“Them that ask no questions ain’t told a lie.
Watch the wall my darling while the Gentlemen go by”.
If the UK votes to stay in the EU next Thursday the level of net migration will stay at more than 250,000 a year for the next 20 years, the latest Migration Watch report warns. Yet former PM Gordon Brown tells us not to worry. The only migration problem Britain faces is the illegal variety (not from the EU) and the best way to deal with this is “cooperation across authorities”. EU ones, he meant, of course – what else?
Brown was at great pains to put our minds at rest. Recent picture of Albanians parked on the cliffs at Dieppe, he assured us, were nothing to worry about. They were only illegals. David Cameron, no doubt, was grateful for his predecessor’s contribution.
For there is no sign that the current British political establishment has begun to understand or face up to the coming tsunami of mass migration and people smuggling into the UK.
You ain’t seen nothing yet, as the song goes. But forget the idea that the UK Government has a plan to deal with it. Its head remains firmly in the sand about the EU which, far from helping stem this traffic, is fostering it.
Smuggling may not be the second oldest profession (said to be spying) but it’s well up there in the rankings. Kipling’s famous poem A Smugglers Tale spelt out the reality of his time, and nothing much has changed since, not even the methods; only the commodity.
When I was responsible for tackling smuggling across the West Country & Wales back in the 1990s, staff under my command dealt with numerous “boat jobs”. Once we dealt with eight in 16 months – more than anyone else before or since. Then the commodity was drugs. Now it is people.
Drugs dumped into the sea during a hot pursuit, are one thing. Humans are another. If we do not see deaths in the Channel and the South Western Approaches to the UK in the coming months and years we will be lucky indeed. We will be lucky too if the people smugglers are not armed.
A couple of weeks ago, when those disturbing scenes appeared on Channel 4 News of gangs of Albanian young men camped under the cliffs at Dieppe and amid numerous reports of regular people smuggling, mainly of Albanians off Kent, I was contacted by the BBC asking for an explanation. Why were there Albanians at Dieppe?
Off the cuff and without research, I suggested perhaps unwisely that the EU had probably granted visa-free, uncontrolled movement to Albanians, within the Schengen area (of which the UK is not a member). I suggested that these young men were making their way freely – and legally – across Europe to the Channel in increasing numbers and then on to the UK illegally.
Why would they not do that, I asked? The UK is after all the prime destination for economic migrants. Furthermore, Albanians here (mostly illegals) now dominate organised and armed criminality in the UK, frequently using false, Greek, Italian or other, identity papers. Before they took over, this claim to fame went to Turks and Turkish Cypriots.
My deduction turned out to be correct: Yes, visa-free travel has been granted; no, the UK had not been consulted (officially). The French, however, (and other countries since then) had objected but to no avail. This measure had been put been forward by the EU Commission (not by the politicians) and passed by majority voting.
Researching the story further it turned out, however, that both David Cameron and Tony Blair had encouraged this measure, as reported here, here, here, here, and here.
The purpose of this blog post is less to throw further fuel onto the ‘Leave’ case in the EU referendum (though, I declare my interest – I shall vote “Leave” for many reasons) than to demonstrate how politicians from all parties can be intimately involved in dramatically changing Britain, very much for the worse, without the consent of the people.
A conspicuous feature of the referendum debate, illustrated once again by Gordon Brown on Today, is how little Cameron, Corbyn, Clegg and Co want to talk about the future destination of the UK population in numbers, given current migration trends.
We are set to become the most populous and crowded country in Europe. Yet few people realise where this is really going nor how such numbers will test our social model and infrastructure to destruction. Bad and overwhelming for us, it will be bad too for counties denuded of a whole generation of their young people.
The trends, based on constant rates of fertility, illustrated in the UN’s forward population projection, which stretches to 2100 and beyond, are clear.
The UK will be over 83 million by 2100 – that’s within the lifetimes of our grandchildren and great grandchildren – approaching, or possibly even equalling, the population of Russia. The countries of Eastern Europe are set to drop substantially as is Germany. For Albania and Romania a 50 per cent drop is predicted. France will grow, but from a starting point of much lower population density. Ominously, Turkey shows a substantial increase.
The US is set to increase by 100 million but Africa by hundreds of millions. Not all of those Africans are going to want to stay in Africa.
Given the current trends in human trafficking, however sanguine Mr Brown may be be, it is surely only a question of time before a rusting hulk of a “mother ship” with hundreds of migrants on board, whether from the Mediterranean or Africa, fetches up in the South Western Approaches just outside Britain’s territorial waters, from which immigrants will be “coopered” ashore by smaller boats. That is, as long as it stays afloat.
To deal with this the BBC reports that the Border Agency has recently ordered 8 more rigid hulled inflatable boats – something that in my time we got rid of as they were unable to operate safely in deep water and bad weather, unable to carry sophisticated radar and cost far too much to crew and keep in a state of readiness.
The UK could station a boat every ten miles around 300 miles of coastline, from the Severn Estuary to Great Yarmouth, and still not intercept one smuggling attempt by chance (a “cold find”). Ordering these craft is an illusion of meaningful activity, which belies any understanding of the problem.
Real ‘results’, as my service got, were based in the main on our intelligence infrastructure, our sophisticated covert investigation back up (which no longer exists in the same form or size) and our joint cell working with other agencies.
Now reports leaked from the Foreign Office, allegedly suppressed pending the referendum, about granting similar visa-free uncontrolled travel to the UK from Turkey would open our borders to a further 1.5 million Turks – something British diplomats have admitted would be a ‘risk’.
Give the Turks legal visa-free access to and within the Schengen area and Mr Gordon Brown can expect to see ‘those Albanians’ getting some Turkish company on the cliffs at Dieppe. He can expect too to see the beaches from Dunkerque to Cherbourg littered with camps and some serious spats and fighting.
We, and the French, who will inevitably ‘host’ the camps, will be stuck with a problem created by the EU. But it won’t be solved unless we – our politicians, in or out of the EU – work honestly and jointly with the French to stop it. We’ll need to support each other, and as nation states stop the EU acting against our interests.
At the moment our political leaders won’t talk about it honestly – not even in the Brexit camp. They must be made to.
(Image: CSDP EEAS)
