Calais migrants crisis: most national papers blame France, bien sûr
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Version 0 of 1. In 1558, when French forces took England’s last little territory on the European mainland, the loss of Calais was lamented by Mary Tudor. She is reported to have remarked: “When I am dead and my body is opened, ye shall find ‘Calais’ written on my heart.” Now Calais is writ large on the front pages of Britain’s national newspapers amid a growing controversy over the desire of migrants to enter the country through the Channel tunnel. Amid what i calls “the battle to secure Calais”, headlines in other papers - based on calls for action by a police chief and various “senior MPs” - urge prime minister David Cameron to “send in the army” or, in the Daily Telegraph version, to “send in the gurkhas.” The burden of the page 1 articles in the Daily Mail, Daily Express, Daily Star. Metro and the Sun (headline: “Softy Calais goes ballistic... Frenchies are atrocious”) is that the French authorities are at fault. This viewpoint is reinforced in leading articles and, in some cases, by columnists and commentators. The Mail blames everyone it can think of for the crisis: the “thousands of illegal immigrants” for trying to reach Britain; “western leaders, chief among them David Cameron” for creating “a gateway to mainland Europe from Africa by toppling Gaddafi in Libya, then abandoning the country to anarchy”; the Italian government for ignoring EU rules in which “migrants must claim asylum in the first safe country they enter”; the European Commission for being “typically pathetic in enforcing its own laws and protocols”; and, of course, the French for “behaving every bit as deplorably as the Italians” by “shamelessly waving migrants on towards the UK, failing to take their fingerprints and, when they do detect stowaways, releasing them within minutes.” The newspaper of Middle England is particularly enraged by “our own government, which refuses to utter a word of criticism of France for fear they will rip up treaties allowing Britain to carry out border checks on its soil.” It argues that there are two “fundamental reasons why the migrants are massing at Calais... First, we are rightly considered a global soft-touch which will provide them with limitless welfare... And second, the illegal immigrants are getting through our lax border controls, which only encourages more to come and try their luck.” The Sun, which believes “anarchy at Calais” to be “a weeping sore on the face of Europe”, argues that “France’s heart is not in it” and even quotes Labour’s Harriet Harman approvingly because she said France should identify the few genuine asylum seekers and deport the rest. The Sun wants both France and Britain to call on their soldiery to bring order at Calais. The Telegraph contends that “much of blame belongs with France” because its has been inadequate.” There are “grave doubts” about the effectiveness of the French police and “strong grounds to suspect that the French government has deliberately taken a relaxed approach to detaining and removing immigrants near the tunnel because it regards permitting their departure to the UK as a cheaper and easier option than returning them to their countries of origin.” “Frankly,” says the Telegraph, “the French are attempting to shirk their responsibilities and transfer their problems to Britain.” The Express, never less than blunt, argues that “the French have failed to control the marauding migrants” who “have overwhelmed the inadequate French police.” It concludes with a cliché: “There is no good reason why our soldiers cannot help to keep them from entering Britain... desperate times call for desperate measures.” The Guardian views the “politically charged issue” of the Calais migrants through the prism of Britain’s relationship with the European Union in which “cooperation remains indispensable.” The problem of migration pressures from Syria and sub-Saharan Africa “have not arisen because of EU treaties or directives.” But solving it must rely on European “nations working together.” In the Times, David Aaronovitch shows an understanding of why so many people want to escape their countries of origin. So why not accommodate these desperate fugitives? “With proper arrangements, we could take every single person... and hardly notice it. We could turn those rangy, scary young men into electrical engineers. It would still be a drop in the drowning ocean. The crisis is elsewhere and cannot be solved by single governments. But we’re scared and that makes us hard-hearted and, worse, it makes us unable even to ask the right questions, let alone imagine the right answers. Perhaps from now on Calais should be spelt C.A.L.L.O.U.S — the place from where you can look across the Channel and glimpse Stupid.” Similarly, the Telegraph’s women’s editor, Emma Barnett, wonders if “our human compassion has deserted us.” She writes: “Even the language that’s being used to describe the mostly male Eritreans, Ethiopians, Afghans and Sudanese trying to live in Europe is mechanical at best, and dehumanising at worst. Emergency government meetings are being held to ensure there is ‘upstream management of illegal migratory flows.’ Excuse me? These are real people, with hearts, families and lest we forget it, human rights.” By contrast, the Mail’s Dominic Sandbrook, although identifying the reason for the wave of migrants arriving in Calais, sees the problem as a security issue in which we have the good luck to be an island: “Referring to Britain as an island is now, of course, deeply unfashionable. Liberal academics love to tell us that we are merely one European country among many, and our politicians often seem to have a pathological aversion to any thought of British uniqueness... Mr Cameron’s predecessors managed to keep out Napoleon and Hitler, both of whom had gigantic armies and an entire continent behind them. So he really should be able to cope with a few thousand exhausted migrants — shouldn’t he?” Leo McKinstry, in the Express, thinks the Calais crisis is the ultimate symbol of the failure of the “EU project.” Open borders have brought chaos and division. But the Independent’s John Lichfield argues that it is neither a Calais problem nor, in a sense, a European problem. It begins in the homelands of the migrants and more should be done to prevent them from leaving their homes in the first place. |