UK Lifeboat charity on its migrant rescue missions

The Royal National Lifeboat Institution last week hit out at accusations it is operating a “migrant taxi service” by rescuing people at risk of dying in the water as they cross the Channel in small boats, which the charity says is its moral and legal duty.

Responding to accusations from Nigel Farage that it is facilitating illegal immigration, the RNLI, a volunteer lifeboat charity, said it was “very proud” of its humanitarian work and it would continue to respond to coastguard calls to rescue at-risk Channel migrants in line with its legal duty under international maritime law.

“Imagine being out of sight of land, running out of fuel, coming across incredibly busy shipping lanes when you’re frightened and you don’t know which direction you’re going in. That is by anyone’s standards distress. Our role in this is incredibly important: simply to respond to a need to save lives,” said Mark Dowie, the chief executive of the RNLI.

The day after Dowie spoke out, the RNLI said it had been inundated with message of support and donations reached £200,000 ($278,000), around 30 times its normal average of £6,000–£7,000 per day. During the same period, there was a 270% increase in people viewing volunteering opportunities on its website.

Dowie’s comments came as the government prepared to enact its borders and nationality bill, which aims to reduce the numbers of crossings by criminalising migrants who attempt illegal routes into the UK rather than entering via settlement schemes.

While the charity does not take a stance on political matters, Dowie said: “These islands have the reputation for doing the right thing and being decent societies, and we should be very proud of the work we’re doing to bring these people home safe.”

The RNLI’s work rescuing migrants began five years ago, but has greatly increased over the past two years across nine sites on the Channel coast stretching between Margate in Kent and Eastbourne in East Sussex. In recent months, volunteers have observed an increase in larger boats, sometimes of up to 50 people, which are even more precarious than smaller vessels.

This reflects the rapid growth in the number of migrants attempting the crossing. Last month, the number of people who had crossed to the UK so far this year reached 8,452, which exceeded the figure for the whole of 2020, when 8,417 people made the trip.

Dowie said he had spoken to crew members who had shared “harrowing” details of “an appalling melting pot of possible risks” to understand the plight facing migrants and wanted to share these more widely. “I understand it’s a polarising and complex situation,” he said. “But unless you’ve experienced being in an open boat in the waves, it’s quite hard to get a feel for what it must be like.”

Anonymised testimonies from crew members released by the RNLI shed light on the dangerous situations for migrants. These include people lost for 30 hours in -2C temperatures in

January, families suffering from severe heatstroke and sea sickness on sweltering summer days, people travelling on inflatable dinghies, sailing catamarans and canoes, or sometimes floating on the broken remnants of boats without any lifejackets, hoping to be saved.

One volunteer described one encounter: “They’d paddled this thing about 80% of the way across the Channel and they’d been doing this all night. They’d made it into the middle of the shipping lane, and they were just so exhausted they couldn’t go on and they had nothing left and they’d stopped. When we got there, they were so tired they hardly reacted to us.”

Other volunteers shared experiences of “vile abuse” on the beach as they returned with people, including young children, in desperate need of medical attention, such as having beer cans thrown at them and people shouting: “Fuck off back to France.”

RNLI crew members are mostly volunteers. Once they return from a mission, they ensure those rescued are safe and well before handing them over to the police and border control officers.

Dowie stressed that the RNLI’s role was solely to save lives, not to act as an additional border control force.

While there had been “strong demand” for the RNLI’s service given the increase in the popularity of British seaside holidays, the charity had the resilience to cope, Dowie said.

‘Our role in this is incredibly important: simply to respond to a need to save lives’

Mark Dowie Chief executive, RNLI