Refugee Activist

I f the refugees make it to Britain, they exchange one hostile environment for another. Sajid Javid, while Home Secretary, first declared it a national emergency that a small number of refugees were getting across the Channel on boats. Since then the vitriol has expanded and the situation for refugees who arrive has worsened. Priti Patel has launched a full-scale assault on those who cross, backed by the whole of the Cabinet, every Tory MP, most of the press and of course, the far right.

For months, refugees in Calais and Dunkirk have been a community under siege. Their existence has always been precarious, with appalling living conditions, constant harassment from the police and unrelenting hostility from the French authorities. Recently these attacks have been stepped up to levels not seen since the destruction of the original Calais jungle in 2016. There has been a long series of assaults on the squalid settlements where the refugees live. The area available to them on waste ground and in industrial estates on the edge of Calais has been systematically reduced.