Millionaire militant who wants to send your holiday up in f lames
Meet the Calais bully boy who makes Arthur Scargill look like a pussycat
Padding about in a T-shirt and flip-flops, he insists he is a humble sailor looking after his crew. in reality, Eric Vercoutre is one of France’s most powerful men. This week’s traffic chaos in Calais, beneath a thick black cloud of burning rubber, was a reminder of that. and he may be about to make this a miserable summer for millions of British holidaymakers.
in recent weeks, M. Vercoutre and his tiny trade union have created some of the worst cross- Channel traffic jams in modern history, broken umpteen laws and orchestrated mutinies on two Channel ferries.
They have assumed control of one of Europe’s busiest ports, to the fury of its authorities. if M. Vercoutre were British, he would now be in jail, but here in France, he continues to cause mayhem with impunity.
On Tuesday, his union members set fire to the motorway leading to the Channel Tunnel, just as they did last month. On that occasion, they also cut through a steel security fence and set fire to the tunnel’s entrance, creating a 30-mile lorry queue on both sides of the Channel; much to the delight of the 3,000 migrants trying to sneak a ride from Calais into Britain. Their punishment? Rien. When this arthur Scargill of the high seas talks about a ‘hot summer’ of industrial action, he is not exaggerating. at his quayside HQ, what catches my eye are the hundreds of tyres piled up to the roof — fuel for blazing barricades, like the one which brought the a16 autoroute to a halt on Tuesday.
This militant ex-mariner with a conviction for assault and a substantial property portfolio is unapologetic. ‘How else can we be heard? What else can we do when we are fighting for our jobs?’ asks the head of the Syndicat Maritime nord union in his first interview with a British newspaper since the start of this summer’s troubles.
The stand-off in Calais involves 577 staff of the ferry operator MyFerryLink. its owner, Eurotunnel, wants to sell two of its three ships to rival ferry operator, dFdS, which has jobs for only half the workforce. So members of M. Vercoutre’s union have commandeered the two ships and vow to resist all attempts to board them.
They mean business, judging by the effigy in the orange jump suit hanging from the bridge of the ferry Berlioz.
‘When the first person tries to come aboard these ships . . .,’ says M. Vercoutre and then resorts to sign language. His members, he says, would rather scupper the ferries than hand them back.
THE company’s chief executive, Jacques gounon, told me this week he has secured a court order for the ships’ return and called on the French authorities to enforce it. ‘This is unacceptable blackmail,’ he said. M. Vercoutre, who sleeps on board one or other ship each night, is not bothered. after all, this would appear to be his port. Last month, his union ‘banned’ DFDS from operating at Calais, forcing the company to shift its operations to dunkirk. This week, it ‘permitted’ DFDS to resume sailings. Less than three hours later, its members were setting fire to the a16, presumably to remind everyone who is in charge.
it is barmy. How can the leader of a union with fewer than 600 members exercise ultimate authority over the main artery between Britain and Europe? The port’s owners would like to know, too. ‘i have no idea,’ says Jean-Marc Puissesseau, president of the Cote d’Opal Chamber of Commerce, which owns the Port of Calais.
But then M. Vercoutre, 53, would seem to be untouchable. it has now emerged the 25-strong posse with whom he set fire to the Tunnel entrance last month included the chief of staff of the local MP, Yann Capet. M. Capet subsequently said he would gladly have gone himself.
Politicians have no wish to upset M. Vercoutre and his members. daniel Percheron, socialist leader of the regional council, recently announced he would give a ‘bonus’ of to anyone who helps the strikers to blockade the Tunnel.
at Calais Town Hall, neither the mayor nor the deputy mayor (nor anyone else) will discuss the mat- ter, even though they are very vocal in blaming Britain for the gangs of migrants and people smugglers.
no wonder Britain’s Road Haulage association has called on the French government to deploy its armed forces. Fat chance. The militants are threatening to repeat last month’s blockade on an even grander scale.
‘We can block the port of Calais, block the Channel Tunnel and block dunkirk, too,’ says M. Vercoutre, ‘ pour tout l’ete! [all summer]. We have nothing to lose.’
The implications would be dire for British business as well as crossChannel travellers. British hauliers have warned of empty supermarket shelves and crippled production lines in the event of a sustained blockade. Charlie Elphicke, the Tory MP for dover, has warned that Britain is too dependent on Calais and should invest in other ports in the interests of national security.
So who is Eric Vercoutre? How is he in a position to throttle 75 per cent of British road imports and ruin millions of holidays? How, for that matter, does a shop steward end up owning seven homes?
M. Vercoutre is a vivid reminder of the chasm between Britain and France in modern industrial relations. We haven’t seen his like in British public life for a generation.
The beefy, bearded manager of a non-league football team, he is a class warrior of the old school. in 2009, he received a suspended prison sentence for his part in assaulting a female photographer during a ferry blockade in Le Havre. He is also part of an investigation into duty free scams at SeaFrance, the defunct f erry operator. He accuses investigators of ‘acting politically’.
MyFerryLink was born after the collapse of SeaFrance in 2012. Eurotunnel stepped in to buy three ships and f ormer SeaFrance personnel set up SCOP, a workers’ co-operative, to crew them.
Many staff invested their redundancy money in the new venture and M. Vercoutre set up his union to represent them. His enemies (few of whom will speak openly) argue that he should now be trying to salvage as many jobs as he can with DFDS instead of occupying ferries. They also point to his considerable property interests.
Over the years, M. Vercoutre and former wife nathalie have acquired seven properties around Calais — reportedly worth £1.5 million — including a seafront apartment and a block of four flats.
‘i have been working for 36 years. if i have a few apartments, it is because my wife and i have worked hard and we have taken life seriously,’ he tells me firmly. ‘We are not rich. i pay my taxes.’
Part of the reason that the strikers command strong local sympathy is that MyFerryLink was turning into a successful business before Eurotunnel pulled the plug. But Britain’s Competition and Markets authori t y had ruled that Eurotunnel, as owner of the Channel Tunnel, should not be allowed to own a ferry company.
The CMA’s ruling was overturned by the Court of appeal, but Eurotunnel had already agreed to sell its ships to DFDS. Jacques gounon blames ‘British protectionism’ for this crisis and says that there can be no going back.
CaugHT in the middle are the port’s owners who are about to spend £150 million doubling the capacity of Calais, but will companies want to invest further in a town which operates on the whim of a union bully boy?
it doesn’t take much to cause utter chaos. Tuesday’s tyre fire was over in a couple of hours, yet Kent police again had to impose its ‘Operation Stack’ emergency queuing system, still in place last night, and the situation remains volatile on the French side of the Channel.
Outside the tunnel freight terminal, i find the migrant gangs even more determined, crawling over stationary trucks and picking fights with drivers who complain. From a bridge, i can see into the cab of a Romanian lorry where the driver’s mate has a large knife in his lap. The police are nowhere to be seen.
does any of this worry M. Vercoutre? ‘This is not our problem. This is Europe’s problem,’ he says.
i have one more question. if he did what he has done here in Britain, he would be in jail. How is it that, in France, he walks free?
‘Happily,’ he laughs, ‘we just happen to be more of a democracy.’