The BBC News Magazine, published on-line and funded by the British public, has printed an extensive piece on the work done by members of Calais Migrant Solidarity, without mentioning the organisation itself once.
‘Calais migrant crisis: The Britons in the Jungle’, ran this morning and featured a number of left-wingers, presenting them as ordinary people who were spontaneously inspired to travel to France.
Yet even the most cursory glance over the backgrounds of the people featured exposes them as committed activists with links to a number of extreme left organisations, including anarchist group Calais Migrant Solidarity.
Self-described as the “no borders people”, Calais Migrant Solidarity has maintained a presence among the migrant camps since 2009, working to impede the work of police officers controlling the area and enabling the presence of illegal asylum seekers on their way to Britain. Behind the friendly humanitarian persona is a radical anarchist agenda, advocating the end of national borders in their entirety, and vowing to fight capitalism and existence of the nation state.
It is probably well that Calais Migrant Solidarity has the BBC on hand to do its clandestine publicity work on their behalf, as they are remarkably shy of many other press outlets. Rather snootily they declare “We will definitely not talk to the Mail, Telegraph, Express or Murdoch owned press”, and report speaking to any media whatsoever is “unlikely”.
The members of Calais Migrant Solidarity featured are remarkable for their divergent backgrounds.
Public-school educated Tom McElholm told the BBC he was going to Calais to combat “xenophobia running through social media and the press”. A supporter of Calais Migrant Solidarity, he is joining French-Muslim campaign group Association Salam in Calais and is driving a car full of supplies to ‘the Jungle’ – as the camp was christened by the French Authorities.
While Tom shares his support for Calais Migrant Solidarity with student politics activist Joanna Sutton-Klein and Brighton GROLIE (look it up) Vikki Ita, he also follows super-hip group CalAid.
Dripping with worthy hashtags (#WeAreAllImmigrants, #NobodyIsIllegal etc), the group seems to be less active in distributing aid and more engaged in creating arty Instagram pictures of smiling illegal migrants cooking hearty ethnic food on the perimeter fence of the Eurotunnel terminal.
Just like Calais Migrant Solidarity, CalAid brings up the importance of people travelling to jungle to arrange donations of shoes.
The Migrant Solidarity’s own Facebook activism organisation group repeatedly mentions the importance of getting good quality running shoes to the migrants in the camp. Why these desperate asylum seekers so desperately need to be so light on their feet is not expressed.
Responding to a Breitbart London request for comment, a BBC spokesman said: ‘This article specifically describes the personal experiences of a number of British people who have volunteered to work in the Calais migrant camp, and does not seek to draw any conclusions about their motivations. We have covered what’s happening in Calais extensively across our news programmes and heard from a broad range of voices”.