Chopping carrots with a Vietnam veteran escaping Trump’s USA and a young computer scientist escaping war in his home country, local teacher Simon Shaw reports from the front line for refugees in Calais

Two standing over a steel cooking pot with one of them stirring it — Credit – Refugee Community Kitchen

Over the February half-term, I volunteered with Refugee Community Kitchen (RCK) as Care4Calais paused operations to recalibrate its activities. As the UK and EU governments intensify their campaigns against asylum seekers, aka desperate people escaping desperate situations, the small boats have to take longer and more hazardous routes, so Care4Calais now has to go further afield to deliver donations.

During our recent stint in Calais, two more vigils occurred for three more lost lives in the Channel. When will the politicians learn that increasing militarisation of the Channel will lead to more fatalities?

The UK government has now decided that those seeking refuge can no longer obtain citizenship. This is undoubtedly in contravention of international conventions that the UK are signatories to. The sole force driving Starmer seems to be to forage in the gutter of racism to steal Farage’s thunder. The reality is that the people we meet in northern France have no safe/legal routes, unlike the 300,000 people the UK accepted, rightfully, from Hong Kong and Ukraine.

I met one young man during my recent brief visit to Calais whose story is typical. He was a 23-year-old from Sudan who after two years studying computer science had to flee the war. He told me in perfect English, with a hint of YouTube accenting, that he wanted to improve his English as he showed me his tent in a cold dirty hanger that houses around 600 similarly scared young men who have made a perilous journey across Africa and through Europe.

RCK prepares hundreds of meals a day in an industrial kitchen staffed by global volunteers. I was washing up one day between two French students discussing their favourite sociologist in perfect English. I chopped carrots with a horticulturist from Cornwall who now farms in the Netherlands. Her Dutch friend has lived off-grid for five years dumpster diving, with only a slight iron deficiency.

A UK marine biologist told me she was fed up with her job as it involved mainly sitting in front of a computer. A young gymnast and circus performer was planning how to take her troupe to entertain asylum seeker children.

I could go on, but the stand-out character is Gary, a 75-year-old Vietnam veteran who had an incredible Texan drawl. He was one of several Americans escaping Trump. Gary showed me a picture of himself aged 21 in full combat gear – he had also served in other US combat zones in the 1970s and 1980s.

While we peeled and scrubbed vegetables he kept on referring to the fact that he was not the same person as the one who had served in the military – he had had a Damascene conversion.

It was Gary’s turn to chair the weekly team meeting on Thursday morning. He called us to order by addressing us as: ‘fellow humanitarians’.

We need more Garys.

I have just been reading about The smoke in the room experiment – Latané and Darley (1970). When a person is alone in a room that begins to fill with smoke, three-quarters raise the alarm within minutes. Yet when surrounded by others who remain passive only ten per cent act. There are clearly ethical issues with this experiment, but ‘the bystander effect’ is clearly potent.

As we drove back from Dover BBC Radio Four was blithering on about how to protect ourselves from the constant miserable news cycle.

No, no, we should be shouting: ‘Smoke – Farage, Smoke –: Asylum seekers are an asset, Smoke – the far right is on the march’.

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