The migrant express
Stowaways leap aboard UK-bound freight trains amid Calais chaos
SQUATTING in an empty freight train carriage, illegal migrants take advantage of the chaos at Calais caused by French strikes to catch a ride to the UK.
More than 40 young men were pictured stowing away on a train as it made its 31-mile journey via the Channel Tunnel to Folkestone overnight earlier this month.
It came as the Freight Transport Association warned that the situation in Calais was now a ‘ national crisis’ for Britain which costs £750,000 a day.
A perfect storm of wildcat strikes by French lorry drivers, growing numbers of migrants, protests by French farmers over food prices and the great summer getaway has caused mayhem at the port.
With security guards and the border police struggling to cope with the situation, migrants desperate to reach Britain have started jumping aboard empty carriages.
It is not known whether the 40 men were intercepted, but earlier this week 80 illegal migrants were caught by police after arriving on the trains.
A source told a newspaper: ‘The last incident happened on Monday, pretty much where the train gets into the UK. There were about 80 just sat there.
‘When it stopped the police came down and picked them up. They shouldn’t be sending trains through with immigrants on them.
‘Some have fallen off and died. It seems to happen on a lot of the nights. People need to know it is happening.’
John Keefe, from tunnel operator Eurotunnel, said ‘ handfuls’ were now getting through rather than more earlier in the month. But Tory MP Philip Davies said: ‘These people are ingenious. They are going to find any way to get into this country. The authorities need to be one step ahead.’
And fellow Tory MP Andrew Percy added: ‘This is unacceptable. The authorities in Calais need to get a grip or stop sending the trains at all.’ Strikes by hundreds of French lorry drivers have backed up traffic and caused severe delays in Kent and northern France.
As no freight can get through to be loaded on to the carriages, they’re left empty, although the trains still depart for Britain at a rate of up to four an hour.
Operation Stack – in which freight traffic is forced to queue on sections of the M20 when cross-Channel services are disrupted – will continue until at least tomorrow, according to Kent police.
The Freight Transport Association’s deputy chief executive James Hookham said that the value of goods lost and the cost to business had turned the situation into a ‘national crisis’.
‘This is the country’s GDP and exports standing still in these horrendous queues caused by the situation in Calais,’ he said.
‘ It is simply not acceptable that industrial action in France can cause such chaos which is impacting on the British economy.
‘Calais has to be made a strikefree zone so that cross-Channel traffic can start moving again and Operation Stack can be lifted as soon as possible.’
‘They need to get a grip’