Hell is a teargassed scrubland crawling with infectious disease. Hell is toddlers scavenging to survive. Hell is a refugee camp in Calais.
Each time I visit, I learn more about the diabolical conditions that human beings are forced to endure in the camp. Having fled the horrors of war, environmental disaster and destitution, refugees there have sacrificed everything to find safety. Instead, they die slowly in a hopeless wasteland. Muddied tents provide the only shelter from the freezing cold. Children beg for water contaminated by faeces, as rats scurry into people’s makeshift homes.
The human shrieks of a rodent-sighting are nothing compared to the wails of infants longing for their mother’s embrace. One of the main sites of separation is Calais itself. Since the destruction of the “jungle” in 2016, the French police have enforced a policy of “zero-fixation points” to prevent refugees settling elsewhere. Evictions are carried out daily; tents, blankets, identity papers, mobile phones, clothes and medicines are confiscated or destroyed.
During this campaign of harassment, refugees are regularly beaten, shot with rubber bullets and choked with teargas. Human Rights Observers – an independent watchdog in northern France – told me they’ve witnessed French authorities urinating on people’s belongings. In the melée, mothers are routinely separated from their children. It’s often the last time they see each other, at least alive.
It may be French authorities who assault the refugees, but it is the UK government that gives them the batons and bullets. In 2021, the UK paid £55m for French border patrols to clamp down on border crossings; the money goes on barbed wire, CCTV and detection technology. Absolving itself of any international or moral responsibility toward refugees, the UK is paying France to criminalise them instead.
The police have the same desire as the French and British governments: for refugees to disappear. Even before Suella Braverman took office, the UK had one of the lowest rates of asylum approvals in western Europe. Under Braverman’s plans, anybody who crosses the Channel would be banned from claiming asylum in the UK altogether.
For most people, being told that their plans violate the 1951 UN refugee convention and the European convention on human rights might compel them to reconsider. Not Braverman. We need to breach these conventions, she says, to finally crack down on people smugglers. She knows the truth: by refusing to provide safe routes, the government forces desperate human beings to search for alternative, more dangerous means of transit. Far from taking on human traffickers, it is her policy that creates the market for them in the first place.
Undeterred by international law, Braverman is determined to fulfil a dream: to witness flights sending refugees to Rwanda. On the plane to Rwanda is Britain’s colonial baggage; from this country’s previous role in the slave trade to its current role in the arms trade (most notably in arming the Saudi-led war in Yemen), Britain bears culpability for the economic and political roots of displacement.
By criminalising the very refugees they create, successive governments have handed over their international responsibilities to the voluntary sector. Calais Appeal, an umbrella group encompassing eight organisations, provides humanitarian assistance to those in need. From Refugee Community Kitchen (which seeks to “serve food with dignity”) to Project Play (which provides displaced children with a space to rest, learn and play), dedicated staff and volunteers fill a gap that the French and British authorities have callously created.
I asked how we can best support them. One is through donations. Another is to amplify what they’ve been saying all along: safe routes save lives. We can stop people drowning in the sea tomorrow – by enabling them to come here safely by plane, train or ferry. Instead of bankrolling the persecution of refugees trying to reach our shores, the UK should be playing a leading role in renewing international commitments to the rights of displaced people around the world.
The only way we can defeat a politics of hatred is with a politics of compassion. The Tories’ assault on refugees must be opposed – not because it lacks fiscal prudence, but because it lacks a basic regard for human life. Refugees are not political pawns to be debated and disempowered. They are human beings, whose hopes and dreams should not be sacrificed in calculations of electability. When looking to justify an alternative policy toward refugees, surely their humanity is enough.
We need an immigration system grounded in compassion, dignity and care. One that brings an end to the poverty, environmental collapse and wars that are displacing people around the world. One that stops spewing the hateful rhetoric of “invasions” and instead says loudly: refugees are welcome here. As Warsan Shire writes in her poem Home, “no one puts their children in a boat unless the water is safer than the land”. For some, a politics of pragmatism is more important than a politics of principle. Maybe a trip to Calais would change their mind.
Jeremy Corbyn MP is a former leader of the Labour party
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