July set to be busiest ever for Channel migrant arrivals amid ‘summer sale'
So far this month, 2,378 asylum seekers have arrived in the UK on small boats.
Overall, 22,360 migrants, mostly from the Middle East, Vietnam and East Africa, have successfully made the perilous journey across the Channel so far this year. That is a 57 per cent increase on the same period last year, when 14,164 people arrived in the UK on inflatable dinghies.
Analysis of Border Force figures by The Telegraph indicates that this will be the busiest July on record, with 2,378 arrivals in the first 12 days compared to 1,711 in 2023 – the previous busiest 12 days.
Extrapolating that daily rate for the rest of the month gives a total monthly figure of 6,143, which would be the highest on record.
'Increasingly professionalised' gangs targeting certain nationalities with discounts of up to 50 per cent and changing their tactics to avoid French patrols are driving the increase.
Eritreans and Albanians are being targeted with personalised advertisements on social media, with smugglers offering passage for as little as £2,000.
Smugglers have been increasingly launching 'taxi boats' – pre-inflated dinghies – from waterways and canals that lead into the sea, where they can be quickly loaded with people before police have a chance to intervene.
The boats crawl along the coastline, picking up passengers who wait in the sea, out of reach of police.
This week alone, The Telegraph witnessed two such examples in Gravelines, a seaside commune connected to the River Aa that has become a trafficking hub where as many as 300 migrants may be smuggled in a day, according to its deputy mayor.
Dr Peter Walsh, a senior researcher at The Migration Observatory, ascribed the increase this year to discount deals being offered to migrants. In some cases, it was because they were willing to pilot the dinghies themselves.
Dr Walsh said: 'The numbers go up and down, and special rates can be offered for individuals who say, 'Well, I have experience directing boats'. Special offers can be given to certain nationalities.
'There was this big increase in Eritreans crossing in small boats, and anecdotal evidence suggested they had offered a lower rate that made it more affordable. About all we can say is the typical cost in the thousands of euros rather than hundreds and the prices are dynamic.'
Dr Walsh also pointed to the newer tactics employed by smugglers, such as inflating dinghies on land while concealed in trees or sand dunes and then sending them down inlets and rivers into the sea.
'They are highly adaptable, you know in a certain sense law enforcement is always a step behind and remember, law enforcement has to follow the rules of the law and that is a substantial disadvantage that they are at,' he added.
In the early hours of Sunday, French police stopped a group of 40 or so migrants from setting off on a crammed dinghy bound for the UK, by wading into the water and puncturing its hull with box cutters.
Police were later seen towing the deflated black rubber dinghy away over Sangatte beach, around five miles west of Calais.
The passengers were mostly young men of Vietnamese, East African and Middle Eastern origin. Three or four women were believed to have been on board along with an infant boy no older than 18 months.
They were not detained by the police, and were seen wrapped in gold foil blankets and being given hot drinks by aid charities at 5am GMT.
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He is appalled by the prospect of publicly funded human rights lawyers dragging Army veterans into the dock in pursuit of compensation for convicted terrorists and their families. He is furious that Sir Keir Starmer claims the current British law designed to protect veterans is 'unlawful' – as he did again last week – because it clashes with a European one. Emboldened by the Daily Mail's 'Stop The SAS Betrayal' campaign, he wants to show that, far from being some sort of rogue unit, the SAS were there to save lives – even those of the people who loathed them. Andrew was a 26-year-old corporal with six years in the SAS behind him when the call came through in January 1981 to mount an observation operation on the McAliskey home – overnight. 'We were very busy in those days. This was what we called a 'fast ball' operation,' he says. 'I had spent the day protecting a Belfast councillor during his constituency surgery. Then this job came in for that night. There was information of a threat to a celebrity politician. I learned afterwards that she knew she was on a hit list. 'There wasn't time to do a background study on the situation. We were just dropped off in the early hours of the morning and left to make an approach march to a grid reference where this bungalow was situated.' There was no question of walking up the lane. The three soldiers had to make their way in the dark for miles through driving snow around a peat bog. Their orders were to establish an observation position as close to the bungalow as possible, staying out in the open, regardless of the weather, for up to a week (a standard operational procedure known as 'hard routine'). Each man was armed with an Armalite M16 rifle and a Browning 9mm semi-automatic handgun. The plan was to keep watch round the clock, taking turns to sleep. They had only just arrived at first light and were still doing their initial circuit of the property, known as a '360'. This had just become more problematic following the discovery that the couple were breeding greyhounds in an outbuilding and the dogs had started barking, at which point the three soldiers could see a Hillman Avenger driving up the lane towards the house. The car was carrying three members of the UDA, Andrew Watson, Thomas Graham and Robert Smallwood, armed with a Smith & Wesson revolver and two 9mm Brownings. Leaving the engine running, they had jumped out. Two were smashing in the door to the bungalow with sledge hammers while a third set about tearing down the telephone line. Inside, Michael McAliskey had already seen a man in a balaclava through a window and yelled at his wife to hide under the bed. He rushed to the door and was trying to hold it back but the gunmen prised it open. A pistol was thrust through the gap and bullets started flying. He was hit in the arm and the gang pushed on into the house, one shooting at Michael – now on the floor bleeding and pretending to be dead. Another man went in search of Bernadette and found her in the bedroom. He fired at least six shots into her back, chest, legs and arms (some reports say as many as nine), leaving her for dead wedged in the gap between the bed and the wall where she had tried to hide. The children, unharmed, were in deep two gunmen ran for the car, just as the driver had managed to pull down the telephone cable with a rope. They were suddenly face to face with Andrew and his two colleagues, their M16s raised and ready to fire. 'We were seven or eight metres away and it was face on face like two charging bulls. We had every right to drop all three of them,' says Andrew. 'But we had shock on our side and we were more assertive. We were all in Army camouflage shouting, 'Security forces. Put down your weapons'. They could see it was a case of comply or die – so they complied.' Andrew ran inside, saw Michael on the floor and three children 'running around, hysterical' before finding Bernadette. Despite suffering multiple bullet wounds and now being confronted (while naked) by a second armed stranger in the space of a minute, the famously forthright political campaigner was still defiant. 'I suppose you bastards are coming in to finish me off,' she groaned. 'I didn't say who we were. I couldn't help her with this great hole in her chest. I just told her help was on its way,' Andrew recalls. Then he turned his attention back to Michael. 'We didn't have any drips or tourniquets. I just told him to keep the pressure on his arm to stem the bleeding.' The immediate problem was communications. As they were running towards the house, Andrew had issued the signal: 'Contact! Wait out!' This was the all-important alert telling HQ that his unit was going into action, to clear the airwaves, to await his next update and to have reinforcements despatched immediately. 'But communications just ended with my transmission. I never got the confirmation back that they had heard us.' Did anyone even know they were there? With no phone and no radio (standard-issue Army transmitters were notoriously unreliable in freezing weather), there had been no option but to send one of his two men to run off in search of a telephone. 'Luckily, as it turned out, the unit had heard my 'Contact! Wait out!' and had already deployed a quick-reaction force from the resident unit in Dungannon,' says Andrew. A company from the Argyll & Sutherland Highlanders were on the ground inside 15 minutes, followed swiftly by a helicopter to take the McAliskeys to hospital. 'Then we handed over the scene,' says Andrew, 'and extracted ourselves.' Having had no sleep for more than 24 hours, he returned to barracks for a shower and the mandatory debrief with the police and the military legal team. Then it was on to the next task. A year later, Andrew would be in the thick of the action in the Falklands War, shortly after the terrorists had received sentences (life for ringleader Watson, 20 years for Graham and 15 years for Smallwood, who was later murdered by the IRA). Andrew never heard from Bernadette, who would always maintain that he and his men were from the hated Paras, had no interest in saving her and had made no effort. 'Had it been left to the Paras, I would be dead,' she told the Mail in 2002, claiming that it was the Argylls who saved the day. 'Rob the medic saved our lives. He called a military helicopter and got the Paras to hand over their medical packs to stem our wounds. 'The Paras were confused and paralysed. It was the Argylls who took control and we did not die.' She also gave a crystal decanter to the military surgeon whose brilliant handiwork in hospital had saved both her and her husband (even though the doctor was a Para). One can but wonder what Bernadette would say if she knew what really happened that day. The Mail has approached her for comment. In such horrific circumstances, she can be forgiven for not knowing who was who. She showed commendable fortitude that day simply by keeping herself alive – and even cracking a joke. Having become disillusioned with politics and politicians, she would go on to devote her life to social projects in South Tyrone, as she still does. Despite her lifelong condemnation of the British state, this tenacious activist would never hesitate to attack Sinn Fein, the IRA and the Irish government, too, for letting down their own people. The horrors of that day left their mark on all the family, including Bernadette's daughter, Roisin, who later spent some time in jail, while pregnant, fighting extradition to Germany following a 1996 IRA mortar attack on a British Army base (repeated extradition attempts by the Germans were ultimately denied by a British judge). The attack on the McAliskeys also led to savage reprisals by the IRA. Days later, an eight-man unit murdered 86-year-old First World War hero and retired politician Sir Norman Stronge, 86, along with his only son, James, in the family home, Tynan Abbey. The murderers then torched the place to the ground. But the aftermath could have been far worse had Andrew and his team not done what they did that January day in County Tyrone. While he is fiercely proud of the SAS, he plays down his own role. 'We just did our best in the circumstances. And it didn't matter which side the attackers were on. They were just terrorists as far as I was concerned. 'We had every justification to shoot them but we showed restraint. If our actions had been different, then I might now find myself in the dock. But I've not said anything since.' So why talk now? 'Because now is the time to talk.'
