The Boat Smugglers
Seriously...
BBC
4.1 • 885 Ratings
🗓️ 24 January 2023
⏱️ 30 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
The recent rise in migrant boat crossings between France the UK is being fuelled in part by the more sophisticated methods gangs are using to source the boats.
Last year when they investigated the smuggling gangs for BBC Radio 4, reporter Sue Mitchell and former British soldier and aid worker, Rob Lawrie, were alongside border force officials as they seized all manner of dinghies used in the crossings. Today that haul looks very different: the makeshift supply has been replaced by a sophisticated business which sees boats manufactured in Turkey and transported across Europe to the beaches of France.
This streamlined supply chain is big business and it’s enabled the gangs to rapidly expand the trade: bigger boats made specifically for these crossings are mass manufactured in Turkey and shipped straight into the hands of smugglers. It’s a complicated dodging of laws as they’re transported across Europe, with authorities slow to react. And it promises to thwart whatever deals are secured between Britain and France to intercept the Channel crossings themselves.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | This was an impregnable fortress. The only way you get out was in a wooden box. |
| 0:05.0 | The controversial maximum security prison impossible to escape from. |
| 0:09.0 | And one of the duties of a political prisoner is the escape. |
| 0:12.0 | The IRA inmates who found a way. of a political prisoner is the escape. |
| 0:12.5 | The IRA inmates who found a way. |
| 0:14.5 | I'm Carlo Gableer and I'll be navigating a path |
| 0:19.5 | through the disturbing inside story of the biggest jailbreak in British and Irish history. |
| 0:25.0 | The narrative that they want is that this is a big achievement by them. |
| 0:28.5 | Escape from the maze, listen first on BBC Sounds. |
| 0:35.0 | BBC Sounds. BBC Sounds, Music Radio Podcasts. |
| 0:39.0 | Welcome to Seriously from BBC Radio 4. I'm Vanessa Kasule. |
| 0:45.0 | Each week this podcast brings you two of the best documentaries that Audio World has to offer. |
| 0:51.0 | You're about to hear something gripping, extraordinary, and seriously unforgettable. |
| 0:57.0 | So we've just driven on to the camp at Dunkirk. Every time we come it actually looks |
| 1:07.0 | so different doesn't that? But this is what happens is that they allow them to set up in one place, let them stay there for a number of weeks, |
| 1:17.0 | come in, disperse them all, and then all they do is move half a mile down the road where we're going now and set up again. |
| 1:24.5 | I first teamed up with former British soldier and aid worker Rob Lorry in 2017. |
| 1:29.8 | He'd gone to volunteer in the Calais jungle when it sprang into existence. |
| 1:34.0 | A huge camp, housing thousands of migrants hoping to cross from France into Britain. |
| 1:39.0 | Most were planning to make the journey by Lorry or Carr. |
| 1:42.0 | At that point, hardly any talked about crossing by |
| 1:45.0 | boat. Today things are very different and last year just over 45,000 made that perilous sea |
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