Garang*, 18, is one of thousands of refugees recently caught in the crossfire of French riot police, who threw teargas and beat them with batons when they boarded dinghies to travel to the UK. He is a victim of a war in his home of South Sudan – and one being fought on France’s northern shores. He borrows a phone from anyone with credit who will let him try to call home, where his family is displaced.
Garang doesn’t have enough money on the £10-a-week allowance from the Home Office to make a long-distance call. All he wants is to speak to his mum, to hear her voice, and let her know he is alive and safe in the UK despite the violence he has faced. On Thursday, stopping more people like Garang from reaching the UK in small boats topped the “to do” list of the prime minister, Andy Burnham, and the French president, Emmanuel Macron, when they held talks.
The leaders agreed they were making headway in reducing small boat crossings in the English Channel but now needed to go further. How much further can the war on refugees go? Along with the use of teargas and beatings, there are now surveillance drones and more French officers to tackle dinghy launches from other parts of the coast.
The UK government is increasingly using military terms such as “surge” and “neutralise” in relation to small-boat crossings. The home secretary, Shabana Mahmood, has vowed to continue to be “relentless” in this battle. Burnham said the government wanted to “prevent smugglers exploiting vulnerable migrants”, but was silent on alternatives to offer to these vulnerable people.
When the government tried to seal off the lorry route for people crossing from France into the UK a decade ago, ministers did not foresee its replacement with small boats. The maritime option required greater reliance on smuggling networks, which have vastly increased in size, complexity and profits. Worst of all are the optics, which have been seized upon by the right – shots of overcrowded dinghies carrying people in orange lifejackets bobbing up and down against the blue horizon.
These images have fuelled anger, with some Britons believing that most refugees are shunning other countries to beat a path to our door. In fact, the number of irregular arrivals to Europe in the last year has dropped significantly, and the UK ranks 16th in Europe per head of population for asylum claims. According to this newly released data, a majority of asylum seekers do not arrive in small boats – 41% were already in the UK and held a visa or other leave prior to claiming and 20% arrived by other routes, many likely to be clandestine means, such as lorries.
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