This is Not Your Father's Calais: Jungle Rapefugees Torch Tractor-Trailer, Threaten Belgian Driver with a Chainsaw; Recalling 1978 Visit There, It Now Seems Like Another Country, Gone Centuries Backwards

 

Shocking scenes as rioting Calais Jungle migrants burn lorry (Daily Mail)
 

By Reader-Researcher RC

“Images emerged on social media of a burnt out lorry [truck], on a ring road leading to the Calais port during a night of violence which also saw a UK-bound Belgian driver threatened with a chainsaw” (Daily Mail).

“Last month, four young Calais residents threw improvised firebombs at a building occupied by Egyptian migrants in the city center” (New York Times).

I visited Calais in December of 1978. I had traveled to Calais in order to take the ferry to Dover. All I remember about Calais was that I was broke, and that I had only sufficient funds to buy a one-way ticket on the ferry.

Once I arrived in Dover, I had no funds for travel to London. Instead I walked out of the Port of Dover to a nearby motorway, stuck out my thumb, and hitched a ride with a lorry driver. He was so kind that he dropped me off at a Tube [subway] station in suburban London. Before driving off, he told me the exact train I needed to take in order to get to the Kensington station.

In fact, I still have my expired passport from my 1978 European adventure.

Inside the passport is the stamp of a British immigration officer. The stamp reads "17 Dec 1978 Dover."

Beneath this stamp is the following: "Leave to enter the United Kingdom on condition that the holder does not enter employment paid or unpaid and does not engage in any business or profession, is hereby given for/until ...."

"Until" is crossed out and written instead by hand is "ONE MONTH."

I was so broke that the Limeys didn't want me to enter the UK. In fact, I had to attempt a phone call to my brother in London. (He was studying medicine at a university hospital.) I could not reach him. Authorities wanted my brother to vouch for me, and also to confirm that he could and would support me financially, if need be. Instead, I spoke with his landlord. Then authorities spoke with the landlord, to confirm that my brother was real.

Imagine that!

I have a French surname, but I have Welsh, English, Irish Catholic and Scots Irish ancestors who emigrated from the UK to the US.

Yet the homeland treated me as a potential parasite.