Small boat crossings: Targeting of RNLI volunteers is not acceptable - Ismail Mulla

Dangerous Channel crossings need to end, that much we can all agree on. Whether you're pro-migrant, anti-migrant, these journeys are putting lives, often unnecessarily, at risk. And the criminals facilitating these arrivals need to be brought to book otherwise they will continue to profit off the desperation of asylum seekers.

As a country, we are at an important crossroads. The tide seemed to be turning under Labour. A total of 16,513 people arrived in the UK in small boats in the year to September 1, 43 per cent lower than the same period the previous year.

I’m not suggesting this is a job well done and that the Government should be patting itself on the back but the approach of smashing the smuggling gangs seems, on the surface, to have some merit.

However, the sands are shifting and the Labour Government could be about to enter stormy seas. The boats, until recently, have been using the Calais to Dover route but the crossing that took migrants from Normandy to Portsmouth could undo all the work of the authorities to reduce arrivals.

It highlights the challenge with the approach of ‘smashing the gangs’, criminals can simply move their operations elsewhere. The crossings are becoming more ambitious. Not only are gangs facilitating potentially longer routes but also the boats are getting bigger.

If Prime Minister Andy Burnham wants to pick up where his predecessor left off and continue to seek to destroy the gangs facilitating these trips, then his Government is going to have to update this strategy.

Britain also needs to start putting pressure on France. There’s no way that the French authorities will be able to patrol the whole of its Northern coastline to intercept dangerous migrant boat crossings. However, it can and should be doing more to prevent boats launching in the first place. Excuses for large vessels carrying migrants flying under the radar are flimsy at best.

Back on British shores we had a self-appointed militia of men ‘protesting’ the latest arrival of migrants by boats. Clad in balaclavas, they blocked roads in an attempt to stop coaches carrying the migrants and sought to intimidate authorities doing their job. Regardless of where you stand on the migrant boat problem, it was all very unedifying.

What should send a chill down the spine of every right thinking person is the targeting of the Royal National Lifeboat Institution (RNLI) by people sympathetic to the balaclava-clad mobs.

Some idiot has posted a picture of two people going about their job rescuing people at sea, regardless of where they have come from or what creed or colour they may be, asking how can they look at themselves in the mirror?

The RNLI is a charity, in fact 97 per cent of frontline personnel are volunteers. The majority of people would suggest that anyone volunteering for the RNLI, regardless of who they may have helped, should look at themselves in the mirror and be proud of the work that they do.

Peter Sparkes, chief executive of the RNLI, said: “The RNLI’s people represent the very best in our society, they selflessly give up their time to keep others safe.

“Yet they and their families are being threatened by those who would hide behind a balaclava or a keyboard.

“Their action, in contrast, is wholly unacceptable in a civilised society.”

The post that I saw abusing the RNLI volunteers came from, surprise, surprise, an anonymous account. The two men, whose picture this account posted, spend their spare time helping save lives at sea. The cowards won’t even show their faces to the world.

Just as you wouldn’t expect a doctor to refuse treating a gunshot wound because the patient may have been involved in criminal activity, abusing RNLI volunteers for doing their jobs is wholly unacceptable.

The abuse of RNLI volunteers and the falling number of small boat arrivals suggests that some of these people don’t really care about engaging with the issue but rather are just seeking to cause trouble.