People shouldn’t be allowed to live in these conditions

Sarah is one of several Cumbrians volunteering at refugee camps in northern France.

Back home at Renwick, in the Eden Valley, Sarah is a human resources consultant. Across the Channel the human resources she provides include food, clothing and accommodation.

Sarah has been to France three times in the past few months, for a week each time. She will soon be returning for three weeks.

Some of her visits have been with other members of Calais Action Carlisle. This group was launched last summer to send supplies to the migrant camp and to volunteer there.

For Sarah, giving up home comforts was prompted by coverage of the camp, where thousands of people from Africa and the Middle East live in squalor.

“When I heard that less than 400 miles from here there could be people living in such conditions, I thought, ‘One must go there and do something’. I find it incredible that in a rich western democracy we’ve got people living in those conditions.”

Sarah’s last two visits have been mostly to Dunkirk, 25 miles up the coast from Calais.

“The conditions are really quite unbelievable. Everybody’s in tents. The land is below the water table. The camp is ankle deep in mud.

“No structures are permitted. There was an amnesty when pallets were allowed in. Now there are some pallets with chicken wire on top for walkways.”

Sarah has arrived with more comfortable accommodation than tents, having twice towed caravans for families to live in at Calais.

Her daughter Jenny joined her on the most recent trip. In Dunkirk they found a park. Sarah bought a basketball and two Frisbees and played with refugee children and their mothers.

She says some French children joined in, although not all the locals are so friendly.

“There’s a lot of antagonism. In Dunkirk the camp is opposite a very nice housing estate. It’s grown up on a piece of land that presumably used to be for dog walking.

“Some locals bring aid. Like any community, many shut their doors.”

Public sympathy across Europe was tested by hundreds of sexual assaults on women by migrants in Cologne on New Year’s Eve.

Sarah condemns these and is concerned that they could demonise all refugees.

“In any community the vast majority are delightful, law-abiding citizens. There will always be a small minority in any community, including Cumbria.

“The attacks in Germany are criminal and wrong. The perpetrators must be prosecuted. But issues like that must not detract from the humanitarian issues of the refugee crisis.

“Political issues are getting muddled with humanitarian need. When you meet people who have left their home that has been bombed and they have brought their families in small vans and across the sea in dangerous boats...

“Sometimes there isn’t the language skills to understand every detail. But ‘boat’ and ‘small van’ and the fear on people’s faces when they repeat their stories – you don’t set out on such a journey lightly.”

Sarah hopes other Cumbrians will join her in France. “It really is such a humanitarian crisis. It is impossible to live in the wind and the rain in a waterlogged tent. How in 21st- century western Europe are we allowing this?”

David Hayward is a builder, a skill which has proven useful in Calais’s Jungle Camp.

This is the informal title of the migrant camp which houses something in the region of 5,000 people, many of them keen to reach Britain.

David has been there three times. He returned from his latest visit this week. He describes a chaos of rubble, soil and rubbish.

Fires start because candles are used in the absence of electricity. There is a stench of burning plastic, used for heat and to cook on.

David has helped to construct accommodation. Although far from luxurious, it is an improvement on the tarpaulins which some migrants try to sleep under.

“Slowly the volunteers have been building shelters which are little more than garden sheds,” he says. “They sleep between two and five people. They have problems with damp because of lack of heat.”

David’s first visit to Calais was with his wife, Renée Bales. The couple live near Brampton.

Renée says: “I got involved with sorting out clothes to send there. I talked to people who had been and I said, ‘I’ve got to go and see it for myself.’ I didn’t realise how serious the problem was.

“People shouldn’t be allowed to live in those conditions. One toilet for 200 people. They’re getting dysentery and scabies. They have to keep throwing out their sleeping bags and their clothes.”

Sky Higgins works for environmental group Sustainable Carlisle. She has been to the Calais camp twice, once with David and Renée.

They estimate that at least 80 per cent of volunteers are from Britain, along with most of the food and other supplies.

Sky says parts of the camp have been bulldozed by the authorities several times.

The French government has recently begun housing some Calais migrants in converted shipping containers.

Those here include Kurds, Syrians, Eritreans, Ethiopians, Sudanese and Pakistanis.

Some people sympathise with those who have fled danger, but not with those who come to Europe seeking a more prosperous life.

In the Jungle is it possible to tell refugees from economic migrants? David insists the question is asked from a position of comfort and complacency.

“You can’t honestly see who’s a refugee and who’s an economic migrant. You’d have to be slightly crazy to think you’d go and live on that camp to make money.”

“It’s hell,” says Renée.

Of the attacks in Cologne, she says: “There are people suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder. They have not been in a family situation for a long time. They have no jobs or sense of purpose.

“These young people are exploding. We don’t know what they’ve seen and what they’ve been through. They need to be handled sensitively. They have different relationships to women. They don’t understand our views. I know. I lived in Morocco for seven years.”

So these Cumbrians’ compassion does not mean they regard all migrants as saints. But they would like them to have a fair hearing.

“Nobody’s saying we should open the borders,” says Sky. “Just have a fair asylum process. They could process genuine claims for the UK.”

David adds: “We need to find out who they are, where they want to go, what’s their history. It’s unfair on a large number of people, particularly children who have a right to access the UK because they have family here.”

Not everyone in Britain is as welcoming to migrants as the members of Calais Action Carlisle.

The front doors of houses used by asylum seekers in Middlesbrough are to be repainted, after claims they were targeted because nearly all the doors are red. Asylum seekers say eggs and stones were thrown at their houses because the doors made them easy to identify.

Renée says: “I think people are insecure because there’s a lot going on with the economy, that it will affect their quality of life. In fact immigration revitalises an economy.

“In Calais there’s lots of smiles and gratitude. There’s an Iranian man I gave a flashlight to. He cried when I gave it to him. They’re just people, in bad circumstances.”