The wedding DJ who wants to stop migrant boats
By Sue Mitchell
BBC News
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- Published
When Covid lockdowns put an end to his work as a wedding DJ, Jeremy Davis was free to launch himself into his other passion - trying to stop migrant boats heading from France to the shores of the UK.
He'd followed the news and been incensed at reports about the increasing number of illegal boat crossings, with 1,880 migrants arriving in September alone - compared to 1,800 for the whole of 2019.
"I've been watching it every day and I've been fuming. I just got fed up with it. People were saying to me, 'Well, instead of screaming at the television, do something!'"
So he launched a new group, Littleboats2020, inspired by the "little ships of Dunkirk" - 850 vessels that went to rescue 336,000 British soldiers stranded in northern France in May 1940.
"I was just seeing the boats coming into the shores and I was thinking back to when lots of boats were coming across the Channel. And it just sprang into my mind. That was my inspiration," he says.
Davis has joined a growing band of campaigners who patrol Kent's beaches and the port of Dover watching for those arriving. They say that the Covid pandemic reduced the chances of hiding in lorries or cars and that smugglers have exploited a reduced police presence, charging around £2,000 per person to cross by boat.
He says he can understand the people making this dangerous journey.
"Of course, if I was in their position, I'd say, 'Let's go get a nice hotel, get food and a future,'" he says.
"The people who are cheating this country are the government, by not stopping this illegal trade. We used to defend the shores, we don't any more."
Before Covid, Davis spent some nights blasting out ABBA tracks on a crowded dance floor. Now he's on patrol, searching for migrants and possibly even the smugglers. A week or two ago, out on a beach patrol, he confronted four men waiting in two cars. He thinks they were waiting to pick up migrants who'd made the crossing, but they drove off before he could confront them.
"I happened upon them, the weather wasn't too bad and there were two brand new cars. I've seen them there before and think they're waiting for people to come off the boats. The authorities should be there to get these people, it shouldn't be down to people like me," he says.
In August it was reported that the Home Secretary, Priti Patel, was planning to approach French officials for co-operation in using Royal Navy and Border Force boats to block the path of refugees and migrants coming by boat.
This is exactly the sort of action Littleboats2020 wants.
Davis spent two nights at sea with other members of his group, attempting to get close to the inflatable migrant boats in order to document the dangers they face, and also to prove a point to the authorities.
"We want to show the government, 'Look, if we can get to these boats, so can you,'" he says.
"And we were clear - if for some reason we came across a boat where it's in trouble, we agreed we'd bring them in ourselves to the UK. Ideally we'd love them to turn around, but that would be dangerous. These are lives and we would help if we had to."
When a family of Kurdish-Iranians tragically died off the French coast this week, Davis says he was not surprised.
"It was inevitable it was going to happen," he says. "I'm surprised it hasn't happened many times before, and I suspect people have lost their lives and we haven't known about it. It's so dangerous… and we've created the conditions that have put them at risk."
Jeremy Davis wasn't the first campaigner to devote himself to monitoring migrant traffic in the Channel.
One of the earliest was a man who calls himself the Active Patriot. He wears a Union Jack face mask and is a constant presence at the port in Dover, frequently live-streaming his confrontations with police and Border Force officials.
He started campaigning after the 2017 Manchester Arena bombing when an Islamist suicide bomber killed 22 people and himself at an Ariana Grande concert. The deaths heightened the Active Patriot's fears about terrorism and he's convinced that the UK's relaxed borders are inviting another tragedy. So he's taken it upon himself to film every migrant arriving.
"I'm basically doing this day and night, gaining intelligence and posting it on my accounts for people to see for themselves. This is really happening," he says.
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Another, Chris, dressed all in black, says he tries to pick up possible stray crossings that officials may not have spotted.
"If I do my job - what I call my job - like the Home Guard, if I can stop the migrants when they get off the boat then I can hold them there until the Border Force arrive," he says. "I don't want them getting off the boats and just disappearing, so I offer them water, cigarettes, anything to keep them there. And I'll pick the dodgy ones out and say to the Coast Guard or whoever, 'There's this one that you should be careful of.' And they do listen to me, but it's really the person that drives the boat that they want."
It's hard to predict when the migrant boats will cross. Those trying to spot them increase their odds by tuning into the coastguard on their scanners, so when Border Force search and rescue boats are sent out, they all know about it.
Jeremy Davis's campaign has received a boost from a well-established protester, Steve Laws, a local father of three who was working as a painter and decorator before Covid struck. Now he's at the dock in Dover night and day, tracking crossings and posting everything on Twitter.
"I've even seen a baby come over, no older than two months. And that for me was when I was like, 'This needs to stop.' And that was after doing this for about two weeks. The baby was hidden in a gym bag. It was so concerning. I've got three daughters and I couldn't believe anyone would risk their child on that Channel crossing."
He says it was a throwaway comment about migrants being given hotel rooms that spurred him into action, to begin with. He wanted to show a friend what was really happening, and started collecting video footage of migrants being loaded on to coaches after their sea crossings. He admits he quickly became obsessed.
"You feel like you need to get the message out there. And every day something else sort of happens and that's what people don't seem to be aware of, so obviously you keep going and going and then it's got to the point where I'm at now, where I'll just naturally wake up at four or five in the morning, and I'll come and check on the boats."
The actions of campaigners such as Jeremy Davis, Steve Laws, Chris and the Active Patriot have alarmed rival activists who think that the government should be doing more to provide migrants with safe passage to the UK.
A coalition of refugee workers and sympathisers recently formed Channel Rescue, described as a "human rights monitoring project" to watch over people who are making the treacherous crossing.
"We have become increasingly worried about the hostile narrative being created by both the government and some in the media, that have sought to demonise those migrating across the English Channel," the group says on its website.
While Jeremy Davis would like to see the UK defending its shores, Channel Rescue says it is concerned that increased Royal Navy activity, RAF flyovers and patrols by activists opposed to the cross-Channel migrants could "act as a lethal deterrent that may force migrants into taking greater risks".
"We will not sit back and allow the English Channel to become a mass graveyard, like the waters of the Mediterranean," the group says.
For his part, Jeremy Davis says he isn't against immigration per se, just this way of doing it.
"Over nine million people from all over the world have made Britain their home, and they're fantastic. They get on and it's brilliant. They have brought a lot to this country. But what we are saying is we don't want people coming in when we don't know anything about them."
Like Active Patriot, he fears that there could be dangerous people among those on the boats.
"People are making money from these boat crossings and that's worrying. But the main problem is, we don't know who they are," he says. "And I don't care what anybody says, somebody is going to die. They're going to kill somebody. It could be you, it could be me, it could be my children. We just don't know who these people are."
He says that a childhood in the care system, in which he suffered terrible abuse, means that he always looks at migrants as people and he doesn't want them to suffer.
"But on the other hand, I look at my own family and friends and country and I think by the same token, I've got to be able to defend them. I've got to do my bit… I can see what's going on in the world and in our country and I want to do what I can to make people safe."
He displays his patriotism by carrying round Union Jack flags and positioning them at the harbour entrance as migrant boats arrive.
"I think we're trying not to be too jingoistic. But on the other hand, nobody will listen to us unless we are a bit controversial at points," he says.
And even though what he is doing has not been well received by some of his friends, he says he's in this for the long haul.
"We're not going to change anything overnight, but I think people have got to think outside the box. There's got to be a way of bringing this to the public attention," he says. "For me personally, this won't be over until the conditions that are in place to make people come here are gone."
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