Calais: Migration and the UK Border

[Treacle Toes]

Thanks for the report agent quimcunx

Fixed it for you.

 

[Treacle Toes]

Hindsight is wonderful, and the need to make a visible statement is fair enough, perhaps making that statement from Calais would have been better though? Wasn't the whole convoy banned by the French before it even left London?

Yeah, I posted about it on the other thread.

 

[Treacle Toes]

Quimmy is right...they knew there was gonna be difficulties getting through because of the ban so a revised plan was needed. More aid getting through because people blagged it at Dover would have been a victory of sorts...those without aid could still have done the protesty bits.

 

[quimcunx]

Hindsight is wonderful, and the need to make a visible statement is fair enough, perhaps making that statement from Calais would have been better though? Wasn't the whole convoy banned by the French before it even left London?

It was banned a couple of days before and I immediately hoped my co-opter would be ok with unbranding so that our food would stand more chance of getting through and so that we weren't left having to drive back with a struggling overloaded van store it somewhere and find another way to get it through at a later date. I think a lot of the organisers and attendees may have been first timers but not all.

 

[Bahnhof Strasse]

It was banned a couple of days before and I immediately hoped my co-opter would be ok with unbranding so that our food would stand more chance of getting through and so that we weren't left having to drive back with a struggling overloaded van store it somewhere and find another way to get it through at a later date. I think a lot of the organisers and attendees may have been first timers but not all.

People live and learn. When doing things the authorities don't really like, always better to just do them and deal with it rather than telling them you're going to do it. Hopefully this weekend's experiences won't put people off trying again.

 

[quimcunx]

It's difficult to find a balance and you are right about hindsight. Visibility and the political is also important and helps keep people informed and engaged. I don't want to sound too critical but it did frustrate me a little to see aid delayed. And it worked out well for us. It meant a shorter day (still a fucking long one!) as we weren't in a 250 long queue to drop off donations.

 

[belboid]

saying beforehand that it was going to be a 'rolling protest' when you know full well that such protests are banned is rather silly. If you are going to do that, at least make sure you have got the bulk of the actual aid in via other means - which seems to be what the far more experienced War On Want lot did. From everything I've heard, it is pretty much all the people who had actually been before and knew what they were doing, who made it through, and no one had bothered advising other participants properly. In one case, a carload did get through, but they took it straight to the camp, not the warehouse, and were surprised they couldn't just unload it there and then.

 

[free spirit]

logistically that sounds like a nightmare for the warehouses as well, if 250 vehicles all rock up at once to be unloaded. I also wonder if the reason the warehouses have been posting up about being empty for the last few weeks has partly been because so many were holding stuff up until the convoy date, rather than going across as soon as they'd got a van load together.

Sounds well intentioned, but maybe not so well thought through to me.

Still good on you quimmy (and others), glad you got through ok.

 

[quimcunx]

Not sure to be honest, free spirit . Maybe partly. I think it may have got people going who hadn't been before. The few people I spoke to hadn't been before. Of course aid could have been indirectly diverted to the convoy but I'm not sure that many people who already do regularish runs were involved. I don't really know tbh, I wasn't involved in it, just asked to go because I'd been before. I do think it helped that I was already familiar with the situation there, belboid . Until you've been it's hard to understand the hows or whys. I only really glanced at the PA and C4C convoy plans a couple of times weeks apart and was a bit dubious at original plans to distribute stuff at the camp etc. I don't think all vehicles would have been carrying donations but it still would have been a statistical nightmare.