How We’re Making Things Worse For Migrants

0:00We know how to win elections. You focus on the basic issues, cost of living, inequality, housing, health and transport, and you avoid the culture wars. That being said, though, there are moments where it's so important that we stand up for marginalised groups and people who are under attack. Last Christmas, I went to Calais and so much of the experience will remain with me for the rest of my life. I think it's important whilst talking about inequality to also focus on the brutality that is happening in Calais and our government's own complicity in it. Today I'm going to be talking to Lily. She's a staff member of the Humans for Rights Network and also a volunteer for Project Play.

0:39I'm going to be talking to Lily about what the situation is in Calais right now, what the French government are doing about it, and what our British government's role in it too. This is my conversation with Lily. This episode is sponsored by Crowdfunder. Bring your bold idea to life at crowdfunder.co.uk forward slash.

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1:55Browse thousands of the world's leading podcasts, book host reads or run your own ads, and track every conversion in real time. Same skills you already have, brand new results. Acast. Acast.com slash advertise. Bold. So Lily, you work for the Humans for Rights Network, and I know that you spent a lot of time on the ground in Calais. I went to Calais last year, and when people ask me what it was like, I often say, as bad as I knew it was going to be, it was worse. and not necessarily in like, I couldn't give you one very specific example of anything that was shocking in the moment. It was just a real sense of a whole system that had failed so many people and just the conditions they were living in and the kind of systemic cruelty that would almost be farcical if it wasn't so dangerous.

2:48But just this kind of, I remember at the time I kept describing it as a dance that the police and the people on the move go through. They're just kind of loops and everyone's signed up to this kind of game, although it's very much not a game because it's people's lives. What's been your experience spending so much time on the ground in Cali? Yeah, it's kind of ridiculous how heightened it is and that sort of ongoing cruelty as well. It's so daily. It grinds people down. It's part of their experience every day. So things like the eviction cycles, which I know you witnessed when you were there in the past week, for example, there's been five evictions of a living site which has a thousand people in it.

3:24and so that means the police are coming they're making people move they're taking their belongings things like bikes things like toys you know just everyday belongings that people need it's just that kind of cruelty like you say because they know that people are going to go back and live in that same living site so it's just to kind of really enforce that we're in charge of what you do and can I just try and summarize what I think you're saying correct me if I get any details wrong but there used to be the Calais jungle which lots of people knew about which is where a lot of the people on the move would all be in one place.

3:55I'd never visited, but people say that it was pretty much a hellhole. But at least people were staying in one place. And then there was, is it no point of fixation policy brought in by France, which means that no one could stay in any one particular place. So you have these lots of different sites now. And every couple of days, the police come along and just move people. And very often, the people on the move just take a couple of steps. They watch their tents ripped apart or their belongings taken. not everything is taken so the cruelty is quite random about who gets picked on and what gets taken they go kind of through all this trauma including often kids who are just watching on as their their mother or father is just helpless kind of to the police brutality and then my experience was the police go and then people just return to the spot they're on and they might not have a tent anymore so they might just return to a freezing spot where they just huddle with their belongings or if they're lucky quote-unquote to have a tent a tent is not a suitable living space anyway but at least they have a tent then they just kind of live in fear of the next day the same thing might happen again yeah exactly people are in that situation where those possessions are so important and it's things like people's documents people's phones that are their connection to their family back home and i spoke to someone last week who asked the police can i just go and get this from my tent and he was pepper sprayed so it's all part of that system of of just saying you're not welcome here you can't stay here but then of course what people are then experiencing is they can't leave France either because they're trying to cross to the UK and the police are also stopping them from doing that.

5:23So yeah, I think, yeah, your experience of that sort of real, just trying to sort of crush people's spirits and trying to really push them out, but almost where can people go? You know, it's that thing that comes up again and again, I think in the border policies across Europe, actually, of trying to disappear people, people are expected to somehow just disappear into nothing. Because the line we often hear is France is a safe country. and how would you respond to that with your experience with Calais? We know that France is definitely not a safe country for the people that we're working with, people of all ages, including really young children.

5:54That comes through especially in Calais and especially at the border. I mean, throughout France, people who are seeking asylum are living destitute on the streets and it's not safe for them. But in Calais, we really see the extremity of that violence. So the use of non-lethal weapons like tear gas, like rubber bullets, like batons. I also work with Project Play who work with children at the border And, you know, we've seen babies as young as two months old who've been tear gassed by the police on the beaches. So this really is extreme violence that we're talking about by the state, which just shows, yes, you're not going to feel safe in a country like that.

6:31And so we need some option for people to be safe somewhere. Right. And can you talk to me about Project Play? Because I feel like that probably runs contrary to lots of people's kind of assumptions about what's going on in Calais and the age of the people who are there. Yeah, absolutely. So in Project Play, we work with children from zero to 18. We provide a mobile play service and we also support the families. And it just gives a little bit of respite and chance for sort of development and opportunities to learn and grow and have fun in quite difficult, obviously a very difficult space for children and families.

7:04I think you're right there's this narrative that it's single men of this phrase of military age comes up a lot you know young men who are crossing and there's actually a lot of reasons why that is often those men have come ahead of families to try and bring then bring them without the families having to make those dangerous journeys which unfortunately the UK government has made impossible by suspending family reunion but the reality is also that one in five people who've crossed the channel since 2018 are children they really are there on that border experiencing that violence day in day out and so when we talk about these solutions that we need this the safety that is needed that's for people of all ages and children included and one of my experiences i only visited project play for for a short amount of time but was just looking in the eyes of children and kind of sensing the trauma i'm sure that's not well every child i'm sure is traumatized to some extent there was also a lot of joy there and a lot of kind of normality for a few moments but also a lot of the time that you know project play can only operate certain hours a day for instance and then just this children often if they're unaccompanied as well in particular just kind of being left in calais and over report that your organization was involved with was called um we can't stay but we can't leave what's been your experience of working with the young people yeah so i think um like you say there is hope there is normality there's play and there's joy um and i think this is what keeps us going right this sense that there is hope and positivity within everyone in that space um to an extent but there is also the difficult side of it as well and there is that fact that a lot of children have experienced trauma throughout their journey perhaps in their home country perhaps in other spots in europe or other points on the journey and then to compound that they're being subjected to this violence within France.

8:55So thinking of one example of a family that Project Play worked with, it was a single father and he had a six-year-old son, Musab, and Leila, who was just one years old as his daughter, they actually witnessed their father being beaten by the police until his ribs were broken. It was just after a crossing attempt, they were walking back to Calais, the police just found them. So children having to witness their parents being subjected to this kind of thing that is happening to parents, but also at times violence that's happening to the children themselves. Like you say, that's where Project Play then steps in.

9:28We supported that family as best we could. As you say, that again is limited. There's only so much we can do. And we know that we're fighting the state on this. And so, yeah, those solutions have to come from the state, really. They can't just come from the NGOs. And quite rightly, we're centering the people who are on the move in this conversation. I'm also at the same time curious that I spent a little while out there with human rights observers as well and one of the kind of part of this circus of the moving of tents is that volunteers are constantly trying to get phone numbers to all the people who are on the site to say if you're stuck without a tent or if you're freezing this is a number you can call and then we'll try and supply you with a tent and my observation there was I think it was about an 11-day waiting list to to get a tent and that was if you're a woman or a child if you were a man aged over 18 then you're just not going to be on that waiting list there was beautiful solidarity in that too though in terms of people sharing their belongings and their tents but again it was it was no way to live i'd love to think that i was resilient enough to be a volunteer there to help to feel like you're helping but then for every few days for the whole thing to be reset again because people have either disappeared and we don't know where they are in the system frankly some people will have died and just not survived and other people will have got on a small boat and we won't know what what has happened to them how do the volunteers hold that kind of resilience of just just going through that constantly it's a totally unstable environment there is constant violence whether that's like direct police violence or like you say that violence of a total lack of resources being forced to shelter in a tent across the winter things like this so i think yeah the experiences of working in there can be really difficult i think what you're saying about the atmosphere of solidarity definitely brings a lot of strength in that situation.

11:16Also, you know, the solidarity that comes directly from the people that we're working to support and having the sort of shared humanity between us, just hearing their hope in that situation, the hope of getting to the UK tomorrow, the hope of having a better life, the hope of being able to be reunited with friends and family in the UK, being able to study, being able to get a job. If they can stay hopeful in that situation, I think we share in that hope and we're there in solidarity with that hope as well. And that's beautifully put like the resilience of the people who are on the move but also the practical steps that you're taking to support them in their resilience rather than just assuming people are strong.

11:53Are there any stories that do still stick with you in terms of the people who are on the move or particular situations that you feel like people should really know about this? Definitely a couple I mean thinking about I guess the long-term impact it would have on the children that we worked with in Project Play was something I I thought about a lot I worked with an eight-year-old called Evan from Kurdistan and we were playing and she stood up and wanted to tell me about a crossing attempt and she acted out the like near drowning experience that she had in front of me this is an eight-year-old it was her way of processing it but it was you know obviously really difficult to think that she'd lived through that and this same child a few weeks later was at a funeral for a baby who died during a crossing attempt she stood up at this funeral and looked around the graveyard and said there's lots of Kurdish people who died on a boat I don't want to die on a boat now you just think the impact of having that reality that you could die at that age at being eight and the long-term impact that could have I think that's something that really stayed with me but also the fact that I think when people talk about this situation they talk about it sometimes as a tragedy or a humanitarian crisis.

13:03And it is those things. But I think using those terms only hides the fact that this is a human created crisis. This is something that has been manufactured by the policies of the UK and France. And so thinking about her having to worry about dying on a boat, that's not something that is a terrible shame that we wish we could avoid. It could be avoided right here, right now by a change in policy. Seeing the impact that has on people is what keeps me wanting to change that and wanting to work on that. I think that's so important. And actually, last year, I think after I'd been to Calais, Nigel Farage proposed something called the Polanski Law, which was to make, if we have a reform government, to make it illegal for anyone who supports someone who's trying to flee Calais or get on a small boat.

13:46The reason why I mention that is because I think what that totally misses is it is our government that's enabling this whole situation to go on. In fact, there's been a new bilateral agreement, I believe, where we've almost doubled the amount of money that we're putting to the border, which taking a sidestep for a moment we both clearly care about this for humanitarian reasons but if you're someone who just was looking at it and you want a system that economically works that's fair that results in a managed system of migration this money in the border right now I would say is doing the opposite is the more you could share with us about this trade agreement not trade agreement bilateral agreement sorry yeah absolutely so as you say it's just been renewed for the next three years.

14:25That's£667 million over three years. Now that takes the figure from 2018. That means the UK government has paid£1.3 billion just to the French government to secure the border in that time. I mean, secure for who as well? We also know that there's a lot of money going into private contracts as well. There's people profiting off this border. There's a lot of people making a lot of money here. Finding the full extent of that is really difficult, but we know again it's millions and millions of pounds just think of how that money could have been spent think of what it could have gone and been spent on you know it could have helped so many people whether they're seeking asylum or not within the UK around the world so I think this is yeah this is a really really important question is who's making those decisions why are they making them and what does that mean and what could be happening instead with that money as well you know could that be diverted instead to to treat people with dignity and respect and that has a parallel I suppose when people do arrive in the UK that we're spending lots of money on asylum hotels which are pretty inappropriate place to be keeping anyone anyway but often those hotels are on private contracts where people again are profiting from the unsuitable accommodation and then we're stoking up of division and fear and hate rather than actually dealing with the situation.

15:39Absolutely within the asylum system there's so many points where people are profiting rather than people being treated with respect and I think when it comes back to this agreement what's really important is that we drill down into the terms of it and what it means because there was a lot of talk at the time about well we're going to make this funding conditional on France preventing more people from crossing people hear that and they think yeah well small boats probably are a dangerous way to cross and probably we don't want people to cross but what they don't understand is that that means the violence on the beaches right so 42 % more police officers on the beaches patrolling those beaches and what we know is they use tear gas they use rubber bullets they use tasers and so on and so this violence that is happening on the beaches all the time that's going to increase and they have made some of the funding conditional on France preventing departures so either that's going to mean more of the same which is more violence but higher levels of it or it's going to mean more extreme violence as well and more extreme tactics being used and we're worried that that's that's a reality that could come in this next funding cycle and again i think once again centering most of all the people who are on the move i also reflect though that i was with a brilliant group of volunteers one of which was called manet he was just so full of humanity for people and looking for the best for them and i just remember him looking at the eyes of several police officers and i'm not even necessarily blaming these officers, they're doing their job, but just nothing there.

17:11No human response whatsoever. They were just going through this daily cycle of violence that they were being told to do. And I just think how unhealthy that is for everyone involved in this entire system. I mean, since the announcement of the new funding, we've seen already an increase in violence. Like I was saying, the evictions have gone up with those five in the last week of a place where a thousand people are living. We've also seen family separations on the beach with police officers holding children away from their family to stop their mothers boarding the boat. This is cases where some of the mother's children are already on the boat.

17:43So she's having to pick between her children on the boat and her children on the land. This has just increased so much in the last few weeks and just in general the scale of the violence. So whether that's because of this funding agreement and whether that's a sign of things to come, that's something that we're really concerned about. And can you tell the listeners about the one-in, one-out policy which I know has just been renewed? Yeah, so this is a policy that was introduced last year where people who cross in a small boat can be deported back to France and in exchange someone can come from France to the UK in a way that's regularised by the UK government.

18:18It's been portrayed as a safe route. For us this is not a safe route at all. For someone to come in safely, someone is having to come in on a small boat and that's not safe. If everyone stopped coming on small boats there'd be no way in. So it's not a safe route. But also what we've seen is a lot of people are excluded from this. You have to have papers to be able to apply. And one mother recently speaking to MSF said, every single person I know here doesn't have papers for them and their children. It really excludes so many people. So I think this is a really dangerous thing to portray it as a safe route and to say, no, no, we've done something and let people in safely.

18:55It's really worrying. The other side of it is we've seen some horrific conditions in immigration detention and horrific removals of people who've been subjected to that out route. So there's a man called Hamid. He was himself a survivor of torture. He was subjected to a really horrific removal back to France where they used a leather strap to restrain him. And his breathing was restricted. Really, really dangerous stuff. And so we need to make sure that there are genuine safe routes. And that means repealing the one in, one out, which unfortunately, as you say, has just been extended. The UK government has the choice to get rid of that scheme and introduce something that's genuinely safe.

19:33When I was there again, that felt like one in, one out added to the sense of confusion too. And some sort of kind of distorted version of Squid Games. It just felt like lots of people would come over to me and say, how do I get in on the one in, one out? And obviously, I then would ask questions of volunteers to go, well, if I can help people, let me explain the process. And the answer I got every time was no one knows what the process is. It just seems entirely random. And it seems like this dangling of maybe a way out that people can't actually take and isn't safe is then added to an already confusing, chaotic situation to add an element of randomness to give people hope, but it's entirely a false, dangerous hope.

20:08Absolutely. Yeah, I think like you were saying earlier, making the link between the asylum system in the UK and then what's happening at the border is this constant creating confusion, making it difficult for people to access things. I've spoken to someone who was waiting for four months in Calais. He'd applied, he heard absolutely nothing. This whole time he was thinking, I just don't want to have to get in a small boat or a lorry. It's so dangerous. I don't want to risk my life in this way. I want to come in, you know, a safe way, but also a way that won't be seen as illegal by the country I arrive in.

20:40After four months, he just thought, I've got, I can't live in these conditions anymore. And he crossed in a small boat. So again, it's leaving people in limbo without answers, without that basic humanity. Here's a quick message from our friends at Crowdfunder. We're stronger when we're together. But the reality is there's been a deliberate shift to make us forget about the things that matter in life. Kindness, community, looking out for each other. Decades of austerity and growing regional inequality has left so many towns, districts and villages with community projects underfunded. Green spaces neglected.

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23:41My understanding too in terms of the small boats is people are regularly checking a weather app in terms of the wind to make sure when it's quote unquote safe to cross. It's never safe to cross but safer. And because of some of the border violence, people are still getting on the small boats but much further down the coast. so what was already a perilous long journey has just become a more perilous long journey and it just means people are increasingly at risk but if someone's desperate enough to get on a small boat this isn't deterring them ultimately it's just making conditions more dangerous.

24:10I think you make a really good point because I think there's also a bit of a misconception about how dangerous it is. It's obviously inherently dangerous to cross the channel in a dinghy but that danger was not necessarily killing people it was pretty rare that it was killing people. a few years ago. But since 2023, when there's been a lot more UK funding, when there's been that joint leaders declaration and things really ramped up in terms of the police response, that's when we've seen the deaths start to occur. And there's a few reasons for this. So one is that boats are being confiscated higher up the sort of supply chain.

24:47That sounds great. You know, even as someone sort of who might be sympathetic, you think, well, great, less boats, less crossings, but people still need to cross. They need to find safety. So what that means is overcrowding. All five of the children who died last year were killed by crush injuries in overcrowded boats. So that's a direct response to UK policy, which has said, let's stop the supply chains. What we're also seeing though, is that increased police violence on the beaches trying to stop people. And that is causing death and injury. So I spoke to someone who'd crossed last year called Jamal and he told me about his crossing attempt.

25:25He said he was having to wade in the water up to his waist because the boat had to already be in the water. If it was on the land the police would slash it with knives and there'd be no chance to cross. He was already in up to his waist but at this point the police started to use pepper spray and tear gas. They started to use tasers as well and as a result people totally panicked. Understandably they wanted to get away from this someone was having an asthma attack people were helping him the police did nothing this atmosphere of chaos and panic that results when you have these violent police operations on the beaches is what's contributing to those journeys being even more dangerous so he said that unfortunately during that experience he saw people drown in the water now they weren't far out at sea they weren't in a really dangerous spot on the coast but that police chaos and that police violence is what made it dangerous and I think until that policy changes and until there's you know some safe alternative that doesn't involve police on the beaches stopping people then we're going to continue to see this violence and that's again what comes back to people understanding when the UK says we're securing the border we're trying to you know we're trying to stop people coming we need the police to do more interceptions that's what they're talking about that's the reality.

26:45I think there's often a misconception that the person driving the boat is the gang leader or something like that. My understanding is often it's children driving the boat because that's how they're getting free crossing. And also the fact that the gang leaders often do turn up at the campsites in fancy cars. They're there for a short amount of time. The police seem to generally leave them alone is my understanding. And then they drive off. So if we want to smash the gangs, and I think that's an admirable thing to do, Nothing's being done actually about the specific people who are profiting from this.

27:16You're so right that that rhetoric of smashing the gangs is hiding a lot of the reality of what's going on. The gangs are a massive problem, but the demand for smuggling gangs and to be smuggled in this way, to have to pay someone, has only gone up and up as the border has become more secure. So there's always been smuggling networks since there's been migration across the channel in regular migration. But what's really changed in recent years is it's become harder and harder to do it without a smuggler involved because they've cracked down on lorry crossings because of the fences around the Eurotunnel, for example.

27:51This means people are more and more reliant on smugglers. And actually, what's also been happening is that the smuggling networks have fragmented more. This means more violence between them. And so people's daily lives are also inflected with this violence by the smugglers. but if you just try and take out a few smugglers which as you say isn't even always happening but if you try and take out a few smugglers you're not getting to the root cause of this the smugglers will exist as long as people can't get to the UK by a safe route because if that's your only chance at safety you're going to do whatever it takes that's why the only alternative is to have safe routes and then I believe there's a public inquiry starting to happen that's cross-party in France So you'll have to tell us a little bit more about that.

28:37Yeah, so there's an ongoing public inquiry in France in the French Parliament that's led by a sort of cross-party group of MPs. They've been speaking to a lot of French officials about how the UK and the sort of bilateral funding agreements and how they work, what they've been doing, how they've been affecting local people in the north of France, how they've been affecting most of all people on the move who are affected by those policies. we're yet to see the outcome of that inquiry but I think what it shows is that there's clearly an interest here from the French politicians into actually what is going on with this money where's it going is it funding human rights abuses within our country the answer is pretty obviously yes I think the fact that they're willing to open that up and look at that a lot of what they're finding is from the interviews that I've seen certainly is French politicians saying, well, yeah, we had to do that because it came from the British.

29:35Well, yeah, that was in the British agreement. Well, yeah, that was funded by the British. Obviously, it's the French government's choice whether they do that or not. But what's, I think, really interesting is how much of this is coming from UK policy. And that's why we're calling for a similar inquiry within the UK as well to get to the bottom of this. A lot of this has been very grim, and rightly so. One of the things I observed, though, was I can never say the names, you're going to have to correct my French for cathedral, sacre. Secours catholique. There we go, Secours catholique, the day centre where people would gather.

30:07And I just remember, again, just like an hour where I was watching some people play football with each other. Other people were drawing pictures of each other. Other people just charging their phones or kind of sharing information. And there was just this beautiful sense of community in the most like unimaginable, horrific circumstances where people are just trying to get by. what I actually saw was people really looking out for each other, looking out for each other's kids, and that kind of real sense of togetherness. I think that story often isn't told, and I think that's right, because I think the first place is to focus on the brutality and stopping that.

30:40But I also think it's important for anyone listening to this to know that the hope is coming from within the community itself. Definitely, yeah. And I think that a lot of the narratives in general around migration, we lose so much humanity of the people that we're talking about and the people concerned. And these are people with hopes and dreams, with jokes, with hobbies, with interests. And yeah, these things do still flourish in an environment where there's a little bit of space for them too. People want to have fun and enjoy their lives and that comes through. And like I say, I think if they have that hope that things can get better, that they can find a better life, that they can persist and build something.

31:18I think we have to stand with them and try and do everything we can to make that a reality because yeah they're people who who deserve that as much as anybody else I want to say explicitly that I've adored having you as a guest on I'm sure you'd agree with this too that the most important people that we hear from are the people who are on the move themselves and but when I was in Calais there was a very strong sense of not centering people in video or film because of complications around legal applications and making sure we're ensuring people's safety but I just wanted to say that explicitly that I'm really grateful that people like yourself advocate for people who my first instinct would be to hear from those people themselves but actually for good reasons.

31:55Very often people are speaking on behalf of them as opposed to centering them in the conversation. It's definitely something we come across a lot as well talking to people that obviously there's a lot of barriers to people sharing their stories directly whether that's fear of like repercussions within the asylum system or whether that's fear of repercussion from their home countries as well and so I think we need to always be creative with how we share those voices and how we empower people to have their stories heard but as you say it's it's really important that that still comes through and that people go out and look for that and listen to that as well I think people listening hopefully will be inspired to go and find that and from you know the people working directly on the ground in Calais.

32:40Calais Appeal is a good example where they're sharing the reality of what's going on and you can sort of find that in a more sort of ongoing way as well. Yeah, an experience I really remember is there was a photographer following me who'd been given strict instructions that he could photograph me and he could photograph conditions but he shouldn't photograph the people on the move for this exact reason. And there was a moment where I was distracted because someone was talking to me and to be fair to the photographer he'd said to two young people, can I take your photograph? And they had said yes.

33:06So he started to take that photo and And then an elder came over and went ballistic at him, and particularly the young people, saying, even if they ask you, the answer is no. Because actually there's just been such a history of journalists and particularly right-wing commentators coming along and dehumanizing people and pretending that they're wanting to tell people's stories, but actually just to create more toxicity and division. And so understandably, I think the charities and the NGOs out there are very protective, as they should be, of the people and their stories, which I absolutely admire.

33:35In terms of if someone watching or listening to this is moved by this and wants to help or wants to do campaigning, what would you suggest to them to get involved with? Yeah, there's a couple of things. First of all, like I say, we're calling for an inquiry in the UK into the effects of this funding, the effects of this policy. And we're saying, you know, all funding should be suspended until that's resolved, because clearly there's human rights abuse is going on. We've got a petition with 38 Degrees. They've been supporting us with that. If you search stop border violence 38 Degrees, that will come up.

34:04and I'm sure we can put a link as well. We'll put it in the show notes. That's one thing to do and also to share that around and make sure that's getting as many signatures as it can. I would say, yeah, definitely to obviously just follow what's going on in Calais, whether that's on social media, obviously Humans for Rights Network and Project Play, we're always talking about it, Calais Appeal as well, represents quite a lot of the organisations on the ground. So it sort of shows several different perspectives and they do a newsletter as well. and yeah of course also we do need financial support to do this work so as strange as it can feel to to tack that on to the end there I think if people are really moved and they want to donate then that will really impact the service that we're able to provide.

34:47With the financial support I suppose I want to tell a quick story that I only learned when I was out there that there used to be a lot more support for organizations like Calais Appeal who are an umbrella organization of about six different groups of people like Project Play and a group called Utopia who are all doing different work with different communities. And I think it was under Suella Bravman when she was Home Secretary, found out that some of these organizations were getting funding and kind of painted it as charities and NGOs are helping people onto small boats, whereas actually what they were doing was helping things like life jackets.

35:15So if someone's going to get on a small boat anyway, they're making sure that they don't drown. It just seems basic humanity. Anyway, the public pressure meant that a huge amount of this funding was withdrawn. And it means some of these organizations are surviving, I was going to say, week to week, day to day, and they badly need support because they're doing fundamental humanitarian relief that is so desperate every single day that our government and the French government have turned their backs on and it shouldn't have to be funded by volunteers and citizens but the truth is if it's not funded by them they just won't be able to survive and do the work they do.

35:45Absolutely and in particular Calais Appeal is made up of really small grassroots organisations so it does mean that the budgets are small but they're really tight and so it means that you can make a difference by giving in that way as well. And yeah, within particularly the political context that we're in, where there's a lot of demonization of this work, criminalization of this work around Europe as well, then yeah, it's super important that we can stand in solidarity with people on the move. Well, thank you so much for the work you do. And thanks for coming on the podcast. Thank you very much.

36:15This episode was brought to you by Crowdfunder. What's your bold idea? Start it at crowdfunder.co.uk forward slash bold.

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