know to my cost. Last year, on holiday with my family in Sicily, I sailed my rented boat into an unmarked exclusion zone.
I was suddenly apprehended by an Italian patrol boat, held for an hour and ordered to pay a €320 fine or else face arrest. I duly coughed up.
We have all heard of ‘two-tier’ justice. But it is certainly not confined to Britain. It’s alive and well here in northern France, too. Welcome to the ‘deux etages plages’.
