From Customs Cutters chasing brandy to Border Force Cutters rescuing migrants - it's not Dad's Army

 

I was a bit stunned by reports of Priti Patel’s latest brainwave – to rewrite maritime law so that Border Force cutters can ‘pushback’ migrant boats, “when deemed practical and safe to do so”.  

Stunned that she would try it, and stunned that it was being reported on the BBC website as changing the law to “allow” the Border Force to push back, as if it was something the officers on the vessels were anxious to do. 

This could just be an aftershock from June when the Daily Mail headlined a story saying that Border Force cutters had entered French waters to pick up migrants. The Mail said it had a recording of a radio conversation between the Border Force and a French ship asking permission to cross into their territory and rescue the group (instead of waiting for the dinghy to drift into British waters). People smugglers cynically put immigrants in flimsy, overloaded boats, knowing that under the UN Convention of the Law at Sea there is a humanitarian obligation to save them from harm (the passengers, equally cynically threaten to jump overboard if the French come near). To the Mail, the big scandal was that the cutter had broken protocol by going into French waters, rather than waiting for their boat to drift into UK waters.  

As a confirmed landlubber, I find it hard to second-guess the actions of a cutter crew. The first question that entered my head was “what sort of person monitors the radio traffic of a Border Force cutter?” ( A  “south coast sailor whistleblower” apparently). 

And the second question that occurs to me is whether someone in the Home Office said, “How can we save face by counteracting this humanitarian stuff?”

From what I’ve seen on social media, it seems like the public view of Border Force cutters is very short term.

The UK ran Revenue Cutters to tackle the smuggling of goods throughout the 18th and 19th Century. During the 20 th Century, HM Customs and Excise had one cutter, the Vigilant, from 1902 to 1928. After World War Two, an increased risk of smuggling led Customs to buy two Navy surplus vessels, which only ran during the Summer to control the yachting traffic. In those days the smugglers were just as likely to be bringing in cheap brandy or fags.

Waterguard officers who had picked up nautical skills during wartime service were deployed on a temporary basis to crew the vessels. Although the fleet expanded to seven cutters, they were still crewed by temporary officers on three month shifts up until 1998 when the increased demands of patrolling both UK and EU Borders triggered a shift to 120 permanent officers.

Coming under the control of investigation division in 1994, they were often used to intercept small boats and inflatables landing drugs on lonely beaches. The cutters assisted in several major drug seizures, sometimes at great risk. In 1996, a Dundee officer Alastair Souter was fatally crushed between his cutter and a yacht bringing in three tons of cannabis.

In 2005, of course, the gallant Gordon Brown merged the Inland Revenue with HM Customs and Excise to form HM Revenue and Customs. At the same time, the responsibility for the war on drugs went to the newly formed Serious Organised Crime Agency.

 And in 2009, the law enforcement side of HMRC was merged with the Immigration Service to form the UK Border Force within the UK Border Agency. In 2012 the Border Force was absorbed into the Home Office, shortly before the floundering Border Agency was abolished. By 2016, the Border Force had only five cutters.

Sometimes the Border Force vessels were out in EU waters helping the other member states to disrupt smuggling operations and carry out search and rescue missions. But in the wake of Brexit, the Border Force cutters were “redeployed to provide improved coverage in the Channel.”

So the state of play is that we’ve got two less cutters than we did at the turn of the century (although bolstered by two coastal patrol vessels according to a 2019 Home Office report). 

Without knowing the  details instead of intercepting smugglers carrying a lifeless and deadly) cargo, they’re now intercepting a live cargo (with the smugglers safely back on shore counting their money).

Reading through some recent posts on social media, it seems that the main concern of the man on the internet is that there aren’t enough cutters to catch all the illegal immigrants: “ UK Gov . Protect the country like you mean it? We only have five cutters to patrol 19,491 MILES of coastline. Italy has 600 boats.  Pathetic!”  

I can’t help wondering if south coast sailor whistleblowers would have been as bothered back in the days when the cutters were mainly intercepting drug smugglers. But then I guess that’s a case of Brandy for the Parson.  

I said at the start that as a landlubber I wouldn’t try to second-guess the actions of a cutter crew. The Home Secretary obviously thinks she’s responding to the wishes of the people when she suggests those crews should recklessly endanger life – or more likely a hardcore of back seat Admirals who see the whole thing like the opening titles of Dads Army with the asylum seekers just a cartoon who can be pushed back into the sea.